Contemporary Popular Music and the Construction of Meaning

Abstract

The author shows how the marginalisation of studies in contemporary popular music by traditional musicology is a consequence of a distinction which underlies modern, Western thought. According to the latter, some discourses are "true", historic, public, and others are imaginary, subjective, private. This distinction creates the aesthetic space, which deals with the artistic, with the products of fantasy, with the subjective and the private, and without any responsibility regarding the real and public. The separation between cultural and political-economical spheres is not a natural theoretical choice but rather an act of complicity which leaves the traditional musical domain in a pure, uncontaminated limbo. This separation avoids any historical analysis. It also avoids questions about its historical role in the constant construction and reconstruction of hegemonies and social identities. Because it cannot be considered as being a part of this limbo, contemporary popular music helps to lead this process into a crisis.

Full article is in Spanish on the Transcultural Music Review (Revista Transcultural de Música) site. Please click here.