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I have produced several episodes of Sound Philosophy that explore the thought of Immanuel Kant as it applies to various issues in popular music. More such episodes are coming. Here is what is available now:

031–Kant’s Three Syntheses and the Album

This episode explores the three syntheses Immanuel Kant describes in his Critique of Pure Reason. The first synthesis designates locations within time and space; the second finds associations to draw perceptions together in order; the third applies concepts to percepts. The four basic concepts are number (the whole and its parts), quality (the features of an object), modality (its mode of existence–whether real or fictional and many other states in between), and relation (how the object fits in the world). These are the concepts in general, the bare minimum for something to register as a thing. I then apply that way of thinking to music. First, I consider musical space and time as idealizations, then the issue of association, then the concepts in general as they apply to music. Finally, all of this is brought to bear on the conception of the album (starting around 1945) as a unitary thing that is, in some ways, superordinate to the various songs contained within it. 

032–Kant’s Syntheses and the Ontologies of Music

This is a companion episode to the previous discussion of Kant’s Three Syntheses. Here I use the three syntheses as a means for exploring some intriguing elements of the nature of music. Music, I suggest, has a very special relationship to space and time; that is, music produces an Imaginary (in Kant’s sense) of space and time (the first synthesis). Music also presents fascinating problems in coming to grips with our ability to forge continuity among representations (the second synthesis); this relates to Aristoxenus’s theory of melody. Finally, music is a relatively strange object. It features quantitative relationships (intervals) that reveal themselves as qualitative; it is a quality of another object that becomes substantive; it depends upon but also establishes relations; it both exists and is fictive. This illustrates the four basic concepts of the third synthesis: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. 

033–Singer-Songwriters of the 1970s and the Problem of the Self

This episode investigates the move from the communitarian spirit of the 1960s to the “Me Decade” of the 1970s. I explore some historical and cultural reasons for this shift, employing ideas from Tom Wolfe and Immanuel Kant. I then look at the dialectic between an intentionally inauthentic notion of the self (personae) and an authentic self as it unfolded in the music of the 1970s, particularly among the singer-songwriters. The last segment addresses the style of that music–caught between folk music (and its implicit authenticity, speaking with the voice of the authentic We) and light-jazz/lounge music (and its implicit inauthenticity). 

034–Joni Mitchell, Kant, and the Fragility of Beauty

This episode brings together Joni Mitchell and Immanuel Kant in an attempt to elucidate what it means to engage with beauty. We explore the role of pleasure in beauty for Kant as well as the peculiar nature of aesthetic judgment. We also discuss the four “moments” in Kant’s discussion of the striking way in which we confront beauty. Mitchell’s music helps demonstrate the way beauty manages to be both utterly private and utterly social, subjective yet universal, the way it suggests a kind of necessity that can’t be pinned down conceptually, manifests meaning without defining that meaning, and gets bound up in an engagement with another being/object in a similar manner to love. Indeed, I suggest that engaging beauty is not at all separate from the act of falling in love.  ONLY AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY (because I include copyrighted music by Mitchell).

035-Shortcut to Transcendence: The US Reception of Hindustani Music

This episode begins by examining the relationship between music and nature. It then explores the Chandogya Upanishad and Hindustani Classical Music for insights into nature, humankind, and music. The final segment turns to the U.S. reception of the music of Ravi Shankar and discusses how that reception over the course of the 50s and 60s reflected a growing concern with spirituality and the search for a shortcut to transcendence. 

036–The Transcendental Aesthetic of Space and Time in Hindustani Music

This episode examines Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic to reveal some of the strange properties of space and time. It then turns to the nada Brahma of Hindustani philosophical tradition and the writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan to discuss the creation of space and time from the unstruck sound and how that makes music a special conduit to the truth. The last segment turns to Hindustani music and how its formal and performative elements enact a path of transcendence beyond space and time (and our entrapment in the cycle of birth and death) in order to connect with the nada Brahma. 

037–Progressive Rock and (Kantian) Form

This episode examines form in popular music and especially Progressive Rock by first investigating the distinction between extensional and intensional form (as presented by Andrew Chester) and glossing that as the distinction between “trekking” and “dwelling.” The second segment targets some specific issues in Immanuel Kant’s understanding of aesthetic form. The third segment turns to the adaptation of classical music by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and what that reveals about Prog Rock’s approach to form. 

038–Giving the Idea to Art: Kant, the Genius, and Prog Rock

This episode explores the notion of genius and Immanuel Kant’s concept of the aesthetic idea. The aesthetic idea is shown to be the distinguishing element that differentiates natural beauty from art beauty. Progressive Rock is then discussed as a genre that self-consciously courts the label of genius and takes seriously the espousal of ideas (aesthetic and otherwise). “Pantagruel’s Nativity” and “Black Cat” by Gentle Giant are discussed along with a brief overview of “Supper’s Ready” by Genesis. 

041–Sapere Aude: Bebop and Kantian Autonomy

This episode begins by examining historiographical accounts of the rise of bebop and places bebop within the context of Harlem and 52nd Street. The second segment discusses the famous essay “What Is Enlightenment?” by Immanuel Kant and unpacks his concept of autonomy as presented there. Michel Foucault’s critical take on Kant’s essay introduces the idea of autonomy involving working at the edges of one’s being. The final segment presents Harlem and 52nd street as two zones of autonomy for bebop–one involving relatively safe experimentation within isolation and the other offering social change at the risk of assimilation into tradition. 

042–Bebop and Freedom in Play

This episode examines the issue of play. What is at stake in play? How do “rules of the game” relate to the freedom of play? The second segment turns to the notion that aesthetic pleasure arises for Immanuel Kant from the “free play” of the Imagination and Understanding that exhibits “lawfulness without a law.” I suggest that in both play and this notion of aesthetic judgment the “law” or the “rules” are emergent–they emerge out of the act of playing, they are in play. The last segment looks at bebop as a form of play and confronts the Kantian paradox that some limited civil unfreedom leads to greater artistic and intellectual freedom. 

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More episodes are coming soon, including two on Outlaw Country music and issues of freedom and morality and then two on the so-called Hip Hop Sublime. I will post on these when they are completed. Be sure to also check out the other Kant series: a close reading of the Critique of Pure Reason with Eric Taxier. I will discuss that in the following post.

Be sure to consult the Kant page under the Sound Philosophy Heading on this website for more information on the two Kant series of episodes, general commentary, reading suggestions, and more.

Thanks, as always, for your time and patience.

Once again, I got woefully behind on updating my website. I have to make this more of a priority. My apologies. There have been several Sound Philosophy episodes added since my last post on this site. They include:

030–The “First Death: of Hip Hop and “Rapper’s Delight.”

In this episode, I am joined by Matt Carter and Eric Taxier to discuss “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang, which historian Jeff Chang refers to as the “first death of hip hop.” I begin by outlining the inevitability of narrative and interpretation to history–that there is no “just the facts” approach to history, no matter how hard we try. I then suggest that Jeff Chang tells a story of death and resurrection (and a shift from authenticity to increased inauthenticity) while someone like Dan Charnas tells a story of expansion and innovation (in business as much as art). Then Eric and Matt join me to discuss various elements of that “first” rap recording: the shift away from the DJ toward the MC, the use of a backing band and the continuation of a remix culture, the citing of names as tags, and other issues. 

My Kant Series or Set of Series

There are several episodes (and more coming) that deal with the thought of Immanuel Kant both as it applies to various topics in music and a deep reading of the Critique of Pure Reason though a series of conversations with Eric Taxier. I will discuss each of these series in separate posts–right away, I promise.

Thanks, as always, for listening and reading. I promise to be more diligent in updating.

I haven’t been updating this website properly. Many episodes of Sound Philosophy have gone live since I last posted here. There are episodes on the blues, Motown, Appalachia, Ralph Peer, Graffiti and Payola. See the list of episodes and listen to them all!!

Episode 15: The Emergence of Blues in the Mainstream

This episode covers elements of blues harmony, melody, and form to demonstrate that our typical picture of the blues is far too simplistic and the blues itself is far more interesting than we assume. I then go on to discuss the early appearance of blues in sheet music and in recordings (including the beginning of the Blues Craze in 1920 with Mamie Smith’s version of the Perry Bradford composition, “Crazy Blues”).

Episode 16: Booker T. at the Crossroads: Country Blues

This episode discusses the image of the crossroads as a central metaphor not only for the blues but for the Black condition at the turn of the 20th century. I then discuss the musical roots of the blues, the relationship of the blues to the ideals of Booker T. Washington, and the manner in which the blues navigates the liminal space between the religious and the secular, the communal and the individual, the inside and the outside. 

Episode 17: Motown, Black Uplift, and Fordism

In this episode I discuss the business model Berry Gordy employed for Motown records, including the influences of Booker T. Washington and the Fordist model. What are the advantages and disadvantages to applying these business models to the creation of music?

Episode 18: Crossing Over: Billboard, Nietzsche, and the Supremes

In this episode I discuss phenomenon of the crossover, employing an eccentric reading of Nietzsche to elucidate one element of the success of Motown and the Supremes. We begin by discussing the way Billboard created its charts, the ways in which those charts changed over time, the crossover phenomenon of the Rock n’ Roll era, and the suspension of the R&B chart during 1964 and its impact on Black music. The second segment discusses Nietzsche’s concept of the overman and the role he sees suffering playing in one’s affirmation of life. The final segment applies some of this thinking to Motown and the resistances it overcame with the Supremes as the primary vehicle to the mainstream. 

Episode 19: Appalachia, Disaster Songs, and Fiddling Contests: Early Country Music

This episodes examines country music as a popular (mass culture) entertainment prior to the Bristol Sessions of 1927. I investigate three contributing streams into the country music scene: Appalachian music, disaster songs, and the fiddling music of the string bands. I tease out certain contradictions in each in order to demonstrate that country music is an “invented tradition” that relies upon the past but reinvents that past into an image useful to its own concern with creation.  

Episode 20: Ralph Peer and the Bristol Sessions

In this episode, I explore the business innovations of Ralph Peer: his ability to profit from the mechanical right guaranteed by the 1909 Copyright Act, his exploitation of under-explored markets, and his innovations in marketing country musicians as pop stars. This leads to a discussion of the famous Bristol Sessions and the music of Jimmie Rodgers and, especially, the Carter Family. 

Episode 21: The Carter Family and the Death of God

This episode looks at how early country music, particularly that of the Carter Family, dealt with the position of the South after the Civil War into the early decades of the 20th century. I discuss the ideologies of the New South and the Lost Cause and how that relates to country music’s concern with tradition. I then turn to a reading of Nietzsche’s notion of the “death of God” to reveal that Nietzsche’s primary concern wasn’t with atheism but rather with the loss of an “ultimate” value that created a vibrant hierarchy of values–a loss that resonates with the South’s position as portrayed in the writing of William Faulkner and the lyrics of country music. The last segment offers a close reading of “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” employing these themes. 

Episode 22: Jazz Rap

This episode explores jazz rap as a response to other trends within the Golden Age of Rap (roughly 1985-1994). I discuss, in particular, the approaches taken by the NYC hip hop collective, Native Tongues. 

Episode 23: On Distance, Nietzsche, and Conscious Rap

This episode delves into a passage from Nietzsche’s Gay Science on giving style to one’s life to demonstrate that his view of style is not superficial but rather substantive. This giving of style creates an orbit of several of Nietzsche’s most important conceptions: the need for an Ultimate (the Death of God), the dialectic between Apollo and Dionysus, the need for distance or abstraction, the importance of aesthetics, becoming what you are, and the eternal recurrence. To further examine the issue of distance, I turn to Graham Harman’s view of the withdrawal of the real object and the tension he labels “allure.” The last segment then applies this view of abstraction/distance and the constellation of other concepts discussed to some elements of the conscious rap of A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Digable  Planets. 

Episode 24: Graffiti and the Aesthetics of Transgression

In this episode I am joined by Matt Carter to discuss the aesthetics and civics of graffiti art, or writing. We begin with the important transition in the 1960s  from older forms of graffiti to modern graffiti art, examine the integral nature of transgression to the aesthetics of the art, consider the importance of writing and the signature, and conclude by discussing the question of the ownership of public space. Episode art comes from: By derivative work: Jemandanderes (talk)Seen_bode_ny.jpg: https://www.flickr.com/people/sweet_child_of_mine/ – Seen_bode_ny.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5578651

Episode 25: Digitalization and the Ontology of Music

This episode examines how the digitalization of music has changed the mode of being (the ontology) of music. We examine the shift in music from something performed to something recorded and then to digitalization. We then examine some lawsuits concerning digital sampling and their implications and then some opportunities artists have exploited in the digital album. 

Episode 26: Feeling Otherwise: Music, Commodity, and Streaming

This episode explores the commodity structure of music as it has evolved from the beginning of the sheet music industry to today’s streaming environment. The second segment employs ideas from Nietzsche and Raymond Williams to articulate the way in which we feel our way in relation to the world and suggests that music contributes to our affective standing. The last segment looks at Guy Debord’s notion of the Society of the Spectacle and examines how we have moved from being to having to appearing. I then suggest ways in which streaming contributes to a new structure of feeling.

Episode 27: The Problem with Payola

This episode examines the Congressional hearings on payola at the end of 1959 and 1960. I explore the history of payola briefly as a major part of the radio broadcast landscape. I then compare payola to common promotional practices in the advertisement and marketing of other types of commercial products and ask why it is that people might feel that things are different when it comes to music. Is this a confusion of the parameters of music’s status as a mass art?

Two episodes of Sound Philosophy have just been posted, both dealing with Highlife Music from Ghana. Episode 13, “Syncretism and Highlife Music of Ghana,” discusses syncretism (the amalgamation of different religions, philosophies, cultures, or schools of thought) as it applies to music in the colonial situation of Ghana at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Syncretism is not simple amalgamation, however. It can involve accommodation but it can also be a subtle form of rebellion. Using this concept as a platform, I turn to various forms of Ghanian popular music that fed into highlife and then the early years of highlife itself. I take a close look at the song “Yaa Amponsah,” first recorded by the Kumasi Trio (featuring Kwame Asare, also known as Jacob Sam, on guitar) in 1928. 

Episode 14, “Nietzsche’s Rausch, Aesthetic Form, and Highlife Music,” uses Highlife music of Ghana to investigate a Nietzschean take on aesthetic attunement (what he terms Rausch), aesthetic form, and the production of the self. I begin by outlining how Ghanians employed ahaha, konkoma, and dance highlife to create a new sense of self for young people after the colonialist disruption of traditional modes of life and hierarchy. I then to turn to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s ideas concerning aesthetic attunement which is disinterested and yet passionate in order to assess how music might be employed in the production of the self. In the last segment, I broach the issue of Nietzschean “bad conscience” as it pertains to the colonial situation. I end by imagining how highlife music might be construed as a reversal of bad conscience, a way of turning the suffering of the passions into joy. 

Listen and enjoy!

The newest episode of Sound Philosophy is now available. It is entitled: “WEB DuBois, Double Consciousness, and Bert Williams’s Jonah Man.” This episode examines WEB DuBois’s notion of “double consciousness,” which he defines as a way in which Blacks have both the opportunity and the curse of seeing the world in a manner he suggests was unavailable to Whites. I read from the two essays in which DuBois employs the term and address some of the difficulties facing its interpretation. I then employ the term to examine the participation of Black performers in Blackface minstrelsy, specifically James Bland and Bert Williams. Our focus turns to Williams’s signature character, the Jonah Man, which I construe as a subtle and sly critique of social indifference. 

Check it out!

Two new episodes of Sound Philosophy are going live today.

Episode 9, “Nietzsche Birth of Tragedy Sections 3-25 and the 1960s Dionysian,” is another installment in our series exploring the thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche and their application to issues in popular music. This episode provides an overview of the remainder of The Birth of Tragedy (following on from Episode 7) with a focus on the emergence of the Socratic impulse and its connection to an overemphasis on logic and rationality at the expense of the instinctual drives of the Apollinian and the Dionysian. Then I discuss elements of the connection between the Apollinian and Dionysian as manifested in the “symbolic dream image.” After introducing Herbert Marcuse’s accusations against the conformity of modern society, I explore various notions surrounding the very popular conception of the Dionysian in the United States of 1960s: the resistance to the “madness” of instrumental rationality, the need for creative spontaneity, but also the threat of a possible fascist element within the Dionysian. I conclude with some thoughts about the Apollinian and the Dionysian as they relate to the Grateful Dead. 

Episode 10, “Ragtime, Reversal, and Syncopation,” switches gears away from Nietzsche (we will return to him soon). Starting with the reversals of cultural borrowing or appropriation in the cakewalk, this episode examines ragtime and its various inversions or reversals. I discuss the emergence of ragtime out of the coon song with all of its problematic racial representations, the “problem” of Black music at the turn of the 20th century (and the lack of Black musical representation in the official program of the Columbian Exposition),  the efforts of composers such as Scott Joplin to transform ragtime into a quasi-classical form of instrumental music, and the objections voiced by James Weldon Johnson to the “nationalism” of the ragtime craze versus the “racialism” of its origins. The episode concludes with a discussion of syncopation and its eerie corporeality.

I hope you enjoy both!!

The newest episode of Sound Philosophy has appeared; it is entitled “Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence, and Repetition in Music.” This is the third episode in our series on Nietzsche. It examines the controversial and oft-misunderstood doctrine of the eternal recurrence for what it might tell us about the structuring of time (here I draw on Deleuze) and about how repetition in music operates in popular music. I review some of Adorno’s complaints about popular music and the distinction between progressive time and repetitive time. I then turn to a discussion of how the notions of the Apollinian and Dionysian are transformed in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, focusing on the idea that we ought to “become what we are.” This leads to the examination of the eternal recurrence and a manner of reading the repetition in popular music as a liberating and redeeming quality, not, as Adorno would have it, a symbol of our unfreedom. 

I haven’t been adding posts about my film writing to this website thus far–mostly because I don’t think anyone is really using this website much. That’s okay. I should still go ahead and post some links here just in case someone wants access to some of what I throw into the cultural abyss. To see everything I’ve published on the cultural webzine PopMatters, click HERE. There’s a lot there. For some recent things, click on the following links:

• On Infinity in Miranda July’s Me, You, and Everyone We Know: This is a great film. My take on it has to do with ideas about good and bad infinities, for example in the writing of Hegel, and uses the images of the line and the circle as they figure into the film.
• What Does Perception See? On Fighting as Perception in Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu Films: I take seriously Lee’s famous statement recommending that we “Be Water.” I apply some of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking about perception to an understanding of the cliches of the Kung Fu fight scene and their expansion in Bruce Lee films.
• Breaching Closure in Pasolini’s Teorema: This is a troubling and fascinating film. I look at the issue of systems of thought and feeling that require the sense of closure while relying upon something that lies outside of the circumference of that closure (like Christianity, capitalism, touch, sense).
• The Narrative Voice in Scorsese’s Shorts: Scorsese has a fascinating way of dealing with narration (literal and implied).
• Performing Race in James Whale’s Showboat: A look at how Black and White are performed within this film. Showboat takes a fascinating and not always enlighten approach to the issue of race but we too often ignore its subtleties.
• The Erotic Disruption of the Self in The Comfort of Strangers: Strangers are strange….and yet strangely comforting. They reveal the strangeness in ourselves.
• Buridan’s Ass and the Problem of Free Will in The Great Escape: My original title for this was “Determined to Be Free,” which I still think is superior. Still this title tells you exactly what you are getting: a philosophical examination of free will through one of the great escape films.
• “Just Don’t Believe in Truth:” Cassavetes’s Husbands: Why do we assume extreme emotions (like anger, hostility, fear, revulsion) are more authentic than others? What kind of bullying behavior are we possibly engaged in when we insist that someone just “be themselves”?
• Choosing Experience in Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry: A film about suicide. This is one of those topics in which we often feel the need to offer an airtight reason for not committing suicide. That sometimes leads to bad thinking (as I try to suggest with respect to Camus and Schopenhauer). This film gives us a chance to think again about an issue we fear contemplating.