By James Goodfriend
GOING THE OTHER WAY
MUCH has been written to introduce those with popular tastes to classical music, but very little to aid those who might want to travel the road in the opposite direction. It is as if popular music were thought to be some thing one fell into quite naturally and without preparation, understanding instinctively exactly what to expect from a given artist, group, or style. And so it is, you say, and so it has always been. Not any more, I say. Popular music today comprises a group of tonal languages for the most part as foreign to those with classical tastes as the spoken languages of Polynesia are to a conventionally educated European. The root difference may not be so specifically geographic, but it is social, economic, perhaps intellectual, and most definitely generational. It is also willful.
The old conception of popular music as primitive entertainment for the masses is dead in all but a numerical sense, even as we realize that primitive art is sometimes exceedingly sophisticated-by criteria with which we have little familiarity. The concept of popular music as "light" is equally moribund, for some of it is heavy indeed with meaning for its devotees, and the very term "light" implies (as in Scotch whiskey) a dilution of flavor, whereas what we are dealing with here is a difference in the very substance. Little wonder that those who spend their time with Mozart and Beethoven, or feel at home with Schoenberg and Boulez, are so nonplussed when confronted with Jefferson Starship or Toots and the Maytals. Little wonder also at the overreaction that had classical critics at one time rearranging the pantheon to make room for the Beatles and Procol Harum some where between Bach and Schubert.
The problems faced, then, by those who would make a first acquaintance with popular music are (1) that it is not necessarily clear, simple, and easy to understand; (2) that its standards of excellence do not necessarily bear any relation to standards of classical mu sic; and (3) that it is not one music but a multiplicity of musics that often have little to do with one another. Such complexities are rarely taken into account by those whose ears are elsewhere.
Anyone with some experience in classical music will have a fair idea of where to look for a new piece of classical music that will please him. If he has an antipathy to poly phonic choral music he will not readily buy a recording of Lassus or Palestrina, and if he likes Bach cantatas he can turn to Buxtehude with reasonable expectations. The average classical listener has the field fairly well compartmentalized, both as to style and as to his personal likes and dislikes.
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But suppose that same listener decides to sample the popular music of today. He reads a bunch of reviews and, armed with the assurance that informed and knowledgeable criticism has declared all the items in question to be first-rate, he purchases the following group of records: "Doc and the Boys" by Doc Watson, "First Night" by Jane Olivor, "Shake Some Action" by the Flamin' Groovies, "Spirit" by John Denver, "Viva" by Roxy Music, "Creative Orchestra Music 1976" by Anthony Braxton, "Bogalusa Boogie" by Clifton Chenier, "Here and There" by Elton John, and "Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band." All right, you pop sophisticates, stop laughing. Someday someone may attempt to turn you on to classical music by suggesting that you rationalize the similarities of Walter von der Vogelweide, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, a Palestrina motet, the Bartok piano sonata, and John Cage's Four Minutes and Thirty Seconds. That's about what it comes down to if you approach "popular" music unwarily.
The innocent explorer needs warning. He should know, for example, that while most pop music involves songs, and songs have lyrics, in some pop music those lyrics are every thing while in other music those lyrics are literally (not to mention literarily) nothing. It may be difficult for him to determine which is which, but the difference is crucial. He should be aware that even in the same area of pop music, even dealing with the same song, some singers are valued for their ability to sing the words while glossing over the notes, yet others are equally valued for being able to sing the notes while paying no attention to the words. He should be aware that among the records collectively lumped under the title "jazz" he will find coexistent musical styles that sound, by classical standards, as though-- they were several centuries removed from each other in origin. Jazz has many parallels with classical music, and among them is its position of offering virtually its entire historical development simultaneously. True, jazz is a performer-oriented music, but the original progenitors of every succeeding style are very much alive on records, often in stereo, and sometimes in person.
The explorer must be aware that there are people performing today for whom the For ties have never ended and others for whom the Forties never existed-not even as history. He should know that loudness is measured by some pop people in odd ways ("Turn the volume up, I hear it but I don't feel it yet").
He should also know that some pop music is genuine throwaway art, its ephemeral quality a real criterion of its popularity and its sub stance recyclable for another song on another day. And further, that some pop music is valued not for its quality but for its lack of quality-the exquisite listening pleasure of a badly missed note, a bollixed chord change, or an utter and complete lack of any socially re deeming value.
HE must be aware that when classical music is adapted by popular groups (rock or other) its purpose is not to introduce anyone to classical music but rather to add to the avail able repertoire of pop. He must know of which country he speaks when he speaks of country music, and that someone who can't sing a note can receive awards as a "vocalist." He must know that the beat is everything in establishing a proper style, but that the proper rhythmic beat is totally different from one style to another and practically never bears any relation to what is actually written in the music. And, most important of all, he must understand that most young people like popular music because they know their elders don't, or won't, or can at least be intimidated into staying away from it.
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Also see:
THE POP BEAT, PAULETTE WEISS
EQUIPMENT TEST REPORTS: Hirsch-Houck Laboratory test results on the: Audio Pulse Model One time-delay system, Avid 101 speaker system, Realistic SA-2000 integrated stereo amplifier, and Shure M24H stereo/quadraphonic phono cartridge, JULIAN D. HIRSCH