When did "pop music" become synonymous with "music"?

[herodotus]

Back in 2001, an American composer and professor of music named Milton Babbitt said the following in an interview:

The New Yorker just did an issue on music....it was called the music issue of The New Yorker, which takes itself very seriously. It had not even the lip service of a sentence to what we call our music, be it 'classical', be it 'serious', be it 'elitist'. Not a word. It was rock and it was hip-hop and it was--not a word! So we're apparently not music anymore. The music issue of The New Yorker, which never would've done that with literature or with poetry, had not a single reference to not even serious contemporary music, but any, what I would call, serious music.

He was, of course, right about this. Contemporary music written for orchestras or chamber ensembles that is not written for a film soundtrack is a vanishingly small part of modern culture

Now however you feel about this state of affairs, there are implications here that go far beyond issues of popular acclaim. For instance, when journalists or economists quote experts on questions of law, those experts tend quite naturally to be professors of law. But when they are looking for an expert on music they go to....Pitchfork Media??

Is this a deplorable state of affairs, or a shrug of the shoulders? Do musicians deserve to have opionated and occasionally articulate hipsters acting as the curators of the culture that they, the musicians, create? Do these opionated and occasionally articulate hipsters do a better or worse job than professors of music, or is the whole thing just a mess?

Discuss. And feel free to talk about anything else that the thread title might happen to inspire in your imagination.

And of course, fish.

[Aleatoriac]

...do a better or worse job than professors of music, or is the whole thing just a mess?

Human = mess.
Did "pop music" become synonymous with "music" when recorded music became a popular thing?
Maybe when a civilization begins to crumble, the luxuries die off first.

[vurt]

its probably the elites who attend the serious music concerts who write for the new yorker.
writing about it would encourage the oiks to attend and that wouldn't be nice for the hoity toity writers.

yay! class war!

[yellowmix]

When did "pop music" become synonymous with "music"?

When The New Yorker covers popular culture and music became a commodity.

They are trying with literature! It's just that it's harder to commoditize books to the same degree. But we're starting to see it with audiobooks. We've seen it with television, we've seen it with movies, we've seen it with paintings. The more passive and less expensive the consumption, the easier it is.

Babbit wants to read about what's going on with "serious contemporary music", there are music journals that do a far better job of talking about it for people that care. Readers of The New Yorker simply don't. And for the minority that does, they're capable enough of finding it through other means.

And I listen to and appreciate Babbit's works. But you can't get annoyed at a pop culture magazine covering pop music because it's popular and "serious contemporary music" isn't. You can feel the disdain across the internet and you don't win hearts and minds that way.

Make the music for yourself, disregard what everyone else thinks about it, and you'll be happy. You want to get fame and recognition for it, you want to make money from it, you have to play the game of capitalism. If you lament the lack of art knowledge and appreciation in society, ask why society stripped the funding for art education and enrichment, and handed the reigns over to multinational corporations.

Also, orchestras are much larger than rock bands and cost more to stage, you need to go to specific venues that simply don't exist everywhere like a bar does. Millennials don't have money like that and it's also intimidating to a lot of people. And yeah, I know organizations are trying. The Met has that discount program for people under 30, and nosebleed tickets are $25. But opera is dying because people have televisions and the internet now and it's far easier to consume. So The Met is smart and simulcasts some operas to movie theaters, and you can get videos of performances. But you can find Babbit on Spotify, so what's the problem?

Society is at that point where people proudly and openly declare they don't read. So anti-intellectualism is also a problem. But then look at what people are voting for. It's a reaction to elitism. So when Babbit makes these lamentations, it's not helpful. Put the music out and help people appreciate it instead of telling them only "serious" people do.

[herodotus]

its probably the elites who attend the serious music concerts who write for the new yorker.
writing about it would encourage the oiks to attend and that wouldn't be nice for the hoity toity writers.

yay! class war!

Vurt, I mean it as a sincere compliment when I say that you think sideways.

But elites don't go to concerts of modern chamber or orchestral music. When Pierre Boulez tried to introduce a bit of of Webern and Stravinsky into the New York Philharmonic repertoire, the wealthy donors on the board of directors threatened to have him fired.

I don't think that rich people listen to Milton Babbitt any more than poor people do. Same with Merzbow, or Fantomas, or Boards of Canada, or Van der Graaf Generator, or Gyorgi Ligeti .

Freaks tend to be freaks wherever they go, no matter their class, race or nationality. And Milton Babbitt was a freak if ever there was one.

[Aleatoriac]

Put the music out and help people appreciate it instead of telling them only "serious" people do.

Good advice.

[melomood]

Classical music itself evolved from the popular folk tunes from whence so many melodies were derived so it's all good,bro

[metamorphosis]

I thought this thread was about the ascendancy of pop vs other genres, whereas it's actually about contemporary styles in general vs classical/abstract.
Well, I don't think there's a mystery there, to be honest.
Not many people read poetry or 'literature' (they may read books, but not high-falutin stuff) so there's no comparison. Almost everyone listens to music, and mostly they listen to contemporary music of some form. Not a lot of broad appeal == not a lot of coverage...

[sqigls]

When did "pop music" become synonymous with "music"?

When did you start giving a shit about popular 'culture'?

No matter where we are in the world, Normies are all on auto-pilot, so what they think is none of our concern, unless you're trying to sell them something.

I live in Southern Thailand, where people can't appreciate music unless they can see someone has an acoustic guitar in their hand or until someone starts singing. OR edm, (not the broad sweeping vague term, the genre, as in mainstream shite)... I'm yet to meet a person here under 40 who even appreciates traditional Thai music. Most people just think it's embarrassing. A Thai DJ came down from up north last year and tried to play some molam style Thai music to the southern crowd here, cleared the place, completely. They HATED it.

Lady Gargle is music, McDonalds is food, Fox news is the truth... VB is beer (go Australia) I can't argue with what people want, nor set straight their pre-coneptions. I mean, I could, but but what a f**king waste of time.
I'm too busy listening to Stravinsky and drinking fresh squeezed IPA
There are a number of Frank Zappa quotes I could throw in here----->

It's a shame people don't dig deeper, but i guess you get what you settle for.
Though most genuinely seem to be loving the shit they're shovelled.
And I really shouldn't be affected in the slightest.
There are a number of Voltaire quotes I could throw in here----->

[slipstick]

The clue is surely in the name...pop is short for popular. Things which are popular get more attention than things which are not popular because by definition more people are interested in them.

Babbit, and probably many of us, should perhaps think ourselves lucky that no-one really refers to classical and/or serious modern and/or other interesting music as Unpop music. Renaissance/Baroque = Ancient Unpop, Classical = Old Unpop, Serious modern = New Unpop (or perhaps Really Unpop) etc.

I was going to say "Who cares?" but when I think about it I know who cares. Those few of us who think music started with someone banging two rocks together and hasn't finished yet.

Steve

[herodotus]

So when Babbit makes these lamentations, it's not helpful. Put the music out and help people appreciate it instead of telling them only "serious" people do.

Well it's funny, but that part of the interview came at the end of a long discussion about an academic conference Babbitt had attended where every possible name for 'classical' music had been tried and rejected. They tried 'concert music' but no, because no one goes to such concerts. They tried 'cultivated music' but that was too elitist. Everyone but Babbitt and one other guy favored calling it 'classical', but they both pointed out how inaccurate that term was, so in the end, no name was chosen at all.

And it should be pointed out that it's not just the New Yorker that ignores well regarded bit unpopular music. The New York Times does it too. So does almost every journalistic outlet.

But the more interesting case to me was the story I linked to where academic economists, looking for information about the quality of all contemporary music, quoted the opinions of writers at Pitchfork, as if they are the experts on music. I really don't see how we can blame Babbitts elitism for that. There is another kind of elitism entirely at play here.

[zerocrossing]

Probably shortly after the invention of audio recording hit the market.

[herodotus]

Probably shortly after the invention of audio recording hit the market.

Interestingly, according to Guinness, the first record to sell over a million copies was 'Vesti la giubba' from Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, sung by the Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso (1873–1921). And it was recorded in November 1902.

[vurt]

its probably the elites who attend the serious music concerts who write for the new yorker.
writing about it would encourage the oiks to attend and that wouldn't be nice for the hoity toity writers.

yay! class war!

Vurt, I mean it as a sincere compliment when I say that you think sideways.

But elites don't go to concerts of modern chamber or orchestral music. When Pierre Boulez tried to introduce a bit of of Webern and Stravinsky into the New York Philharmonic repertoire, the wealthy donors on the board of directors threatened to have him fired.

I don't think that rich people listen to Milton Babbitt any more than poor people do. Same with Merzbow, or Fantomas, or Boards of Canada, or Van der Graaf Generator, or Gyorgi Ligeti .

Freaks tend to be freaks wherever they go, no matter their class, race or nationality. And Milton Babbitt was a freak if ever there was one.

as a veteran of the loudness wars, the tone-wood wars and the recent real drums vs sampled drums war, im just battle hungry finding it hard to get back in to society...
i was lookin for a war, if i cant have class war well tbh freaks vs normal, that's an easier one to pick sides for

tbh i don't even know what the new yorker is, beyond being a publication, i have no idea if its hip or like smash hits.
but, i imagine it costs money, therefore they will have target demographics.


as for the other thing, i don't know what pitchfork is, but if i was writing such an article, id hit more than one source, as there tends to be experts in different fields.

[fluffy_little_something]

The music of the majority of people has always been rather simple. Most people in the Middle Ages did not care about Classical music, either, they had their simple jolly pop music to hum/sing and dance along to.
Glad I didn't live back then, I hate the sound of the bagpipe