What! Are there just TWO musics?   In a world that appears to generate genres in the twang of a guitar string, or the twisting dials of an electronic music generator, this may seem like an outlandish understatement.  But I am not talking about genres or particular styles, or cultures and subcultures.  I am talking about something more fundamental, what we get from our music, why it is important to us.  And before I point and name, before I drag out my two ultimately unsatisfactory categories, I must insist that all music exists on a spectrum.  There really are no clear cut divides in terms of what they mean to us.  These are matters of emphasis, matters of personal taste.   With that important qualification in mind,  let me sketch this ambiguous bipolar landscape.

 

The first category: POP.  What makes pop so…so POPular?  Pop is popular because it is almost inescapably embedded in our lives.  It is the music with which we arrange and decorate our life, our auditory wallpaper.  We grew up with it. We imbibed it regularly in school and at the movies, on television, and now on our phones. It witnessed our first dates, and it pulsed in the background of all our social encounters. It was the music that reflected our interests and common bonds. The lyrics talked to us, and even if the language was frequently banal, the pulse and ambience more than compensated.  A large chunk of those lyrics were stories of love, relationship, sex—things we all care about.   Beyond that were occasional relevant songs of social protests, or personal crises, a whole range of themes that could capture our interest.  The music could express our attitudes toward the world: from the in-your-face (and sometime up-yours) aggressive insolence of punk rock to the all-things-are-one psalms of some new-age meditations.

 

Pop music is identity music. It is who we are musically, and it is notoriously generational, subcultural, and ultimately personal.  And here we must pause to recognize that this general musical baptism is very recent, particularly in the degree to which we are immersed.  Only in the last roughly 120 years has the “electronic” revolution (in the broadest sense) progressively given us everything from radio and records to mp4s and streaming.  Prior to this, all music died in concert halls and on stages; and only a relatively small percentage of people heard it with something we could call regularity, though hardly on the same level that we are accustomed to.  There were occasional local and traveling minstrels, fairs and festivals, but this was all relatively rare. The only pervasive identity music was in the churches where believers heard the hymns that defined their perceived relationship with the cosmos.  A  few might still celebrate this, but for many of us that is limited fare.

 

So the pop-musical richness of our lives is a historical novelty, which most of us no doubt take for granted.  Next time the power goes out and your cell phone isn’t charged, you can listen to …silence…or maybe nature, if you can find it.

 

And the second category? I am stuck for a word. Nothing pops into the mind with the ease that POP does.  I could say, classical… (Ouch) … but that is too often associated with and limited to European or Western classical music tradition. But I want to refer to something broader, which would include the Raga tradition of India ( which is also referred to as “classical” Indian music), high end or experimental jazz,  the nascent world of much electronic music, and other forms of ‘classical’ traditions in other cultures.  With still some dissatisfaction I will settle on the phrase “art music” which alludes to the old saw, art for art’s sake, a focus on its intrinsic methods and merits.

 

The multifarious forms of art music are obviously rooted in cultural identity; nothing can escape the pervasive gravity of culture. But they have an additional purpose that is essential: it is about the music as music. It is a music that, instead of reflecting your world, invites you to enter its world. There is an emphasis on some form of musical enhancement or development, whether it be rhythmic complexity, thematic elaboration, or harmonic indulgence, (and usually all of the above), in the context of some formal exploration within or at the boundaries of the tradition in which it arises.   It is characteristic of much of these forms that the musical performance of a “song”, a piece, frequently involves substantial periods of time, a half hour, even up to an hour or more; this is in marked contrast to pop music where the average song duration is less than 4 minutes; and it is actually falling due to the pressure in the streaming industry to expose as much of its fare as possible.  References: 1) Fortune.  2) Billboard.

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This is obviously an oversimplification.  There are a wide variety of art music examples that unfold in less than 4 or 5 minute. Think of the individual pieces in Bach’s Well-tempered clavier.  This is not really a matter decided by a stop watch. The main point is that there is an exploration of musical possibilities, whether it be improvisational elaboration, or fixed thematic development, the music for music’s sake. 

 

By way of contrast, in Pop music composition we talk of the “hook”, that catchy or cool or whatever musical riff that reaches out to grab your attention, and keep you “hooked”, at least for a while (four minutes and counting…) This is instinctive marketing, and no doubt there is some musical invention in creating these hooks which must fit naturally into their unfolding and enveloping material.  But they can quickly lose their savor as they are imitated and repeated.  The lyric, if it is close to life and substantive, can form a deeper bond between the listener and the song, particularly if its mood and affect is supported by the music.

 

Hook or invitation? The first really doesn’t offer much choice.  Generally, you either like it or you don’t on initial encounter, with some room for it to grow on you.  But the invitation requires action on your part.  It takes time to get to know and like a more complex music.  You must invest the time.  Only then can it become a part of your identity.