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It is sometimes abbreviated to pop music, although is more often used for a narrower branch of popular music.
Among scholars in the humanities, a broader range of definitions have been proposed about popular music. Frans Birrer (1985, p.
104) gives four conceptions or definitions of " " music:
Popular music is associated with (produced for or by) a particular social group.
Recent examples: "The Wreck of the Old Ninety-seven", "The Ballad of Ira Hayes"(Johnny Cash, Iwo Jima, a native American's WW-II story, recently made into a movie by Clint Eastwood),"The Battle of New Orleans". Johnny Horton, "Ode to Billy Joe", "Ohio" (Neil Young, the Kent State University killings). Many songs written to tell a story have become popular songs.
Mating music. Much of popular music throughout history was written by and for young people with raging hormones. Themes include the possibility of meeting, meeting and the mating dance, mating, loss of love (really popular) and nostalgic.
Many of these types of songs originally written as popular songs have become classics, for example, songs about having sex include The Blue Danube Waltz, Tales from the Vienna Woods, and Liebestraum (love death) is about having a sexual orgasm. The third kind of popular music to be considered is the satirical mocking song. Many nursery rhymes were written about important people and events, making fun of them.
Today, this type of political mockery seems to be the province of cartoonists. The last song written to mock somebody may be "All American Boy", making fun of Elvis. Anything more recent?
All of these, according to Middleton (1990,p.4) "are interest-bound; none is satisfactory." According to Hall (1978, p.
6-7), "The assumption...
that you might know before you looked at cultural traditions in general what, at any particular time, was a part of the elite culture or of popular culture is untenable." Thus popular music must be comprehended in relation to the broader musical field (Middleton 1990, p.11).
Bennett (1980, p.153-218) distinguishes between 'primary' and 'secondary' popular culture, the first being mass product and the second being local re-production, discussed further below.
"While is a feature of all music, of any sort, a high level of repetition may be a specific mark of 'the popular', enabling an inclusive rather than exclusive audience.
" (Middleton 1990, p.139)
Much popular music is the product of the modern business enterprise disseminated for the purpose of earning a profit. Executives and employees of popular music businesses try to select and cultivate the music that will have the greatest success with the public, and thus maximize the profits of their firm.
In this respect, popular music differs from traditional , which was created by ordinary people for their own enjoyment, and from , which was originally created to serve the purposes of the Church or for the entertainment of the nobility. (Today classical music is often subsidized by governments and universities.)
Although the controlling forces of popular music are business enterprises, young people who aspire to become popular musicians are not always driven by the profit motive.
Rather, they often want to find an outlet for their sense of expression and creativity, or simply to have fun. Historically, the conflicting motives of business people and musicians have been a source of tension in the popular music industry.
Many people play popular music together with their friends, often in garages and basements, on a casual amateur basis.
This activity is one of the most widespread forms of participatory music-making in modern societies. As participatory music, "garage bands" are in a sense a resurrection of the old tradition of , which in premodern times was composed and performed by ordinary people and transmitted exclusively by word of mouth. The difference between the old folk music and modern amateur performance of popular music is that the participants in the latter genre are well acquainted with the expert performances that they hear on recordings, and often try to emulate them.
The older folk music of a society often lives on in a popularized version, which is likewise performed by experts and commercially disseminated. Such updated versions of folk music often have heavy amateur participation.
Popular music dates at least as far back as the mid 19th century, and is commonly subdivided into genres.
Different genres often appeal to different age groups. These often, but not always, are the people who were young when the music was new. Thus, for instance, music continues to have a following, but it is probably a rather older group, on average, than the audience for .
For some genres (for instance, ), the original target generation may have died out almost entirely.
This "generation gap" in the consumption of popular music is particularly marked since the second world war and the increased economic and social independence of younger people. Music hall and other forms before the 1940s are not so clearly marked by generation.
are between popular and art music. Examples being that " " (Cats) is a very "acceptable"(??
?) song, while only select groups of people enjoy listening to "One" (A Chorus Line), "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats" (Cats), "Tevye's Dream" (Fiddler on the Roof), "Tomorrow" (Annie), "Over the Moon" (RENT), etc.
The relationship (particularly, the relative value) of classical music and popular music is a question.
Some partisans of classical music may claim that classical music constitutes and popular music only light entertainment. However, many popular works show a high level of artistry and musical innovation and many classical works are unabashedly crowd-pleasing. The elevation of classical music to a position of special value is closely connected to the concept of a , and to theories of .
The very distinction between classical and popular music is blurred in the border regions, for instance and , and are disregarded as art music. In this respect music is like fiction, which likewise draws a distinction between classics and that is not always easy to maintain.
.. arbitrary criteria [are used] to define the complement of 'popular'.
'Art' music, for example, is generally regarded as by nature complex, difficult, demanding; 'popular' music then has to be defined as 'simple', 'accessible', 'facile'. But many pieces commonly thought of as 'art' (Handel's 'Hallelujah Chorus', many Schubert songs, many Verdi arias) have qualities of simplicity; conversely, it is by no means obvious that the Sex Pistols' records were 'accessible', (trashy?) 's work 'simple', (Frank Zappa is considered by many a serious composer) or Billie Holiday's 'facile'.
" (light?) (Middleton, 1990)
This is not to say that popular music is definitively or always simpler than classical. The "default length" of phrases which classical music supposedly deviates from were set as the default by music of the common practice period. , and many forms of , for instance, make use of rhythms more complex than would appear in the average common practice work, and popular music sometimes uses certain complex that would be quite unusual in a common practice piece.
Popular music also uses certain features of rhythm and pitch inflection not analysable by the traditional methods applied to common practice music.
It is difficult to imagine how a work of thirty minutes to three hours can be constructed in a manner that isn't built up hierarchically from smaller units like phrases, periods, sections, and movements. Structural levels are distinguished by .
(1992), for example, claims that popular music lacks the structural complexity for multiple structural layers, and thus much depth. However, Lerdahl's theories explicitly exclude "associational" details which are used to help articulate form in popular music, while 's book The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era 1924-1950 analyses popular music with traditional Schenkerian techniques. (Middleton 1999, p.
144)
The repertoire of classical music is skewed toward works recognized as excellent by listeners over long periods of time. It follows that genres of popular music that have existed for a long time might also produce works that show staying power. For instance, the work of , a popular musician of about a century ago, continues to be played--often, curiously enough, by classical musicians.
The advent of high fidelity audio recordings in the 1950s meant that the actual performances of popular musicians could be preserved forever, and this has raised the possibility that certain popular works will achieve permanent status in their original recorded form.
Philadelphia: Open University Press. .
J. (1985). "Definitions and research orientation: do we need a definition of popular music?
" in D. Horn, ed., Popular Music Perspectives, 2 (Gothenburge, Exeter, Ottawa and Reggio Emilia), p.
99-106.
"Popular culture, politics, and history", in Popular Culture Bulletin, 3, Open University duplicated paper.
New York: Oxford University Press. .
Yesterdays: Popular Song in America. New York: W.W.
Norton Company. .
Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey. New York: Oxford University Press. .
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