Jazz, Hip Hop Etc.

[Stephen Chilton]

Kevin--I'd like to read more from you on this tack.  I'm not
familiar with Bourdieu and would like to learn more.

By the way, while it would surely be useful to look at the
class-struggle aspects of our musical and other artistic judgments,
we must make sure we hold onto the idea that there is also an
autonomous domain of aesthetic judgments.  I think there is a
liberatory potential in art in this very independence of class
struggle.  The same seems true of the domain of morality:  although
every since Marx we can no longer view its actual expressions as
free of political/economic pressures, we cannot reduce it to those
pressures.

By the way, a [Michael?] Parsons wrote an interesting book
presenting a Piagetian-type analysis of the development of aesthetic
judgment.  I can get the cite if you (or anyone on the list) is
interested. 

Best,
Steve

On Wed, 6 Aug 1997, 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
> 

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| Stephen Chilton, Associate Professor, Dept of Pol Science |
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