{"id":7605,"date":"2023-03-03T23:41:45","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T23:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/questions\/mg-music-111\/"},"modified":"2023-03-03T23:41:45","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T23:41:45","slug":"mg-music-111","status":"publish","type":"questions","link":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/questions\/mg-music-111\/","title":{"rendered":"Mg music 111"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n Learning Goal: <\/b>I’m working on a writing discussion question and need the explanation and answer to help me learn.<\/p>\n

Jazz As “Art Music”<\/h1>\n

The idea that there is some sort of dividing line between what is considered \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art music\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153everything else\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd is actually pretty new. If we go back to Medieval or Renaissance Europe, we can find discussions of different contexts<\/em> for music, but never really a distinction that one was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd and that another was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153not art.\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd The same goes for the artistic context of early America. This idea that there is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art music\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153popular music\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd (which is thereby, not<\/em> art<\/strong>) comes sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. It was tied up with all sorts of categorization efforts with which people in the US and Europe (and their colonies) were obsessed at the time. Thus, while it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a relatively new idea, this idea is one that jazz inherited, or at least that the public inherited and applied to jazz.<\/p>\n

Once we get to the mid-1940s, jazz seems to cross into the territory of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art music.\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd Basically, before WW2, folks thought of jazz as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pop music\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd and after the war they treated it more like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art music.\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd Generally, the term \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art music\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd was applied to music played in fancy concert halls set aside just for this purpose, music written by dead German guys, music played on violins and oboes. Now, with the arrival of bebop, some of the reverence usually reserved for this old, dead music was being directed at jazz.<\/p>\n

There are a variety of reasons for this shift in perception, some of which we have\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor will\u00e2\u20ac\u201dgone into elsewhere. The point, there, though, is simply that this shift in perception happened and what that means for the style\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s future.<\/p>\n

Modern Pop vs Art<\/h2>\n

This totally arbitrary line between \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pop\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd persists, today. We interact with it all the time, even when we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do so on purpose. We \u00e2\u20ac\u0153enforce\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd these \u00e2\u20ac\u0153rules\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd about the music through all sorts of ways. For example, when attending a concert, we are supposed to dress and\/or applaud differently depending upon which type of music we are seeing performed. This is kind of silly, but also aids in the ways we are able to truly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153appreciate\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd the music in the most appropriate way.<\/p>\n

But, this brings lots of dumb elitism to different styles of music.<\/p>\n

Can you think of anything<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u201da style of music, a type of movie, a type of book, etc.\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich is often degraded as not<\/em> very artistic, but who you just love or find very moving? Why do you think this thing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmusic, movie, book, etc.\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis so derided by the elites? Why do you disagree?<\/strong><\/p>\n

An example:<\/p>\n

At Cuyamaca College, we offer a History of Rock class as a General Education class. This is pretty common; we have offered it for at least the last twenty years. But, when I was a student\u00e2\u20ac\u201d2000\u00e2\u20ac\u201c2004\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe school where I went (admittedly a pretty conservative, religious school that was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153behind the curve\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd on lots of things) didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have such a class. In the 1990s, a History of Rock class was pretty rare at a college. This was because only \u00e2\u20ac\u0153artistic\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd music was considered appropriate for study at a college, and, apparently, rock music wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t considered close enough to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art.\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd It took Cuyamaca College until 2019 to offer a History of Hip Hop class for similar reasons. Some<\/em> of this is responding to outside pressures (what other schools are doing, what students are demanding, etc.), but a lot of it comes down to what a college wants to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153legitimize\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd by offering classes that study it.<\/p>\n

Related: It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t until the 1980s that jazz bands became more or less a normal thing in an American high school or college. This, well after jazz was seen by most people as pretty firmly in the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art music\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd category.<\/p>\n

A second example:<\/p>\n

I think comic books are silly. But, I have been told that there is a lot<\/em> of great stuff in comic books, great story telling, great visual art, great character development. To me, though, I just see something kind of silly. This is me being an elitist about what \u00e2\u20ac\u0153real literature\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153real art\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd is and isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably not that good of me to have this mindset.<\/p>\n

Please leave a comment about either:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Something you like that is often not considered very artistic. Why do you think other people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/em> think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s art? Why do you?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    and\/or<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Something lots of other people do<\/em> think is great art but you just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. Why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you like this thing? What is keeping you from saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That is art?\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Please, as always, be respectful of others\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 opinions. This question could ruffle some feathers, but I am hoping it will help us dig a little deeper and see where each of our biases lie as to what is\/isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t art. This can then help us examine the way we treat other opinions in more empathetic ways.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Learning Goal: I’m working on a writing discussion question and need the explanation and answer to help me learn. Jazz As “Art Music” The idea that there is some sort of dividing line between what is considered \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art music\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153everything else\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd is actually pretty new. If we go back to Medieval or Renaissance Europe, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"disciplines":[645],"paper_types":[],"tagged":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/7605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/questions"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/7605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=7605"},{"taxonomy":"paper_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/paper_types?post=7605"},{"taxonomy":"tagged","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tagged?post=7605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}