Have Tracer, Mark, and Alan not heard Margaret Berger?

[koganbot]

In relation to Episode Three of the Resonance FM series A Bite Of Stars, A Slug Of Time, And Thou:

(1) Results 1 - 10 of about 1,940 for "margaret berger" "robot song". (0.04 seconds)

(2) How would you compare Mark's and Alan's accents as to class, geography, and personality?

(3) Mark mentioned that the field of science fiction has been and to some extent still is anxious about its quality in relation to supposed real literature. (Frank: And well it should be.) Two questions:

(3a) Does this anxiety manifest itself in an attempt to raise the genre (say by infusing more literary or social elements) or just to do it better? (The field of mystery stories probably suffers from a similar anxiety, but back in its great days there were some writers - G.K. Chesterton and Raymond Chandler and Rex Stout come to mind - whom I'd put into the "do it better" category in that they had writers chops but didn't think they had to monkey with the conventions they were given, so they didn't come across as adding "superior" elements [except maybe when Chandler got to The Long Goodbye, which is his most overrated novel anyway].)

(3b) Does popular and semipopular music (incl. indie and alternative and noise) feel a similar anxiety, and if so, how does it act out the anxiety? I think it's shot through with anxiety, but unlike science fiction, it doesn't have an established "real music" that's equivalent to "real literature" to compare itself to, given the abandonment by so much of the intelligentsia of "classical" and "serious" music as the measure of quality. So pop and rock can be obsessive about their search for the real, but the real always remains provisional, because you don't know where to locate it.

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes literary "realness" is no more existentially secure than popmusicky "realness" -- though obviously the relevant institutions of self-prodction are different organised, and set against each other

i somewhat cavil with frank's argt that classical and/or jazz have been simply dropped as a measure of quality -- i think a powerful ghost of the threat of them still functions very strongly indeed (for example as firepower in the "stands the test of time" argument); what's been droped was never that much there, which was a widespread grasp in the "critical classes" of the actual modes of judgment that old-skool musicians make... someone like adorno is REALLY UNUSUAL in being deeply literate in the rules of classical harmony, and how these rules were breaking down within the composer community between the 1890s and the 1940s... but most cultural commentary which paid mind to this history of music as marking a measure of quality was no more competent to analyse the actual rules of its judgment than ppl totoally outside the game of it

[koganbot]

Don't know what you mean by "existentially" secure but the question I'm asking is about how "socially" secure literary "realness" is, and the point is that when SF wants to improve, it thinks that at least it has some idea of what it would take to be more "literary"*; obviously literature is part of a larger culture that has made hierarchies of taste less secure in a lot of endeavors, and the intelligentsia has consciously (and admirably) made itself less secure but...

Music is the vanguard here, where the hierarchy takes its first, hard beating, with the high regard given Elvis, Beatles, and Brown, who were basically unlike anything that was considered high art but were also not to be conveniently lauded as folk art. Elvis was a threat to literary and art hierarchies too, in that an intelligentsia that's ready to embrace an Elvis and question a hierarchy that got away with treating him as if he didn't exist will then take the questioning to other fields. And of course you're right that classical and jazz haven't simply been dropped, and you can find various universities - maybe most of them, those that still have music departments - where "music" still means "classical" training and analysis. But what you're not getting in literature and art, that I can see, is the sense that there are a whole bunch of cultural activities that are massively different from high art and are as good as or better than high art. "Art" is still what the galleries show, and what you see at art fairs and on motel walls doesn't take its cues from somewhere else. Architecture and design may be a different story (and one for sure that I don't know), and comics may be more of a genuine challenge than I'm realizing (both to art and literature, and I haven't read Martin's post yet), but (in my ignorance?) I don't see comics as remotely having the impact (and being nearly so far from the galleries) of r&b and rock 'n' roll and reggae and disco etc. The "postmodern" ferment in art and literature isn't because there've been art or literature equivalents to Elvis and James out there as counterforces. Not sure how relevant the "actual modes of judgment" of composers actually is to our discussion. The assumption by curators and high-school English teachers of what constitutes the subject matter would be more to the point; whereas a music teacher who leaves out hip-hop and rock and disco - and most would, I assume - has taken herself out of the game, not 100% out (right, classical and jazz haven't simply been dropped, and classical and jazz themselves are sources for popular music, which isn't going to ignore (for instance) classical harmony altogether**), but way out. Where is the disco and hip-hop and rock of "art" and "literature"?

In any event, the relevant question is still, when SF wants to "improve" itself, where does it go for "quality"? And compare this to where popular music goes for "quality."

Frith and Horne's Art Into Pop might be relevant here; it's interesting that the relevant "pop" that art schools generated in the '60s was pop music - or some of its packaging, anyway - not popular art. To an extent, popular music has absorbed the high romanticism of high art. But what popular music doesn't have is a high art to aspire to, when it wants to "improve."

[koganbot]

*And I'd say that even if English depts. are questioning themselves as to what constitutes the "literary," the fans of science fiction would still have a fairly conventional idea of what counts as literary (i.e., what was on the high-school and college reading lists), whereas I don't think fans of popular music - some of whom presumably are also fans of SF - have in mind a section of the musicocultural landscape that constitutes "the good music that self-improvement would take us to." Try this: "Wait, some science fiction is great art, and [science fiction writer] does well what [acknowledged literary titan] did well." As opposed to "wait, some popular music is great art, and James Brown does well what [acknowledged classical musical titan] did well." I don't know what acknowledged classical musical titan would be relevant, could fit into that spot.

**In fact, to reverse things, it's remotely possible that Mannie Fresh and Lil Jon might want to be compared to Beethoven as much as they want to be compared to James Brown (in fact, I have no idea whom they want to be compared to), but I doubt that they'd want to be compared to Beethoven instead of being compared to James Brown.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ok well i have to go catch 1xplane in an hour to fly to STRASBOURG to WATCH OPERA (wagner no less) so 0xtime at all to pick up on the many many strands of this: i think it's a giant huge massive question

when i spoke on the prog and then wrote that post this morning (abt classical music and/or jazz; abt "modes of judgment") i actually had in my head more the anxieties of musicians-as-musicians (and sfwriters-as-writers) than of fans or critics -- a craftsperson's map of "what will work" and "what will last" and "what is teh aweseom" bein sharply different from the (non-craft-capable) fan's...

(disclaimer: the relationship of craftsperson to fan in each of these different areas is almost certainly very different) (music allows for a lot more self-taughtness than eg fine or applied arts -- outside comics anyway -- which, i think, probably embeds a lot more defensive anxiety)

[koganbot]

Have a good time. When do you return?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

With SF, is its accuracy or predictive powers a factor in its art?

So "James Brown is art because he does X well" - there is no value of X which lets us map JB onto classical music*, so we have instead to confront the version of art which might include X.

Similarly the X in "SF is art because it does X well" doesn't HAVE to be an existing literary map, it can be a new X, and if so maybe the new X is 'prescience', which when you look at the SF which DOES get valued and praised is indeed often a factor.

*(There may be values of X which let us map JB onto rhetoreticians and public speakers and actors, mayn't there?)

[(Anonymous)]

"and James Brown does well what [acknowledged classical musical titan] did well." I don't know what acknowledged classical musical titan would be relevant, could fit into that spot."

I would say Igor Stravinsky, who shocked audiences with his starkness of rhythm,
and his recasting of harmony (his own stylee not derived from the
serialists). However, I don't believe that Stravinsky was ever called
upon to perform on TV to calm a nation on the verge of riot. Also,
I never saw him do the splits.

(AkinCLE)