Abstract
Brian Longhurst's updated second edition of Popular Music and Society represents a useful introductory textbook designed for undergraduate-level students of popular music, media and cultural studies and sociology. It reviews a vast range of sociological research in a palatable form, with informative examples, illustrations, case studies, press cuttings, figures and lengthy quotes allowing interested readers to delve a little deeper into the issues at hand.
Conceptually, the book is laid out in a clear manner with three main sections working through production, text and consumption. The first section, concerning production, covers two main topics: the production of the music industry and the production of musicians. This is followed by a second section exploring textual issues of history, politics and sexuality, the social construction of genres taking ‘black music’ as a key example and questions of meaning and semantics. The third and final section on consumption covers performance and dance, audience research, subcultures, consumers and fans. Within each section key debates, current trends and salient research are highlighted and related back to the study of popular music as a discipline tracing a history through such notable theorists as Theodor Adorno and Max Weber.
However, in the introduction to the book, which itself provides an informative explanation and outline to the structure of the book, Longhurst highlights the importance of understanding ‘the nature and place of popular music in society’ (2) and this alerts us to two very noticeable omissions in Popular Music and Society.
First, Longhurst never really establishes what he, or any of the research he covers, means when they refer to ‘popular music’. In fact, frequently, popular music seems to refer to rock music, not even pop music, and, more disturbingly, a fairly ageing version of this particular genre at that. In this regard, hip-hop, reggae, and other forms of black music are separated out as the results of an urbanized post-modern melting pot or as othered forms of popular music set in opposition to white music. Perhaps mistakenly, this seemed to over-politicize black music much of which is as catchy, fun, danceable and, well, as dumb as it is political or informative. Similarly, this approach seems to institutionalize ‘white music’.
However, such a black-and-white version of popular music, the most anodyne uses of which suggest that black rhythm‘n'blues was exploited by white rock'n'rollers, or bored white punks drew upon disaffected black reggae music for inspiration, has, I think, been thoroughly dismantled by Billig (2000), and is therefore an erroneous starting point for undergraduate students. The reason for this is that it inherently presents popular music as overly dualistic (see Stratton, 1983) and cunningly ignores the complications that, in reality, exist between the poles of such binaries.
In addition, Longhurst's silence on what constitutes popular music means that he, ultimately, ignores the fundamental starting points for the study of the popular music and society. Surely it is impossible for us to say what relation popular music has to society if we are unable or unwilling to say what popular music is. This lacuna haunts Longhurst throughout the book. For example, when Longhurst criticises Adorno's grumpy attitude to popular music (which he frequently does) he seems to forget that Adorno was writing at a specific point in time when popular music had a form very different to what it does now. Just as when Adorno critiqued jazz music, he wasn't criticising all jazz music forever but a particular instance of this genre. The result is that Long-hurst's hostility towards Adorno seems to be based on Adorno's inability to accurately predict the future rather than his accuracy at analysing his own present.
Linked to this omission is another flaw, albeit one I do not think is limited to Longhurst's book alone but rather seems to blight all textbooks: textbooks date so quickly. Cutting edge examples and illustrations run the risk of looking very silly in later years. For example, when Longhurst holds up Apache Indian and Cornershop as exemplary of successful ‘Asian music’ (there's that black-and-white framework again), I was left wondering how ‘successful’ these artists appear to first- or second-year undergraduate students in 2007, considering Apache Indian's last hit charted at #239.
The second notable omission from Popular Music and Society is that, despite inherently presenting a dualistic account of popular music, Longhurst makes no attempt to resolve contradictory accounts and tensions that he rightly observes as being fundamental to the creation and study of popular music. In itself it is no bad thing for a textbook to maintain neutrality, but I was troubled when Longhurst, again in his introduction, tells us ‘it makes little sense to … attempt to resolve those contradictions’ (2). If we are to accept that popular music is gendered, politicized, and capable of generating a multiplicity of meanings, as Longhurst suggests, then what hope is there for students and researchers if we cannot resolve the tensions that such complexities generate? Indeed, Longhurst's apathy is even more troubling as Popular Music and Society begins with a thorough review of the ‘production of culture’ research concerning the constraining force of concentrated ownership over creativity and diversity, the very basis of which is dominance of commerce over artistic freedom. This leaves me wondering what the implications are for an overly politicised popular music that ultimately cannot effect any changes to the fundamental, and, one assumes, political, contradictions inherent in popular music. Unfortunately, this is the overriding image of popular music that Longhurst presents us with.
In spite of these problems, the sheer wealth of material covered and the ease with which Longhurst simplifies many complex ideas marks Popular Music and Society as a useful starting point that may facilitate further research and study into popular music. The problem is that for more detailed engagement with the topic the book is more important for what it leaves out.