The avantgarde's relation to popular music

Note to admins: I'm not sure this thread necessarily belongs in this particular forum, so if you feel it does not then feel free to move it. Maybe "Prog Blogs" would be an easier fit, but I'm far from sure myself.

The metal fanzine Black Ivory Tower, which has recently branched out into industrial/neofolk too, now published an article titled The Importance of the Underground which discusses the relationship of underground or countercultural music scenes to the culture at large. It starts out with an analysis of how in the world of classical/orchestral music, most of the basic theoretical grammar/language of Western music traditions was formulated and laid down by the avantgarde/elite music circles before being popularized and filtered down into more accessible forms of music. Looks like it has been that way for centuries up to and including the 20th century avantgarde classical as embodied by Schönberg, Stockhausen and friends. A central point in the essay is then that at some point in the 20th century, the "hard core" of countercultural music scenes that aren't strictly part of "high culture" then either take that place or become an integral link in the chain of disseminating avant-garde music ideas into the cultural sphere at large. I don't really consider it a coincidence that, perhaps because that's one music scene where it's the most transparent how new ideas flow downstream from the underground into the mainstream.

I'm posting this here for the reason that the essay actually uses avant-prog in general, Henry Cow and the Rock In Opposition movement in particular, as examples. This ties into the many "effort-posting" threads I have made concerning artists who are more influential than popular, as well as on how some music maintains intergenerational appeal and which does not. How much has not just the RIO movement, but more appropriately people like Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa done to disseminate the innovations of innovators in modern classical and free jazz into audiences who aren't otherwise familiar with them or might not have heard of people like Igor Stravinsky and Ornette Coleman to begin with? This becomes even more "meta" if you consider how Beefheart and Zappa might be entering that "more influential than popular" zone, I think Beefheart himself isn't quite as popular as his disciple Tom Waits for instance. Then there's his (and by extension Coleman, Stravinsky, Varese etc)'s influences on post-punk bands like The Fall or Public Image Limited and noise rockers like The Boredoms by osmosis... where there's also another cultural generation gap. To make the whole thing even more confusing, there is again those groups' influences on the sorta-mainstream through much contemporary indie rock. This ends up with a sort of "infinite regress" of music influences that very few people have the time and resources to keep track of on an in-depth level of familiarity. I mean, I like quite a bit of the avant-prog mentioned in this paragraph but it's unlikely I'll ever have more than an entry-level knowledge of those parts of jazz and classical I mentioned. Maybe it'll be possible under the condition of a certain active initiative to learn, but that might be easier said than done.

Which brings us to the central thesis of that article: Its author makes the argument that for a wider music culture to advance, and for that matter any kind of cultural sphere as it also uses examples from the world of literature in T. S. Eliot and James Joyce, it needs some kind of avantgarde or underground that works from an in-depth awareness of their artform's history to advance the medium or genre's evolution further with no concern for whether or not it will appeal to a wider audience than an esoteric niche. Their impact upon the culture at large, even if it comes to reshape it, will then by necessity be through cultural osmosis. Everything genuinely original in more wider accessible, more popular culture will have to be downstream from the countercultural scenes' elite circles. This makes my namedrop of Zappa as an example interesting, perhaps as a basis for a potential counter-argument, since his entire mission statement or motivating artistic ethos was to bridge the gap between "high" and "low culture" if not eroding the border between the two.

Did all of that make sense? I'm not sure how much I agree or disagree with the argument made in the essay, but it does add an interesting new perspective on many of the debates we've had on this forum.

I refer to how The Fall and PIL might have absorbed and continued some of the innovations those classical and jazz musicians introduced without ever having heard or being familiar with them, because they absorbed them second-hand through Can, Cpt. Beefheart, Faust etc. Basically, they continue lineages without being aware of them.

My point is exactly that according to that article's theory, Lydon and Smith can be influenced by Coleman and Varese without ever having listened to either. Granted, what most of its target audience will conclude is more likely metal songwriters being influenced by older classical music secondhand or thirdhand through say Deep Purple or Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force.


Edited by Toaster Mantis - April 06 2015 at 03:57

Ravel composed a blues. 

Edited by octopus-4 - April 06 2015 at 02:23

Toaster Mantis wrote: ExittheLemming wrote: OK, but 'cultural osmosis' re Post Punk is but a flimsy type of analogy to (cough) 'passive smoking'. Let's see, here's 3rd generation blow ya dig?: Zappa dug Varese, Faust dug Zappa, Mark E Smith (maybe) dug Faust ergo, the grumpiest man in Rock is influenced by Varese....It's not a massive step thereafter to stating that birdsong and motherese were pivotal ingredients in both the Rubettes and Henry Threadgill... (You'd be a shoo-in for a job at the Wire) Well, I'm not that convinced of that myself but it's what the article's point relies on as a central premise. Sorry I didn't make that clear enough.

Apologies for presuming you supported the article's premise

Toaster Mantis wrote: For the record, I think a better analogy would be that everyone writing crime novels today is indirectly influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whether or not they've actually read either.

Toaster Mantis wrote: (...) Did all of that make sense? I'm not sure how much I agree or disagree with the argument made in the essay, but it does add an interesting new perspective on many of the debates we've had on this forum.

Of course it makes sense. Even that I would add that it was so powerful impact of avantgarde and the popular music in the sixties, actually an impact of avantgarde and that underground part of the 60s "big rock'n'roll party", that (also with a strong addition of Jazz) made a new genre of Art music that was soon named *art rock* and (or) *progressive rock*. The popular music in such strong impact with avantgarde in 60s, in fact stop to being the popular music in its real meaning and turn into Art music. A part of rock music become art music with a capital "A" after that impact, although it keeps a form of rock music. And it doesn't matter how many copies of the best & the most famous prog albums are sold well worldwide because any kind of Art not ceases to be Art if it happened that there were a lot of consumers of that kind of Art in the period. It was great that the prog bands & solo artists somehow managed to take advantage of the very moment of openness of the music industry to anything "new" & "weird" at the time (in fact The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix are responsible for that phenomenon) and to jump into the 70s "big rock'n'roll party" what have been extremely important as an opportunity to sell a lot of LPs & arenas in the golden decade, and to live well by their (Art)music, but our beloved genre never again really belonged to "big rock'n'roll party" as an entertainment only. Of course, some prog bands were changed direction of their music into mainstream in late 70s / early 80s, and rejected Art in order to far greater profit, but that's another story.

Edited by Svetonio - April 07 2015 at 08:06

I'm curious to read your own thoughts on the subject, Dean. Probably won't have time to read or process them until the weekend, though, it will be interesting to see how much the article's thesis really holds up under examination: I. e. that innovations in popular music flow downstream from the avantgarde "art music" world through the medium of music scenes that aren't really part of the latter, but more subcultural in nature.

Once again I'm reminded of Frank Zappa's claim that The Beatles ripped off most of their experimental elements on later albums from his work, which he in turn had from more academic work, but Zappa being Zappa I'm not sure if he was being 100% serious. Also, previous threads on this subject I recall bringing up the conclusion that reconciling "art music" into popular styles like rock is harder than it looks and it's limited how much advanced compositional structure can be integrated into those forms. The few classically trained musicians I've heard voice an opinion on the subject almost uniformly find Beefheart/Zappa/Rock-In-Opposition type "avant-rock" and the Zeuhl movement more successful at integrating classical, jazz etc. into rock music than the most popular British symphonic progressive rock scenes, for what it's worth, finding stuff like Genesis and Yes at heart pop/rock in substance and structure with classical technical flourishes. Which is why I guess the article I linked to specifically uses Henry Cow as an example, notice that the author refers to him pursuing a degree in musicology several times.

Toaster Mantis wrote: For the record, I think a better analogy would be that everyone writing crime novels today is indirectly influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whether or not they've actually read either.

I think an even better analogy would be asking Sherlock Holmes to describe Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Toaster Mantis wrote: (...) Once again I'm reminded of Frank Zappa's claim that The Beatles ripped off most of their experimental elements on later albums from his work, which he in turn had from more academic work, but Zappa being Zappa I'm not sure if he was being 100% serious. Also, previous threads on this subject I recall bringing up the conclusion that reconciling "art music" into popular styles like rock is harder than it looks and it's limited how much advanced compositional structure can be integrated into those forms. The few classically trained musicians I've heard voice an opinion on the subject almost uniformly find Beefheart/Zappa/Rock-In-Opposition type "avant-rock" and the Zeuhl movement more successful at integrating classical, jazz etc. into rock music than the most popular British symphonic progressive rock scenes, for what it's worth, finding stuff like Genesis and Yes at heart pop/rock in substance and structure with classical technical flourishes. Which is why I guess the article I linked to specifically uses Henry Cow as an example, notice that the author refers to him pursuing a degree in musicology several times.

Edited by Svetonio - April 11 2015 at 02:53

Posts like Dean's about the real meaning of "avant-garde" make me extremely jealous.