Listening to Popular Music

It has long been assumed that people who prefer Led Zeppelin to Mozart live aesthetically impoverished lives. But why? InListening to Popular Music, award-winning popular music scholar Theodore Gracyk argues that aesthetic value is just as important in popular listening as it is with "serious" music. And we don't have to treat popular music as art in order to recognize its worth. Aesthetic values are realized differently in different musical styles, and each requires listening skills that people must learn. Boldly merging insights from popular music studies, aesthetic theory, cognitive science, psychology, identity theory, and cultural studies, Gracyk crafts an innovative study that argues that understanding aesthetic value is crucial to the enjoyment of all forms of music.Listening to Popular Musicthusoffers a new, general framework for understanding what it means to appreciate music, showing that an informed preference for popular music is a response to real values of the music, including aesthetic values. "Finally, a book on aesthetics that's philosophically grounded, anti-elitist, and tailored to popular music. Much needed and deftly achieved." William Echard, Department of Music, and Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture, Carleton University "A sophisticated account of aesthetic value in popular music that revealingly challenges orthodoxies of cultural studies and traditional aesthetics." Stephen Davies, Department of Philosophy, University of Auckland, and author ofThe Philosophy of Art"Gracyk's arguments are thoughtful, clear, and persuasive, and it's refreshing to see him expose the flaws in commonly repeated critiques of popular music. This book will challenge open-minded doubters to take popular music seriously." Mark Katz, Assistant Professor of Music, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author ofCapturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music Theodore Gracykis Department Chair and Professor of Philosophy at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He is the author ofRhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of RockandI Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity, which won the 2002 IASPM-US Woody Guthrie Book Award.

Theodore Gracyk is Department Chair and Professor of Philosophy at Minnesota State University Moorhead

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: Aesthetics and Popular Music	p. 1
Aesthetics without Elitism
Separating Aesthetics from Art	p. 11
The Question of "Art"	p. 11
Pet Sounds and Traditional Criteria for Art Status	p. 15
The Problem Generalized	p. 24
Pierre Bourdieu and the Sociological Critique	p. 28
Everyday Aesthetics	p. 35
Clearing Space for Aesthetic Value	p. 41
Interpreting Songs	p. 41
The Social Relevance Thesis	p. 46
Dutch Teens and the Excess Problem	p. 51
The Interaction of Politics and Aesthetics	p. 59
The Case of "Bohemian Rhapsody"	p. 63
Pragmatic Considerations	p. 67
Aesthetic Principles and Aesthetic Properties	p. 73
Unprincipled Evaluations	p. 73
Listening to the Blues	p. 77
Four Challenges to Aesthetic Principles	p. 87
Musical Categories and Ideal Critics	p. 94
The Aesthetic Value of the Popular
Appreciating, Valuing, and Evaluating Music	p. 103
Distinguishing among Objects of Evaluation	p. 103
Appreciating and Evaluating	p. 109
Cognitive Value and Appreciation	p. 114
Functionality and Value	p. 118
The Value of a Taste for a Musical Style	p. 123
Value as Choice and as Importance	p. 127
The Ideas of Hearing and Listening	p. 134
A Short History of the Distinction	p. 135
Denigrating the Popular	p. 139
Is Listening an Exclusive Activity?	p. 143
Listening to David Bowie	p. 146
Listening as Engagement with Symbols
Music's Worldly Uses	p. 153
Traditional Elitism	p. 154
Music as Thought	p. 157
Unexpected Communities	p. 167
The Politics of Noise	p. 172
Taste and Musical Identity	p. 176
Music in Identities	p. 178
Adolescence and the Problem of Self-Identity	p. 181
Imagining Music and Imagining Self	p. 184
Conclusion	p. 191
Notes	p. 195
Selected Bibliography	p. 225
Index	p. 231
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Listening to Popular Music

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Author Biography

Table of Contents

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