CMNS 321 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Disintermediation, Simon Frith, Deterritorialization
8 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
1
Pop will eat itself: Retromania & Progress in Popular Music
Retromania: the role of the past in shaping the present and the future of popular music
• I the artile Toards a Aestheti of Popular Musi, Sio Frith suggested there are four
social functions of music
o The third futio, he suggests, is that usi shapes popular eory ad orgaizes
our sese of tie
o Music focuses our attention on the feeling of time; it is our most vivid experience of
time passing, and is therefore key to our remembrance of things past
• Nostalgia: a concept that originally implied a longing to return to a space rather than to a
particular time; it was an ache of displacement
o Today, it is a temporal condition: it refers to missing a previous, past, but above all, a
lost tie i oes life
o Nostalgia is not just a personal emotion, but it also social: it is expressed as a collective
longing
o Retro or vintage style: aesthetic modes of representation that are consciously derivative
or imitative of trends, fashions, or attitudes of the past
• So, o the oe had, retro or itage is used to desrie ojets ad attitudes fro the past
that are no longer modern
o But on the other hand, these terms are also indicative of the most modern,
contemporary, and trendy styles
o Retro ad itage, therefore, are ters that siultaeously refer to oth past ad
present
Theorizing retromania: why is it such an important part of popular music today?
• In the article Baudrillard in Drag (2013), Brabazon & Redhead, argue that pop time is cyclical
rather that linear
o This ylial teporal loop that ere trapped i is tehologially idued, ad is a
result of:
▪ Deterritorialization: the disconnection from a physical geography and the
imagining of new spaces and social allegiances
▪ Disintermediation: the flatteig of the relatioship etee produers ad
consumers
o The ubiquity of modern media results in temporal cycles that emerge and reemerge at
increasing rates
Its possile the past te years ould eoe the first deade of pop usi to be
remembered by history for its musical technology rather than the actual music itself.
– Erik Harvey, Pitchfork (2009)
• By offloading our cultural production onto computers and into the cloud, we have virtually
unlimited access to the media of the past
o This ease and immediacy of access has given rise to a sort of obsession with cultural
artifacts of previous years and decades
o The result is cultural production in the present moment that continually cites and
references the past
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
