Task 2, Adorno on Popular Music (1941)

Adorno's article sets to highlight the difference between what he describes as 'popular' and 'serious' music. Adorno himself was a sociologist and philosopher, with marxist influences, however generally rejected by many of the Marxist philosophers of the age.

He describes the standardisation that exists within popular music, wherein every song conforms to the same structure, "best known is the rule that the chorus consists of thirty two bars and the range is limited to one octave and one note". What I find particularly interesting is, considering the time period, Adorno's 'popular music' is in fact what we would consider to be the roots of all that is good in our music industry today, the beginnings of Jazz, big band and swing. It seems that Adorno has described the problem of our music industry long before his time, with our current array of repetitive dance anthems and the clones churned out by X-factor. Adorno argues that this kind of standardisation promotes 'standard reactions' - 'wholly antagonistic to the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society'. 

I believe if Adorno has a case here, it can be applied more correctly to contemporary music than the music of his day. His ideas of pseudo individualisation, i.e. the falsity of our seemly free choices, can be applied more correctly to our current situation, where everything is watched, monitored, and laid out for us like a 'multiple choice questionnaire', more so that it was 70 years ago. Adorno also touches on the idea of belonging, feeling a connection with a group of people through the same music, instead of striving to be more intellectual and selective in our choices.

"obedience to this rhythm by overcoming the responding individuals leads them to conceive of themselves as agglutinised with the untold millions of the meek who must be similarly overcome. Thus do the obedient inherit the earth."

This particularly negative view on what must have been quite an experimental and fun time for music, is where I feel  the worth in this article fails. With regard to the current musical happenings, there is now so much variety out there, some of which is standardised and conforms, some of which doesn't - yet both with equal worth - that if you don't like the record, you're more free now than you ever were to put something else on. I agree this does nothing for the 'millions of meek' who still buy 'Now That's What I Call Music', but at least this multiple choice questionnaire now has more choices.