Popular music

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches popular music by setting it against "people" music, or market music. Popular music expresses the singularity of a geographical here and a historical now. Pop music, broadcast from above by radio and television, plays the same hits everywhere and levels out this diversity1. Drawing on Clouscard, he links this opposition to libertarian liberalism: sales are proportional to metrical stability, the hit must be memorised as quickly as possible, and "people music has killed popular musics." He also observes this among young people in Niger2. He uses music to distinguish the people, "people" culture and the populist, and he stresses that popular music nourishes learned music, even in Bach3. He gives the examples of Kusturica and the griots, where music has not yet been turned into folklore. He calls for a music that is both unheard-of and popular, one that gives uncultivated listening the "ladder" Hegel speaks of4. Finally, he sees jazz, which holds together the popular bass line and the avant-garde, as perhaps the true classical music of the twentieth century5.

1. 1P comme Peuple30 Dec 2014
2. 2#5 Libéralisme-libertaire, consommation libidinale et musique...27 Sept 2014
3. 3L'île du Peuple : le débat23 Jun 2015
4. 4Musicosophie 3. Qu'appelle-t-on une musique moderne?3 Dec 2020
5. 5JOHN LEWIS - CLASSIQUE OU JAZZ ? • Pagani Parle Musique29 Jun 2022

Introduction produced automatically from the 5 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.