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Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music
Abstract
Who’s better? Billie Holiday or P. J. Harvey? Blur or Oasis? Dylan or Keats? And how many friendships have ridden on the answer? Such questions aren’t merely the stuff of fanzines and idle talk; they inform our most passionate arguments, distil our most deeply held values, make meaning of our ever-changing culture. In Performing Rites, one of the most influential writers on popular music asks what we talk about when we talk about music. What’s good, what’s bad? What’s high, what’s low? Why do such distinctions matter? Instead of dismissing emotional response and personal taste as inaccessible to the academic critic, Simon Frith takes these forms of engagement as his subject - and discusses their place at the very centre of the aesthetics that structure and colour our lives. Taking up hundreds of songs and writers, Frith insists on acts of evaluation of popular music as music. Ranging through and beyond the twentieth century, Performing Rites puts the Pet Shop Boys and Puccini, rhythm and lyric, voice and technology, into a dialogue about the impact of popular aesthetics on our lives. How we nod our head or tap our feet, grin or grimace or flip the dial; how we determine what’s sublime and what’s `for real’-these are part of the way we construct our social identities, and an essential response to the performance of all music. Frith argues that listening itself is a performance, both social gesture and bodily response. From how they are made to how they are received, popular songs appear here not only meriting aesthetic judgements but also demanding them, and shaping our understanding of what all music means.
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Frith argues that to be engaged with popular culture is to be discriminating.
“''To be engaged with popular culture'', he says, ''is to be discriminating'' (Frith 1996, 4).”
From Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Developments (2013) · cites this paper as Frith 1996
Frith's point is that the claims made around knowledge of popular music are also expressions of superiority and discrimination, just as they are in high culture and classical music.
“Frith's point, however, is that the claims made around knowledge of popular music are also expressions of superiority and discrimination, just as they are in high culture and classical music.”
From Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Developments (2013) · cites this paper as Frith 1996
Frith is far from uncritical of Bourdieu's conflation of taste with class, noting that pop tastes are not just expressions of class, gender or ethnic background but also shape and potentially disrupt, extend and strengthen these sources of identification.
“Again, Frith is far from uncritical of Bourdieu's conflation of taste with class, noting that pop tastes are not just expressions of class, gender or ethnic background but also shape and potentially disrupt, extend and strengthen these sources of identification, a view shared by Hesmondalgh (2007a).”
From Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Developments (2013) · cites this paper as Frith 1996
Frith's Performing Rites begins with anecdotes that express the centrality of judgment to the pleasures of popular music.
“Frith begins Performing Rites, for instance, with a series of anecdotes that express the centrality of judgment to the pleasures of popular music.”
From Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Developments (2013) · cites this paper as Frith 1996
Taste hierarchies don't just exist between high and low culture but also within popular culture as well.
“In other words, taste hierarchies don't just exist between high and low culture but also within popular culture as well.”
From Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Developments (2013) · cites this paper as Frith 1996
Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital is employed by Frith to show how a specific kind of capital native to popular music generates distinctions and struggles over what is aesthetically valuable.
“Here, Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital is employed by Frith to show how a specific kind of capital native to popular music generates distinctions and struggles over what is aesthetically valuable.”
From Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Developments (2013) · cites this paper as Frith 1996
Citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Developments
Prior, N. (2013) · Sociology Compass · doi:10.1111/soc4.12020 · Cited by 78
Making music in a group: synchronization and shared experience
Overy, K. (2012) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2012.06530.x · Cited by 54
Metadata
- Authors
- Frith, S.
- Corresponding author
- Frith, Simon
- ORCID
- Frith, Simon
- Publisher
- Oxford University PressOxford
- Published
- 1996-11-07
- OpenAlex
- W4388354678
- Cited by
- 1,122
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 54 · 2025: 74 · 2024: 72 · 2023: 48 · 2022: 57 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 48 · 2019: 62 · 2018: 58 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 49 · 2015: 28 · 2014: 32 · 2013: 40 · 2012: 47
- FWCI
- 143.62
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Music › Music History and Culture
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Music › Musicology and Musical Analysis
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Literature, Musicology, and Cultural Analysis
- Keywords
- popular music aesthetics, music criticism, emotional response to music, personal taste, high and low culture, music assessment, social identity, music reception, popular songs, Simon Frith
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