(BLOG SERIES) Rebel Music - We Sing, Therefore We Are [Part 4.1]: Music and Man, Culture and "Pop" Culture

IV.                 We Sing, Therefore We Are

Music and Man

Alright, let’s immediately define our term: what is “music”?

The late great philosopher and musician Sir Roger Scruton (we will be relying heavily on his works from here on out) defines music as:

[A]n instance of organized sound, where (b) the intention to communicate something via (c) traditional “grammars” of tonal development makes it possible for (d) a listener to experience (e) movement in a metaphorical space and (f) to sympathize with imagined expectations and fulfillments, thereby undergoing in his or her own soul (g) various motions equivalent to the tonal movements expressed by the composer.[i]

It seems to me that this description can still be simplified without altering the meaning. It can be done this way: Music is organized sound, made by the musician with the aim to convey a message and for the listener to receive and “sympathize” with the message’s meaning through tonal development. I think that’s a fair enough summary of Scruton’s definition. I’ve done so in order for laymen or non-music experts to understand better (that includes me, by the way).

John Coltrane, American Saxophonist

Why rely with Scruton’s definition? Not only is he a great philosopher and musician who wrote and taught vastly on the philosophy of music throughout his life (and therefore an authoritative figure on the matter) but also because his definition of music is what exactly fits the human experience: we listen to it to receive a message, and to do so through the mediation of musical creativity.

Whether it’s the music used by the tribes of old in their rites, the chanting of a choir during the sacred liturgy, the singing of the actor in the opera house, or even the sad secular songs like the ones being made by a popular Filipino folk band called BEN&BEN: we make it (or listen to it, for most people) in order to know “what we’re/they’re trying to say”. And whatever the message is, we rest on it. An instance of this is when a heartbroken man, feeling down after a breakup, listens to sad love songs. He drops his guard, opens his heart, and surrenders to the message. It’s as if through such a moment, he receives a quasi-salvific experience.

ITZY, K-Pop Girl Group

Music has four main characteristics: melody, harmony, tone-color, and rhythm[ii]. Rhythm, for Scruton, is the aspect of music that is closely tied to human life, specifically in the way we talk and act. For just like rhythm, we exhibit accents, grouping, meters, and stresses in speech; and stress and measure in action[iii]. Rhythm is “intimately connected to processes that we know in ourselves.”[iv] We have seen already that for Plato, and in the obvious happenings in society, art is able to form culture, and culture is able to express art. But now, through Scruton’s analysis, we are able to see even more specifically how music is tied to human behavior and thereby to morality, which affects the culture at large.

We are going to analyze these aspects of music even further below, but to set the stage for that, we have to say something about culture first.

Culture and “Pop” Culture

We live in a culture, whether you like it or not. Whatever your standards are, in many ways, it is because you were formed by the culture around you.

Immanuel Kant

German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) defines culture as the “local customs, traditions, and practices of a community”, distinguishing it from “civilization”, which he defined as “the universal ideas of reason, morality and law”[v]. The modern anthropologist most probably defines culture this way as well. On the contrary, Prussian philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 – 1835) defined civilization as “the outward (or external) conformity to the demands of society” while defining culture as “the inner and subjective development of the individual, through art, religion, and self-reflection”[vi], a concept of culture which will be later picked up by the poet Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888). If, for Kant, culture is the external manifestation of a community’s identity, for von Humboldt it is quite the opposite: it is something “in” you, something personal that allows you to be “elevated” into the norms of your community. For the latter philosopher, then, to be formed by the culture requires training in order for you to reach your community’s standards. Just like the traditional norms of Plato and Aquinas, then, to be part of the culture means to be judged, for as you are trained by your surroundings and your superiors, there will be levels as to where you are in the “cultural ladder” (and so there will always be a “better man” than you, namely the “cultural elites”, and someone “below” you, namely the children of the community). Criticism is part of growth, then, alongside respect for one’s elders, such as parents and teachers.

I think we need not pit Kant and von Humboldt’s ideas against each other. Being an Aristotelian who believes that humans are social animals[vii], to flourish as a human being requires interaction with society. This requires docility through prudence: one should be open to be taught so that one may learn properly. One ought not to rebel against the right examples one sees with other people, in fact he should be receptive of it and consider it as part of his training for the better. But in order for all of this to work, one should become virtuous, one should “internalize” the teachings of his elders, for only the man of virtue is the truly noble man. Virtue is the proof that one is already a mature member of society.

And so, culture need not only have either an internal or external aspect. It has to have both in order to work.

And this is where the modern culture, or “Pop Culture”, rebels from what a true culture should be. Pop culture is neither based on traditions or customs or practices already built into a community’s identity, because it’s reason is precisely to create a non-traditional, new way of living through setting up new trends; nor is it a culture that requires training and criticism for its recipients, because pop culture is an inclusive culture: a culture where anything goes. Remember relativism? Pop culture is relativism’s playground. Pop culture aims to create a global village with no specific identity.

And now that we have defined culture and “Pop Culture”. It’s time for our main event: pop music, which Scruton calls “the heart of popular culture”[viii].

(To be continued...)

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[i] David D. Corey, Music and Our Cultural Decline: Roger Scruton’s Conservative Response

[ii] Sir Roger Scruton, The Cultural Significance of Pop: https://www.roger-scruton.com/about/music/understanding-music/175-the-cultural-significance-of-pop

[iii] Corey, Music and Our Cultural Decline

[iv] Scruton (1998), Aesthetics of Music, p. 36

[v] Scruton, The Cultural Significance of Pop

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] This is built upon Aristotelian-Thomistic Metaphysics of formal and final causality. For a contemporary defense, see Edward Feser (2014) Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, (2019) Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical foundations of Physical and Biological Science, David Oderberg (2007) Real Essentialism

[viii] Scruton, The Cultural Significance of Pop