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!!