Music, Culture and Society: Chris Worth
7 March 2008
VU and Value: Canonising Popular Music
Chris G. Worth
The study of popular culture originated partly in resistance to scholarly investment in ‘elitist’ canonical texts at the expense of texts generated and/or consumed by ‘the masses’ or by marginalized social groups. There are, however, many processes at work which encourage the formation of certain kinds of canonicity within popular cultures themselves and also within academic discussions of widely circulated or marginalised cultural texts. Many such processes deploy notions of value and of judgement or taste, explicitly or inexplicitly, to serve the interests of those for whom canon formation is an exercise of and source of power. What are the elements that might be at issue in the formation of putative canons of ‘rock music’? I apply a grid of supposed markers of canonicity and value to the Velvet Underground’s music and its reception. Looking at the results of this thought experiment, I argue that explorations of notions about cultural persistence can in fact generate productive dialogical resistance to, for example, those kinds of critique that, with the best intentions, treat popular creative texts as short-lived commodities circulating in an aesthetic-free market economy.
Chris G. Worth is Director, Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics and Senior Lecturer, English, School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, Monash University.
Questions for all participants were taken at the end of this session. Download the questions in MP4 format or in MP3 format.