All music functions as an expressive representation of its world. In the popular music of our time, and in the multi-faceted culture that contextualizes it, we witness a continuous, intricate retelling of the story of our world. It is no surprise that a host of theoretical explanations of popular music and its culture have emerged since the early 20^th century¾ from an almost overwhelming variety of disciplinary and ideological perspectives. This course provides a critical survey of the intellectual-critical history surrounding popular music, with readings falling into two broadly conceived topics: (1) popular music, aesthetics, and value, and (2) popular music and the politics of identity. When possible, we will listen to the music under discussion in the readings, thinking about it in terms of both the author’s theoretical / ideological framework and our own personal (emotional, intellectual, physical) responses to it.

The following describe the day-to-day activities of the course. The regular, active participation of each student is crucial to the success of the course. The class participation portion of the final grade will be determined by the following:

• Discussion leading: Daily homework will include reading, listening, and preparation for class discussions. For each reading, a pair of students will be responsible for leading the class discussion. This will involve a brief presentation of what you found to be the author’s main points and some points for discussion and/or critique. All students, whether or not they are responsible for leading discussion on a given reading, should come to class prepared to identify the main point(s) of the reading and offer individual reactions / commentary.

• Writing workshops: Twice during the semester, you will be asked to read and respond to the writing of your classmates in small groups. Your full participation in these activities is crucial if the exercise is going to function properly.

• Oral presentation: In conjunction with your final course project, you will be required to give one oral presentation of 15 minutes in length. I will explain my expectations for these presentations during class time.

In addition to class participation, your final grade for the course will be taken from your grades on 8 assignments, which total approximately 7,000 words (ca. 25-30 pages). General paper topics are listed below; the assignments are explained in detail on separate handouts

1. Response to Allan Bloom (500 words)
2. Response to Theodor Adorno (500 words)
3. Position essay: on the value of popular music (1500 words)
4. CD analysis/review #1 (The Flaming Lips) (800 words)
5. CD analysis/review #2 (Dr. Dre) (800 words)
6. CD analysis/review #3 (Prince) (800 words)
7. CD analysis/review #4 (P.J. Harvey) (800 words)
8. Final project (project format to be determined individually) (ca. 1500 words)

All written work will be graded using the +/- system. Consider the following as a general guide to letter grades on papers:

A: Excellent. Imaginative, fluent, sophisticated, thought-provoking, careful

B: Good. Clear, focused, but leaves room for improvement in one or more fairly serious departments: development of argument, style, etc.

C: Average. Adequate and competent, but undeveloped or unclear in important respects (especially development of ideas)

D: Below average. Derivative, deficient in terms of its argument, organization, and style

F: Unacceptable. inappropriate response to the assignment

10% Class participation: discussion leading; writing workshops; oral presentation

10% Two reading response essays (Bloom and Adorno) averaged

20% Position essay (on the value of popular music)

30% Four CD analysis/review papers (Flaming Lips, Dr. Dre, Prince, P.J. Harvey) averaged

30% Final project

The following four compact discs are the only required purchases for the course. I have no problem with the idea of students sharing these CDs. (For instance, a group of four of you could decide each to purchase one.) However, you will be required to get to know each of these albums extremely well, for the purposes of writing four of your eight papers, and I would suggest that if you have limited time to listen, you purchase them all yourself.

(1) The Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin (1999)

(2) Dr. Dre, The Chronic (1992)

(3) Prince, Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic (1999)

(4) P.J. Harvey, Dry (1992)

Most readings are on electronic reserve. (For all electronic reserve items, a hard copy is also available at the reserve desk.) If a call number appears after the entry, this means that the book itself is also on reserve.

Theodor W. Adorno, with the assistance of George Simpson, "On Popular Music," Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9 (1941), 17-48.

Theodor W. Adorno, "Types of Musical Conduct," in Introduction to the Sociology of Music, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1976; orig. German, 1962), 1-20.

Martha Bayles, from Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music (New York: Macmillan, 1994):

· Chapter 1, Introduction, 3-14

· Chapter 19, Rap: Trying to Make It Real (Compared to What?), 341-62

· Chapter 20, You Don’t Miss Your Water (Till Your Well Runs Dry), 363-84

Carl Belz, "Introduction: Rock as Folk Art," in The Story of Rock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 3-15.

Allan Bloom, "Music," in The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 68-81.

Norma Coates, "(R)evolution Now? Rock and the Political Potential of Gender," in Sheila Whiteley, ed., Sexing the Groove: Popular music and gender (London: Routledge, 1997), 50-64.

Angela Y. Davis, "‘Strange Fruit’: Music and Social Consciousness," in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Pantheon, 1998), 181-97.

Lewis Erenberg, "Things to Come: Swing Bands, Bebop, and the Rise of a Postwar Jazz Scene," in Lary May, ed., Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 221-45.

Simon Frith, "Confessions of a Rock Critic," in Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop (New York: Routledge, 1988), 163-68.

Simon Frith, "‘The magic that can set you free’: the ideology of folk and the myth of the rock community," Popular Music 1 (1981): 159-68

Simon Frith, from Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996):

· Chapter 1: The Value Problem in Cultural Studies, 3-20

· Chapter 6: Rhythm: Race, Sex, and the Body, 123-44

· Chapter 10: Performance, 203-25

Theodore Gracyk, "Valuing and Evaluating Popular Music," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57:2 (Spring 1999): 205-20.

Mark Mazullo, "The Man Whom the World Sold: Kurt Cobain, Rock’s Progressive Aesthetic, and the Challenges of Authenticity" [paper currently under consideration for publication]

Ingrid Monson, "The Problem with White Hipness: Race, Gender, and Cultural Conceptions in Jazz Historical Discourse," Journal of the American Musicological Society 48:3 (Fall 1995): 396-422.

Gareth Palmer, "Bruce Springsteen and Masculinity," in Sheila Whiteley, ed., Sexing the Groove: Popular music and gender (London: Routledge, 1997), 100-17.

Max Roach, "What ‘Jazz’ Means to Me," in Gerald Early, ed., Speech and Power: The African-American Essay and Its Cultural Content, from Polemics to Pulpit, volume 2 (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1990), 50-54.

Tricia Rose, "Voices from the Margins: Rap Music and Contemporary Black Cultural Production," in Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994), 1-20.

Richard Shusterman, "The Fine Art of Rap," in Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 201-35.

Cornell West, "On Afro-American Popular Music: From Bebop to Rap," in Gerald Early, ed., Speech and Power: The African-American Essay and Its Cultural Content, from Polemics to Pulpit, volume 2 (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1990), 63-72.

Ellen Willis, "Janis Joplin," in Jim Miller, ed., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, second revised edition (New York: Rolling Stone Press, 1992), 382-87.

Elvis Costello, Armed Forces

U2, Pop

Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit

Janis Joplin, Greatest Hits

Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

Nirvana, Nevermind

• Introduction to the course
• "Twenty questions" about popular music
• Assignment: read Allan Bloom and write response draft (bring 4 copies)

• Class discussion of Bloom reading
• Small-group writing workshop on Bloom responses
• Assignment: revise Bloom response

• Lecture: The study of popular music in the academy¾ an introduction to disciplines and ideologies
• Due: Bloom response
• Assignment: read Theodor Adorno, "Types of Musical Conduct" and begin to construct your own set of "listening types"

• How do we listen to popular music? Discuss Adorno’s "types" and create class typology
• Assignment: read Adorno, "On Popular Music" and draft response; listen to Anthology of Big Band Swing (disc 1) (reserve CD)

• Discuss Adorno and Swing band recording
• Assignment: revise Adorno response; read Simon Frith, chapters 1 and 10 from Performing Rites and bring in some music that the reading made you think of, being ready to share with the class what you found relevant in the reading with respect to the recording (or vice versa)

• Discuss Frith reading and musical selections

• Due: Adorno response

• Assignment: read Theodore Gracyk, "On Valuing and Evaluating Popular Music" and listen to Elvis Costello, Armed Forces (reserve CD)

• Discuss Gracyk and Elvis Costello
• Assignment: read reviews (photocopies distributed) and listen to U2, Pop (reserve CD)

• Discuss reviews and U2
• Assignment: find a good web page on each of the following: (1) the Woodstock festival of 1968 and (2) The Flaming Lips; be ready to share with the class

• Further discussion on reviewing
• Discussion: using the Web as research
• Due: position essay on the value of popular music
• Assignment: listen to The Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin (several times) and draft your analysis/review (bring 4 copies)

• Discussion of The Flaming Lips
• Small-group writing workshop on Flaming Lips CD analysis/review
• Assignment: watch video, Woodstock (time and place TBA); read Carl Belz, "Introduction: Rock as Folk Art," and Simon Frith "‘The Magic That Can Set You Free’"

• Discuss Woodstock, Belz, and Frith

• Assignment: read Cornell West and Ingrid Monson and bring in some music that the reading made you think of, being ready to share with the class what you found relevant in the reading with respect to the recording

• Discuss West, Monson, and musical selections
• Assignment: listen to Prince, Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic (several times)

• Discuss Prince
• Assignment: read Max Roach and Lewis Erenberg; listen to Dizzy Gillespie/Max Roach in Paris (reserve CD); write Prince CD analysis/review

• Discuss Roach, Erenberg, and Gillespie/Roach
• Due: Prince CD analysis/review
• Assignment: read Tricia Rose and Martha Bayles; listen to Public Enemy (reserve CD) and Dr. Dre

• Discuss Rose, Bayles, Public Enemy, and Dr. Dre
• Assignment: read Richard Shusterman; listen (again) to Dr. Dre

• Discuss Shusterman and Dr. Dre
• Assignment: read Angela Davis; listen to Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit

• Discuss Davis and Holiday
• Due: Dr. Dre CD analysis/review
• Assignment: read Simon Frith, chapter 6

• Discuss Frith
• Assignment: read Norma Coates and Simon Frith, "Confessions of a Rock Critic"; listen to PJ Harvey, Dry

• Discuss Coates, Frith, and PJ Harvey

• Oral presentations I
• Assignment: write PJ Harvey CD analysis/review

• Oral presentations II
• Due: PJ Harvey CD analysis/review
• Assignment: read Ellen Willis and listen to Janis Joplin, Greatest Hits

• Discuss Willis and Joplin

• Oral presentations III
• Assignment: read Gareth Palmer; listen to Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run (reserve CD)

• Discuss Pratt, Palmer, and Springsteen

• Oral presentations IV
• Assignment: read Mark Mazullo and listen to Nirvana, Nevermind (reserve CD)

• Discuss Mazullo and Nirvana

• Final course evaluations
• Due: final project