The Minstrel

The Function of Authenticity in Music Discourse

[Wrote this for a cultural studies class, so it’s not really written in the sort of style that I’d normally be sharing, but thought a person or two might find it interesting.]

Music discourse, due to the perhaps undeniably subjective nature of its topic, must often resort to characteristics of a distinctly non-aural nature when it assigns a score, ranks the greatest rock albums of the 90s, or decides who is deserving of a Grammy. The experience of a person receiving the sound itself into his or her head is so personal as to be distinctly inaccessible to anyone else, so the discourse surrounding music is forced to grasp for more tangible criteria: influence, popularity, sales, and, as is the focus of this paper, authenticity all serve key roles whenever music discourse attempts to establish something resembling objective truth based on more than the general agreement of music journalists and critics. Of these, authenticity seems particularly intriguing and mysterious in its behavior. Some artists seem to have it, while others do not, but it is not particularly easy to say how they got it. Even when one has it, their possession of it seems ephemeral at best. Most importantly, once you lose it, it seems you can never get it back. Authenticity implies a purity, an integrity, a state of “doing it for the right reasons,” that, once sacrificed, cannot be reclaimed by its very nature. Thus, when an indie rock band (indie rock being the contemporary genre that perhaps most relies on authenticity) such as Arcade Fire do something decidedly “mainstream” like win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, as they did in 2011 with The Suburbs, it creates all sorts of “authenticity” issues. Competing narratives about selling out, sticking it to the man, and other such clichés emerge, but the entire process might cause us to forget that these narratives are constructed, and any understanding of authenticity as natural or inherent is flawed. Authenticity is a function, a bundle of practices, and it is far less “natural” than it might seem, and its meaning is changing all the time. Recognizing that is the first step in moving towards a more enriched understanding of the dynamic forces behind such a concept.

Raymond Williams’ account of humanity’s evolving understand of the concept of “nature” and what is “natural” serves as important theoretical background for such an analysis of musical authenticity, both by metaphor and by direct correspondence. Metaphorically, the methodology Williams employs, tracing the evolving history of a term which is perceived as singular in order to demonstrate how its understood meaning is far from inherent or, well, natural, can likewise be applied to the idea of authenticity in order to show how it, similarly, is not an “authentic” term in-and-of-itself, but a complex idea that never quite means the same thing, or, more accurately, functions the same way in different historical and social contexts. Williams’ ideas on nature also, however, directly correspond to authenticity’s particular workings in revealing ways.

Williams begins his lecture “Ideas of Nature” by noting absurdity of trying to apply singular, universal meaning to a complex idea like nature or, for that matter, authenticity, for, “[w]hat matters in them is not the proper meaning but the history and complexity of meanings,” that is, the evolving understanding of the idea that reflect the multitudinous and often contradictory ways it has operated in different contexts (Williams 284). Williams then goes on to trace some of the main points along humanity’s understanding of nature. It begins as Nature with a capital N, a “singular and often personified principle,” and continues through evolution’s idea that “[t]he constitution of nature declared its purpose,” its separation from man, and its conceptions as both a refuge and as “cruel and savage” (Williams 285, 289-90, 294). But what remains chiefly important throughout this history of nature is that nature-in-itself is not changing; indeed, it is not even accessible to us if it even exists (to follow Kant’s logic). Rather, what is changing is a variety of complex ideas and understandings of the interaction between human beings and the “natural” world they inhabit, sometimes separately from nature, sometimes as an integral part to it. It is these dynamic practices which come to construct the idea of nature in a given place and time: nature is not there to be discovered, it must be made. It is thus a product of humans and intrinsically tied to their understanding of it, which is key because, as Williams notes, “[w]hat is often being argued, it seems to me, in the idea of nature is the idea of man” (Williams 286). Likewise, the idea of authenticity in music often says a lot more about the music’s listeners than the artists themselves.

Applying such a logic to authenticity shows that it is just as arbitrary to call a band “authentic” or “inauthentic” as it might be to call a man “natural” or “unnatural.” Under such scrutiny, authenticity breaks down except as a mere marketing strategy. The complex interactions that lead towards the attribution of authenticity to a given artist are difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend all at once due to their complexity and ubiquity. Thus, in order for us to be able to discuss them without engaging in voluminous analysis (i.e. out of necessity) we reduce them to societal “givens.” It may seem natural, but it is in fact not natural at all; it is only natural to the extent that it has come to be “understood.” Punk’s simplification of rock music, abandoning the elaborate instrumentation, virtuosity, and complex arrangements of progressive rock for the basic drums, guitar, bass lineup where power chords were played loud and aggressively, was greeted as returning it to a “rawer” and thus more authentic sound. Likewise, the grunge and alternative explosion of the early 1990s was credited with saving rock music from the elaborate showiness of hair metal, while the Strokes, in the early 2000s, were praised for saving rock and roll as a genre altogether, both of which’s success as authentic bands/movements is largely attributable to an aesthetically “rawer” sound.

The idea of rawness as inherent to authenticity is attractive, but it quickly proves faulty, which is not to wave a finger at the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, and the Strokes whilst exposing their hidden lack of authenticity, but rather to demonstrate that looking for authenticity in the music is always a loser, because it is not there; the sonic qualities we associate with authenticity might lead to us calling a particular record authentic, but if we then look behind those sonic qualities we see they lack the authenticity we seek. Authenticity seems to dislike overproduction, yet Never Mind the Bullocks, Here are the Sex Pistols, perhaps the defining album of the first wave of British punk, is an elaborately produced release featuring dozens of guitar tracks by a band, no less, who might be called the Monkees of punk rock, as they were skillfully assembled by manager Malcolm McLaren for distinctly non-musical reasons (famously captured in Sid Vicious’s literal inability to play the bass guitar). Authenticity also seems to dislike technology that distances the musician from his instrument, hence the abhorrence of drum machines and synthesizers by early alternative bands and of auto-tuning by today’s indie rock acts, yet Kurt Cobain physically struggled to perform the introduction to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as a “live” take and was forced to overdub it. Technology provides a particularly slippery slope when one is attempting to establish authenticity due to the incredible amount of technology that even the most “lo-fi” of bands utilize in order to electronically, mechanically, or digitally change their sound. The Strokes’ authentic sound is largely attributable to its “retro” qualities (the band was dubbed “garage rock revival”), particularly the distorted vocals of Julian Casablancas, which recall Northwestern garage bands such as the Seeds, the Sonics, and the Kingsmen. Yet one could just as easily argue that replicating the distorted vocals of 1960s garage music, which resulted largely from the bands’ technological limitations, with a digital effect in state of the art recording studios is profoundly inauthentic. Whether or not it is authentic is the subject of bar conversation, but the point is that assumptions underlying authenticity discourse are often questionable, and rather than reflecting authenticity, those assumptions, on the part of music fans and critics, create it. It recalls Williams’ recollection of “someone saying that it was unnatural, a kind of modern scientific madness, to cut down hedges,” which are of course unnatural and crafted by man (Williams 292). There is nothing authentic (or “natural”) about the Sex Pistols themselves, one could argue they are a notably inauthentic band. However, the people listening to them were disenchanted with a certain kind of rock music and looked backwards (for where else were they to look) to the older rock music of the 50s and 60s which, partially due to technical limitations, sounded rawer and more fundamental, more authentic.

Authenticity has thus changed in function from a static thing that artists possess or do not possess. That is, it never was, but in a world in which the market is truly ubiquitous, in which selling out becomes much more difficult (indie rock bands are much more easily forgiven for lending their music to commercials, for example, because the average music listener has come to recognize the essential economic aspect to music, particularly given the industry’s successful appropriation of punk rock, grunge, etc.), few people can be tricked into blindly following “real” authenticity. Whereas in the past the questions might have revolved around who is authentic, Williams’ concept of an interaction between man and nature leads us to ask: how are artists producing their authenticity, or, perhaps, how are listeners constructing the authenticity of the artists they like for reasons that may be purely subjective? Few people would go out of their way to listen to inauthentic music, and one hears arguments for the authenticity of a variety of artists. Lady Gaga may be pandering to the mainstream, but she is a legitimately talented piano player. Ke$sha may be the same, but she is singing about real issues that are relevant to “actual” people. Arcade Fire may have won a Grammy Award, but they were sticking it to the man, they were David defeating Goliath. One might as easily claim that the Grammy Awards have appropriated Arcade Fire as a means of bringing mystical “authenticity” to their awards show, to make them closer in perceived respectability to the Oscars. We must remember, however, that these narratives are constructed, that authenticity is an actively generated and evolving concept capturing multitudinous social assumptions. We must recognize that these assumptions are assumed, and if we want to truly understand the inner workings of our culture and not just settle for things just being “the way they are.” As Williams writes, “if we talk only of singular Man and singular Nature [or a singular authenticity] we can compose a general history, but at the cost of excluding the real and altering social relations” (Williams 296-97). When authenticity becomes a common sense notion, a case of “I know it when I see it,” it is not anything in particular. We must examine the social relations behind it to understand anything, most particularly the listeners of music, who are probably more important regardless.

The Minstrel

Posts tagged Arcade Fire

The Function of Authenticity in Music Discourse

my take on the suburbs by arcade fire