This article was downloaded by: [Columbia University]

On: 22 May 2009

Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 907055525]
Publisher Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Popular Music and Society

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713689465

Reading between the lines: Music and noise in hegemony and resistance
Paul R. Kohl a
a
Department of Communication Arts, Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa
Online Publication Date: 01 September 1997

To cite this Article Kohl, Paul R.(1997)'Reading between the lines: Music and noise in hegemony and resistance',Popular Music and

Society,21:3,3 17
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/03007769708591676
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007769708591676

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or
systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or
distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents
will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses
should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,
actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly
or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Reading between the Lines:

Music and Noise in Hegemony and Resistance

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

Paul R. Kohl
One of the essential components of being human is the creation of
symbolic systems that allow us the ability to think not only of what is,
but of what was and what can be, even of what can never be. This quality is often a double-edged sword, however, when it leads to the creation
of hierarchy, the dividing of humankind's environment, individuals, and
artifacts into categories that often have negative consequences. Philosophers and literary critics of the past century have investigated such culturally constructed categories in order to illuminate their artificiality,
causing many to be erased or rewritten. But such distinctions also illuminate the true underlying differences in cultures. Ideological distinctions,
for instance, such as liberal versus conservative, offer a sense-making
schema for a world still constantly dividing itself. Cultural artifacts
themselves are useful ideological constructs. As an artistic and cultural
form music can be a valuable tool for reading ideological intentions and
the changing political and economic tenor of the times. This is evident in
its own development and written history as music itself has been endlessly categorized and divided against itself.
Music is, of course, divided into a multitude of categories, mainly
for purposes of marketing. A glance at any recent issue of Billboard will
give evidence of the range and scope of today's musical product. Even
major genres like rock are broken up into myriad subgenres like punk,
techno, metal, hard, and pop. These categories are all meaningful, but
rather than looking at such distinctions I wish to explore a few major
dichotomies that have arisen in cultural analyses of music. Many of
these are tied to purely musical ideas, but it is their cultural meanings
that are important here.
Carl Dahinaus traced one of the most significant musical distinctions in his book The Idea of Absolute Music. Dahlhaus here explores the
development of the notion of absolute music in classical forms, noting
that "According to Arnold Schering, not until around 1800 'does the pernicious spectre of dualism between 'applied' (dependent) and 'absolute'
music enter European musical awareness, leading to serious conflicts"
3

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

Popular Music and Society

(8-9). The conflict itself arises out of the importance of symbolic systems and music's own place within them. Before 1800 music mattered
most if it was tied to some extramusical content, some language meaning
that would accompany the listener. "Music without language was therefore reduced," Dahinaus states, "its nature constricted: a deficient type or
mere shadow of what music actually is" (8). Absolute music, to the contrary, had no meaning outside itself. Devoid of even such guides to
meaning as a title, works such as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony conveyed
"essences" rather than "appearances" and hence reached deeper than language ever could (Dahlhaus 10).
European thinkers eventually elevated the idea of absolute music as
the purest form of art for art's sake. The dichotomy led to philosophical
arguments ever since as to the superiority of one form over the other.
Roland Barthes, however, in the essay "Musica Practica," makes a completely different distinction between music one listens to and music one
plays. "These two musics are two totally different arts," he explains,
"each with its own history, its own sociology, its own aesthetics, its own
erotic" (149). Barthes's concept of music that one plays is somewhat
archaic by today's standards and he admits as much. "This music has
disappeared," he writes (149). Though individuals obviously still play
for themselves, family, and friends, our modern world has been overwhelmed by a professional musical caste that entertains from afar and
for profit. Curiously, Barthes blames (or credits) the same individual for
this change to whom Dahlhaus attributes the creation of absolute music:
Beethoven. The power of Beethoven's music is such, according to
Barthes, "that it forsakes the amateur and seems, in an initial moment, to
call on the new Romantic deity, the interpreter" (152).
The ideas of Dahlhaus and Barthes lay some groundwork for looking at one of the more crucial distinctions in popular music, that between
authenticity and inauthenticity. As Simon Frith has noted, "The important question is not whether one piece of music is more authentic than
another... but why authenticity is an issue in popular culture, why some
sorts of inauthenticity are more suggestive than others" (471). Michael
Jarrett likewise notes the importance of the division, but as he and Frith
both suggest, the categories are in no way distinct: "I want to emphasize
the overlap of 'authentic' and 'commercial' music. Only by unsettling
this opposition can we begin to rethink a cultural model..." (170).
The question of authenticity is important in music because of its
direct relation to economics and industrialization. As music is commodified it is seen as losing its power with the people and instead becomes
part of a greater ideology, a hegemonic tool of sorts. This is the argument of Jacques Attli, who traces the shift in music from a cultural form

Reading between the Lines

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

which provides ritualistic force to one which predicts a capitalist economic system. As Attli states, "A dynamic of codes, foreshadowing
crises in political economy, is at work within music" (31). A brief look at
Attali's codes will create a new set of distinctions by means of which to
discuss issues of authenticity which have been previously raised.
Attli 's Four Musical Networks
In his book Noise: The Political Economy of Music, Attli defines
four historical stages of music production, each of which creates a particular relationship, or network, between individuals and their social
organizations. The first of these networks, preindustrial in origin, is the
sacrificial ritual. Attli begins his thesis with the notion of noise as a
form of murder, a violent rupture in the otherwise peaceful fabric of
existence. Borrowing from information theory, Attli conceptualizes
noise in part as "the term for a signal that interferes with the reception of
a message by a receiver, even if the interfering signal itself has a meaning for that receiver" (27). As Stuart Hall reminds us, a message is never
received or decoded as it was encoded, so noise, it would appear, is
always present at some level. Harnessing this noise, in part, is one of the
ritualistic functions of music: "the whole of traditional musicology analyzes music as the organization of controlled panic, the transformation of
anxiety into joy, and of dissonance into harmony" (Attli 27).
So if noise is a form of murder to Attli, then the harmonizing of noise
into musical sounds is a form of sacrifice, an intentional breaking of
silence for the purpose of control. Such is the origin of the ritualistic
uses of music that predate the industrial age. Even more importantly,
Attli suggests that "music appears in myth as an affirmation that society is possible. That is the essential thing. Its order simulates the social
order, and its dissonances express marginalities. The code of music simulates the accepted rules of society" (29). So it is that the later musical
networks that Attli proposes reflect changing political and economic
systems.
In eighteenth-century Europe music became representation and
commodity. That is, it became a form of greater professionalization
which demanded a greater separation between performer and audience.
This necessitated the beginning of musical exchange value as musicians
began working for patrons and royalty. As Attli explains, such arrangements led to ideological uses of music, as well: "This evolution of the
economy of music is inseparable from the evolution of codes and the
dominant musical aesthetic," as each "specific type of musical distribution and musical code [is] associated with each social organization"
(46). With music now formalized in concert halls or cabarets, a series of

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

Popular Music and Society

controls began to be manifested around it, as Attali's anecdotes on the

nineteenth century regulation of Parisian street performers portray (7277).
Music as representation held sway over the nineteenth century, but
as the industrial revolution took hold a new way of listening to music
emerged. The phonograph paved the way for Attali's third musical code,
repetition. In this network a musical work is wholly commodified,
removed from any physical context of time or space, and even more
importantly, capable of being stockpiled for future listening. It is Attali's
contention that music in this form produces an entirely new economic
system, one reflected in Marx's concept of commodity fetishism. The
commodity itself is removed from the workmanship which created it and
becomes a spontaneous object. Under repetition, Attli states, "music
becomes a monologue. It becomes a material object of exchange and
profit, without having to go through the long and complex detour of the
score and performance anymore" (88).
The network of repetition cannot last forever, however, according to
Attli, and he supposes a fourth musical code that will eventually supplant it. Composition, he admits, "is not easy to conceptualize. All political economy up to the present day, even the most radical, has denied its
existence and rejected its political organization" (134). Composition is a
return to personal usage and meaning in music, an escape from the economic and political structures that have arisen around music the previous
500 years. It is not a return to the ritual of the past, however, but an
escape from all prior codes, "when music, extricating itself from the
codes of sacrifice, representation, and repetition, emerges as an activity
that is an end in itself, that creates its own code at the same time as the
work" (135).
Attali's notion of composition is certainly a heartening one, as individuals create, perform, and listen to music for its own ends, no longer
producing distinctions between producers, commodities, and audiences.
It is a network that Attli sees evolving in the new compositional and
performing styles and philosophies of John Cage and the free jazz artists
of the 1960s and in the noise manifestoes and instruments of Luigi Russolo. These and many other radical breaks in music-making are indeed
liberating, and Attali's conceptions of the four networks and their progression are illuminating. But, like other categorical systems, they
cannot be read as absolute. The compositional mode was doubtless in
effect even at the height of representation and repetition. What makes
composition prevalent at this juncture in history, as Attli admits, is the
achievement of the previous networks' goals: "Representation made repetition possible by means of the stockpile it constituted. And repetition

Reading between the Lines

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

created the necessary conditions for composition by organizing an amazing increase in the availability of music" (136). Ironically, then, it is
industrialization and technology that provide the conditions for their
transcendence in addition to the need for that transcendence.
The history of popular music can certainly be illuminated by using
Attali's codes in conjunction with some of the other distinctions musicologists have devised. What is important in looking at here is that not only
does music foreshadow economic and political systems, as Attli suggests, it also resists and reacts against them. As Susanne Langer writes in
Philosophy in a New Key, "If music has any significance, it is semantic,
not symptomatic" (185). Attali's compositional mode is highly political,
but wrapped as it is in the trappings of previous modes, one must ask
how liberating it can truly be. I wish to parse this question out by looking
at the universal tension between music as authentic voice and as commercial commodity, a tension which has long been contemporaneous.
What Is Authenticity?
Music has for so long been tied up in a system of economics and
commodification that these conditions cannot be held as criteria for a
musical work either being or not being authentic. What is held up, however, is the point of origin of musical styles and works. One point of
origin seen as authentic is the African-American experience as mani-
fested in the blues and related genres. As Michael Jarrett notes,
For me (a white, male, and, now, middle-aged music consumer), "music as
expression" has always meant African-American music. It was "authentic," a
genuine outpouring of real feeling (quality is a result of closeness to the blues).
I have long regarded commercialization as corruption: an "essential human
activity" colonized. (171)
Jarrett admits, however, that this conception is simply too tidy. The intermingling of black and white musical stylings and meanings clouds such
an easy distinction.
Rather than basing authenticity on racial or historical origins,
Simon Frith suggests looking at more local origins and differences
"between meanings grasped 'from underneath' and meanings imposed
'from on top' " (471-72). The cultural impact of commercially successful
artists like Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Bob Marley, Public Enemy, or Nirvana "was not written into their music in advance. The recognitions and
resonances they caused in their audiences were unknown until they
occurred" (472). Though I am in some agreement with Frith that music
ostensibly created on the streets, such as punk or rap, is more sugges-

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

Popular Music and Society

tively authentic than the studio-created worlds of groups like Spice Girls
or the Monkees, such distinctions again get trickier as the music industry
evolves to ever more postmodern lengths towards what Lawrence Grossberg calls "authentic inauthenticity" (224).
Why is such a distinction important if a distinction cannot truly be
made? The answer lies, I believe, in the contention that music can have
both a hegemonic and a liberating effect, often at the same time. John
Fiske's work on the contradictions of popular culture makes it clear that
in order to support itself a capitalist system must provide products which
contradict its goals, thus providing the spectacle of megacorporations
releasing anticorporate songs by the Clash, the Sex Pistols, and Gang of
Four, or hegemonic institutions like Geffen and CBS Records releasing
antiauthoritarian works by N.W.A. and Public Enemy. Are these authentic statements or are they compromised by the distribution system of
which they are a part? Do bands lose authenticity when they move to a
major label? What could be more authentic, however, than Kurt Cobain
singing "All Apologies" on the last track of In Utero, his last album
before killing himself, giving truth to his psychological battles? These
statements of authenticity are all part of Attali's network of repetition,
however, a network in which works are stockpiled and their messages
forever confined in the commodity, "even the act that is the least separable from use-time: death" ( 126).
Can we have it both ways? Using Attali's notion of composition,
the suggestion would seem to be yes, and there is no reason to believe
that we haven't had it both ways all along. As Frith states: "Pop music
. . . matters because it is an important way in which people, young
people in particular, accommodate themselves to . . . the contradictions
of capitalism" (472). Despite whatever attempts might be made, music,
and especially its meanings, cannot be controlled.
The Meaning of Noise
The essential component in looking at music as resistance seems to
be noise. As Attli writes, "Musicology always situates this essential
fracture back at the entry of noise into music" (136). But where does this
entry begin? Attli credits Russolo and his followers in the years before
the First World War for bringing the sounds of the industrial world into
the concert hall, but noise was a component of musical development
long before that. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, for instance, points out that "the
Tristan Chord, at the time of its creation (1859), was nothing but 'noise,'
in the sense that it was a sonorous configuration that could not be countenanced by contemporary harmonic conventions" (46). But the notion
of noise becomes critical with the rise of industrialization. "All twenti-

Reading between the Lines

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

. eth-century music is in effect characterized by a displacement of the

boundary between 'music' and 'noise,' " according to Nattiez (45).
There is some irony in the need for musicians to expand the range
of acceptable sounds in a new world clamoring with new timbres and
rhythms, but there is some necessity for it, as well. As Mississippi blues
players had to electrify their instruments upon entering the noisy nightclubs of Chicago, as hip-hop artists compete according to who has the
best bass on the block, so those artists who incorporate noise into their
music do so to gain attention. Of course, noise need not be literally loud.
Attli notes John Cage's silent piece 4' 33" as an example of disruption,
forcing the audience to listen to themselves (136). Noise can best be
defined here as rupture or resistance toward the dominant ideals of
music, and consequently, of the larger society. What I wish to explore
further is the role of the third network, repetition, in the creation of
noise, rupture, and resistance.
As Theodore Gracyk puts forth in his volume Rhythm and Noise:
An Aesthetics of Rock, the ability to record sounds not only created the
opportunity for stockpiling recordings and removing them from their
originating contexts, it also created a whole new method of making
music, a method that could not be reproduced in any other way. Recordings become not only authentic texts, but the only place where certain
sounds and performances can be heard. As Gracyk explains, the sound of
such recordings as Elvis Presley's Sun sessions or Phil Specter's work
can only be heard on record. Similarly, tape-manipulated songs like
"Good Vibrations" or "A Day in the Life," among many others, can
never be fully re-created in any other manner. Thus industrial progress in
recording technology makes way for a whole new mode of understanding music.
Not all recordings are like this. Many recordings reproduce actual
performances with recording techniques used solely to fix errors. But as
has become apparent in recent years, recordings themselves have
become the raw material from which other recordings are now made.
This mode of composition appears to reflect back some of Attali's ideas
on the shift between musical networks. Recording technology and its
subsequent decontextualizing of content provides for increasing noise
and rupture of the dominant political and economic ideology, despite
Attali's protests. It accomplishes this through the process of mass production and the uncontrollable nature of subsequent meanings. The
industrial and technological nature of the recording process provides a
means of escape from the hegemonic meanings of mass production. I
wish to explore three ways by which this is done: signification, sampling, and the rvaluation of musical history through the compact disc.

10

Popular Music and Society

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

All three of these processes create ruptures between the encoded meanings of mass production and decoded meanings of reception.
Signification, or the Inversion of Meaning
The tension between music as an authentic cultural form and massproduced commodity can perhaps best be expressed by looking at the
notion of signification. The idea of signification enters popular music
through the introduction of African cultural forms and traditions to the
Western world. In his study The Signifying Monkey, Henry Louis Gates,
Jr., calls signification "a uniquely black rhetorical concept, entirely textual or linguistic, by which a second statement or figure repeats, or
tropes, or reverses the first" (49). Signifying was brought to the New
World by African slaves who brought with them mythical characters
who communicated with both gods and humans. These characters were
often trickster figures who played jokes on those above and on those
below. One such character was Esu-Elegbara, whose unique status of
existing in two worlds at the same time gave him the ability to speak in
different languages. Gates notes that, "This probably explains why Esu's
mouth . . . sometimes appears double; Esu's discourse, metaphorically, is
double-voiced" (7).
Upon arriving in the New World, Africans found it necessary to adapt
Esu-Elegbara's abilities to their new situation. Faced with circumstances
that often demanded trickery and subterfuge, African-American slaves
learned to speak a vernacular English which held different meanings for
themselves than it did for their dominators. The art of signification thus
became a way for African-Americans to survive in the New World by
overturning the meanings of their masters and, in turn, tricking them.
Signifying has manifested itself in all manner of African-American
culture, from the early folk tales of the Signifying Monkey and Br'er
Rabbit to the verbal jousting known as "the dozens," all of which filter
into African-American musical culture. Music has always been one of
the most important vehicles for signification for a number of reasons,
one of which is the fact that music was one area in which early white
Americans admitted that the Negro had skill. As Lawrence Levine
writes: "White southerners, no matter how much they might denigrate
the culture and capacities of their black bondsmen, paid tribute to their
musical abilities" (5). Attracted to the rhythms and harmonies that their
slaves brought over from Africa, aware that their use improved the disposition and productivity of their workers, and ignorant of any other
function, slave owners and other whites encouraged the production of
music by Negroes. It is important to note the economic justification used
here; as Ben Sidran states, "These songs were encouraged by the white

Reading between the Lines

11

man because they helped the slaves work more efficiently" (15). The
slaves themselves had other uses in mind. Levine notes, "Inevitably, the
slaves used the subtleties of their song to comment on the whites around
them with a freedom denied them in other forms of expression" (11).
African-American music forms thus became, among other things, vehicles of opposition and resistance, made manifest in an unusually candid
Negro folk song:

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

Got one mind for white folks to see,

'Nother for what I know is me;
He don't know, he don't know my mind. (Levine xiii)
Though the origins of signification predate recording technology,
mass production both disseminated the seeds of signification and made
the device even more necessary. The hidden meanings of African-American culture entered into mainstream American culture, at first slowly,
eventually rapidly. By the end of World War H, the youth of America,
anxious for change and excitement, latched onto black America's rhythm
and blues, which quickly metamorphosed into rock and roll, a music that
ruptured American culture in a major way.
One example of signification at work in modern popular music can
be found in some of the music created in the 1960s at Berry Gordy's
Motown Records. Gordy designed his music to be popular among all
races, and so it was. But many secret messages of resistance and struggle
can be found in some of the company's most popular hits. Most apparent, perhaps, is Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street,"
released in the summer of 1964. Gerald Early notes that few AfricanAmericans at the time took the song literally, insisting, rather, that it was
"a metaphorical theme song for black unity and black revolution" (38).
As important a black revolutionary figure as Amiri Baraka read the song
as "an evocation of revolutionary times" (McEwen & Miller 226).
A similar reading can be made of the Four Tops' 1966 "Reach Out
I'll Be There." Greil Marcus has written that in the song "Levi Stubbs
sang as if he were calling to a buddy in a firefight" (270), and the Holland-Dozier-Holland production reacts to a turbulence that is far greater
than any mere romantic situation could be. Stubbs's performance echoes
the despair of black Americans unable to break through the barriers of
prejudice. As he cries out at the song's conclusion there is a hint of
Gordy himself speaking of his own triumph in apparently overcoming
the obstacles of race.
As the black community broke itself apart in the 1960s by seeking a
variety of ways to challenge racism, such popular Suprmes songs as

12

Popular Music and Society

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

"Where Did Our Love Go?," "You Can't Hurry Love," and "Someday
We'll Be Together" seemed to preach a message of loss, patience, and
hope that white audiences could not fully appreciate. Berry Gordy himself has recounted the funeral of a Chicago Black Panther, at whose large
funeral "Someday We'll Be Together" was played: "All these people
were fighting each other, but they were all listening to Motown music"
(Goldberg 71).
Not all popular music is as subtle in its signification, and as
African-American music has progressed, much of it is almost impenetrable to outside audiences, including free jazz and rap. What is interesting
about much of this music is that it not only signifies through its lyrics,
but likewise through its composition and recording practices. This
should become evident by looking at the practice of sampling.
Sampling, or the Reuse of Material
Sampling has become a major controversy in the music industry of
late, and with good cause. With the technology available to pull sounds
out of previously released recordings and reuse them, the question of
ownership becomes central, and in the dominant economic system of our
time ownership equals profit.
The question of who owns the rights to musical compositions or
recordings has likewise been a pivotal point in the tensions between
dominant cultural practices and marginalized populations. Blues writers
often had their songs credited to others or lost out on major profits when
white artists recorded their songs. The practice of white artists covering
rhythm and blues songs served to cheat the original artists. Even so
major a figure as Chuck Berry had to share writing credit on his first
record, "Maybellene," with disc jockey Alan Freed, who had no part in
its composition (Ward, Stokes, and Tucker 102). Such actions were
fairly standard and not limited to whites cheating blacks.
Such exploitative practices have been well-documented. On the
reverse side, African-American artists have signified on white compositions by changing their structure, as well. Bebop players like Charlie
Parker and Dizzy Gillespie routinely fashioned new compositions out of
the chord changes of Gershwin melodies like "I Got Rhythm" and other
tunes.
Of course, chord changes and rhythms cannot be copyrighted, while
melody and lyrics are. Thus the actions of early rap artists escaped
notice for some time as new lyrics were placed over old beats. But as
hip-hop grew in popularity, the use of previously issued recordings as
musical material became a major issue in the recording industry. Rap
group De La Soul, for example, were sued by the Turtles for slowing

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

Reading between the Lines

13

down "You Showed Me" and using it as a new track. Not only rap
groups are penalized, but alternative bands like Negativland, who were
forced to recall one of their recordings after sampling U2 and the voice
of Casey Kasem.
Sampling provides a technological means to resist dominant ideas
of ownership. It is fitting that the tradition of sampling originated in
oppressed communities using the music of previously marginalized
musicians. Hip-hop artists on the streets of the Bronx in the late seventies used the music of James Brown and Jamaican reggae bands to back
their messages. The manipulation of turntables and records to create the
new music serves as an example of using previously existing materials
for new purposes, much as the founders of concrete music used found
sounds in their compositions. These are examples of what John Fiske
calls the "cultural value" of commodities. "The original commodity (be
it a television program or pair of jeans) is, in the cultural economy, a
text," he states, "a discursive structure of potential meanings and pleasures that constitutes a major resource of popular culture" (27). It is "in
the productive use of industrial commodities" where the creativity of
popular culture is found. "The culture of everyday life lies in the creative, discriminating use of the resources that capitalism provides" (28).
One of those resources is music, which is frequently used to resist or
redirect dominant meanings, and with the increased stockpiling of past
recordings for rvaluation, more and more of that resource is available.
Rvaluation, or Rewriting Musical History on Compact Disc
In defending themselves against illegal sampling charges, the group
Negativland reminds us that "As Duchamp pointed out many decades
ago, the act of selection can be a form of inspiration as original and significant as any other" (91). At its broadest this can be taken to say that
one creates meaning simply by the selection of content to which one
attends. Ultimately this is true, and, based on Attali's criticism of the
decontextualized nature of recordings, is omnipresent. But we have now
reached a new era in recording, a new medium which is more easily
manipulable by the audience than previous recording media of records
and tapes.
Compact discs are revolutionary in that they have allowed for a new
way of listening to* musical history. No longer are the musical canons of
the past as well defined as they once were. By pushing a few buttons on
one's compact disc player, one can reprogram an entire album with ease.
The CD version of the Beatles' Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
includes notes on the original intended playing order of side one, followed by the suggestion to program the player to hear this original order.

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

14

Popular Music and Society

Old albums are now released with alternate versions of songs, or tracks
which were never meant to see the light of day.
Theodore Gracyk proposes an interesting problem in his discussion
of rock recordings as the essential texts over songs. One could create a
"bootleg" version of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, he notes, by
using alternate takes of the album's songs. It would not, however, be
Blood on the Tracks. "My tape would be the equivalent of showing you
one of Seurat's preliminary studies for La Grande Jatte and claiming
that it was the painting that everyone regards as his masterpiece" (35).
It is now fairly common, however, for one to be able to perform such a
re-creation using newly released material. The recently released Anthology volumes of the Beatles contain enough outtakes that one could construct almost entirely new versions of Sgt. Pepper, The White Album, or
Abbey Road. One Internet web site offers tips on tracking down the
planned tracks for the Beach Boys' aborted Smile album, most now
available commercially. Many recordings of old material are newly
enhanced for stereo or noise reduction.
This hunger for old material is not limited to popular music. Manuscripts of unfinished work by Mozart and other composers are often
found and performed, either unfinished or with newly fashioned endings.
Several excised bars of Rhapsody in Blue were recently put back for the
first time. Neither is this backlog of newly found riches unwelcome.
Musicologists and fans alike are always excited to hear new material by
a favorite artist. But these practices should not go without some examination as to what they might mean for the listener or for the perceived
history of music.
David Denby, writing in The New Yorker, notes that "if you reprogram the order of cuts in a pop album, you dissolve the album, at least as
the album was once conceivedas a story the artist wanted to tell" (78).
Denby gives the aforementioned Sgt. Pepper as the most obvious example, but many more organic, concept albums exist. Denby is, of course,
correct, but anyone who would manipulate Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds,
Astral Weeks, or Tommy in such a manner misses the point of those
works, anyway. For those who do appreciate the structure built into such
musical works the newfound ability to deconstruct them accentuates that
structure. With the growing availability of musical resources and strategies for rewriting, one does have a greater opportunity to write one's
own meaning into a text.
The distribution of music is still a highly economic and political act,
subject to market forces. Much of musical history remains marginalized
and difficult to access because of its relative unpopularity. Usually this is
the music that has the most resistant potential. But often the most unas-

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

Reading between the Lines

15

suming texts can become transgressive when utilized by particular groups

or individuals. The popularity of ABBA within the gay community, Sid
Vicious's rendering of "My Way," and John Coltrane's deconstruction of
"My Favorite Things" are examples of mainstream popular music being
appropriated counterculturally. Reacting to Attali's position on the ideological limitations of reproduction, Tricia Rose writes that "Positioning
repetition in the late capitalist markets as a consequence of that market,
marginalizes or erases alternative uses of and relationships to repetition
that might suggest collective resistance to that system" (104).
Because of its development as traced by Attli, music is more
greatly controlled and protected against legal violation than other arts,
visual arts in particular. The appropriation of "found material" by dadaist
artists like Duchamp and pop artists like Warhol incorporates a sense of
play with culture that musical artists are less free to experiment with.
Either artists must attain copyright permission, flaunt the law, or disguise
their sampling so as to make it unrecognizable. But such play is infinitely possible, both on a recording level and in the behaviors of audiences. Anyone who has ever put together a mix tape can attest to the
thrill of creating a new artifact, of giving previously released songs new
meaning in new juxtapositions. Repetition does not restrict this practice
but makes it possible.
Ownership and Meaning
The dividing lines within music that have been explored here are
those between types of ownership and meaning. Whether one distinguishes between music which is tied to an external meaning or is
absolute and freed from defined meaning, whether one sees a difference
between whether one is a listener or a participant, or whether one recognizes certain types of music as being more authentic than others, ownership and meaning are central. There is much power concentrated in the
cultural distribution of musical texts, as Attli demonstrates. But there is
opportunity to resist that power embedded in those texts.
In physical terms, Michel de Certeau makes a distinction between
"place" and "space." A "place" belongs to the forces of the powerful and
provides a locale from which the powerful can perform controlling
"strategies." "Space" is the location of the weak, a temporary shelter
from which the residents perform resistant "tactics." "The space of the
tactic is the space of the other," de Certeau writes. "Thus it must play on
and with a terrain imposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign
power" (37). To look at the relationship between music and its audience
in this way is perhaps unrealistic. Controlling concerns do use music for
hegemonic purposes, but record companies, and certainly musical artists,

16

Popular Music and Society

should not be universally characterized in this manner. Neither do all listeners use music to resist domination. But elements of this schema do
exist in the production, distribution, and reception of popular music. The
complexity of these interrelationships demands more understanding of
what meanings are created as these aspects of musical creation and
appreciation are conjoined.

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

References
Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Trans. Brian Massumi.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1985.
Barthes, Roland. "Musica Practica." Image-Music-Text. Trans. Stephen Heath.
New York: Noonday P, 1977. 149-54.
Dahlhaus, Carl. The Idea of Absolute Music. Trans. Roger Lustig. Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1989.
de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall.
Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.
Denby, David. "My Problem with Perfection: The Consequences of the CD
Revolution." The New Yorker 26 Aug. & 2 Sept. 1996: 64ff.
Early, Gerald. "One Nation under a Groove." The New Republic 15 and 22 July
1991: 30-41.
Fiske, John. Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Frith, Simon. "Art Ideology and Pop Practice." Marxism and the Interpretation
of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 461-75.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American
Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.
Goldberg, Michael. "Berry Gordy." Rolling Stone. 23 Aug. 1990: 66ff.
Gracyk, Theodore. Art and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock. Durham: Duke UP,
1996.
Grossberg, Lawrence. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism
and Postmodern Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Jarrett, Michael. "Concerning the Progress of Rock & Roll." Present Tense:
Rock & Roll and Culture. Ed. Anthony DeCurtis. Durham: Duke UP, 1992.
167-82.
Langer, Susanne. Philosophy in a New Key. New York: New American Library,
1951.
Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American
Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.
Marcus, Greil, ed. Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island. New York:
Knopf, 1979.

Reading between the Lines

17

Downloaded By: [Columbia University] At: 06:57 22 May 2009

McEwen, Joe, and Jim Miller. "Motown." The Rolling Stone Illustrated History
of Rock & Roll. Ed. Jim Miller. New York: Random House, 1976. 222-33.
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music.
Trans. Carolyn Abbate. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.
Negativland. "Fair Use." Sounding Off! Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution. Ed. Ron Sakolsky and Fred Wei-Han Ho. Brooklyn: Autonomedia,
1995. 91-94.
Rose, Tricia. "Soul Sonic Forces: Technology, Orality, and Black Cultural Practice in Rap Music." Sounding Off! Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution. Ed. Ron Sakolsky and Fred Wei-Han Ho. Brooklyn: Autonomedia,
1995. 97-107.
Sidran, Ben. Black Talk. New York: Da Capo, 1981.
Ward, Ed, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker. Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone
History of Rock & Roll. New York: Rolling Stone P, 1986.
Paul R. Kohl is assistant professor and chair of the Department of Communication Arts at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa.