Jazz, Hip Hop Etc.

[Scott Johnson]

Kevin D. Haggerty wrote:
> 
> First time post here.
> 
> I have been following this discussion about Hip Hop for a while now and
> have been intrigued with attempts to dismiss it for being unrefined, etc.,
> or being inherently (naturally?) inferior to jazz and other forms of music.
> 
> This has lead me to wonder how relevant it might be to introduce some
> Bourdieu at this point? While not a clear inheritor of the FS mantle, his
> work seems to bear some relevance to the squabbles that have been taking
> place on the list. Perhaps we should be talking about a "musical field" in
> the way that Bourdieu talks about "artistic" and other fields. Then all of
> these  fine-grained attempts to delimit what we should accept as "good" and
> "bad" music can be seen as power struggles across class lines to define
> what is to count as naturally "good" and "bad" music. I believe others may
> have said similar things, but I was wondering what (if anything) might be
> gained by introducing Bourdieu's work?
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Kevin D. Haggerty
> University of British Columbia


Well, that WOULD be a good idea, but for one problem. If we talk about a
"criticism field" we can easily see that Bourdieu is implicated in a
struggle along class lines to define what good theory is, which leaves
us powerless, since we are also implicated, to know whether he's full of
shit or not.
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                     Scott Johnson

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