Questions for Week 4-ella-ella

I think that we picked a great set of songs. They have everything we’re looking for in a standard pop song, but are different enough from each other that we can separate them.

To me, it seemed the biggest way to categorize the songs is by song structure: How did the use of instrumentation and emphasis on the refrain affect the bridge? Generally, the two seemed to go together, and I came up with two different poles and then most of other songs.

On one end was Lil’ Mama’s “Lip Gloss”, with virtually no instrumentation and a heavy emphasis on the refrain. Rihanna and Beyonce are very close on the spectrum. The bridges on these songs all seem tacked on and almost like an intrusion to the song. Especially with “Lip Gloss”

On the other end is F.K.O., with more instrumentation, but no real refrain. Wu Tang is similar. They go verse after verse with only once or twice interrupting for a very brief “Protect ya neck”.

My question is how do these song structures affect the inherent purpose and reception of the songs? Can the structures work rhetorically independently of the lyrics?

Also, if we want to talk about the lyrics, here’s something interesting I noticed. In each of the songs, especially the hip hop, the performer carried their own ethos. Lauren Hill told us the importance of real hip hop, Beyonce gave an F-you to committal-phobic men, Snoop Dogg smokes weed etc. To me it seemed that the only performer that didn’t carry their own ethos was Rihanna. Jay-Z shows up at the beginning of the song to basically tell us that she’s with him and we should listen to her, then he disappears. Did that seem strange to anyone else or am I just thinking to much?

Question of the Leadbelly Week (#4)

I've got a few ideas rolling around in my head about this week's readings/recordings. I've had the rhetorical triangle on my mind (not only because Evelyn drew it on the board, but because I will draw it for my 111 students next week). I’m interested in where we apply the ethos angle of the triangle to the recordings.

We've talked a bit in class about how performance changes our reception of a song and how the singer's interpretation enhances (or maybe interferes with) its rhetorical value. For me, at least, I tend to put the performer in the rhetor position, rather than the songwriter (whose name, if known, is tucked somewhere among the liner notes).*

After reading about Leadbelly's life, from several different (conflicting) perspectives, I'm curious about how our knowledge of a singer's life interferes with how we interpret a song? Do we assume (like so many readers assume short stories consist of thinly disguised memoir) that we’re learning about the singer’s life when we hear them perform? How can we apply this to our ability to view these songs as rhetoric?

(This is similar to the “separating the artist from the art” question.)

Also, how is this complicated by our “romanticism” of the artist? (I’m thinking about Mullen’s article now.) Is it possible to listen to these songs without a dose of romanticism that might hinder our ability to look at them objectively? Is it even possible to look at them objectively?

*Except for those rare cases, when considering popular music, or "mainstream" (as opposed to indie?), that we have a song delivered to us by its lyricist/composer. Stevie Wonder pulls this off for us, but there aren't too many like him in that regard.

Question of the Week #3

So, let’s talk about Freud. His is hardly the first literature I’d normally turn to in a critical discussion of song, but I find that the anecdote in the second chapter of Beyond the Pleasure Principle offers an interesting perspective. It tells of a child who plays a game, sort of a one-party fetch, where he hurls toys into the corner, waits, then retrieves them with visible satisfaction. Freud interprets this as a mechanism for coping with the frequent absence of the boy’s mother, that the child mollifies himself “by dramatising the same disappearance and return with objects he had at hand” (13).

This conclusion seems contestable to me (and Freud, to be fair, offers an alternate interpretation), but, for the sake of discussion, let’s assume there’s some validity to it. My question, then, is how and to what degree might the performance of music, especially the selections from Goodbye Babylon, be analogous? How, if at all, do we sing religious songs to as a means of alleviation through “dramatizing” our own experiences? What experiences among those who sing might be the stand-in for the missing mother in the scenario Freud describes? It might be interesting, too, to drag Marx into the discussion: is there an “opiate” effect of dramatizing experiences through song?

I don’t have much of a congealed answer to these questions—not yet, at least. I’m looking forward to reading what everyone comes up with.

Question of the Week #2

As I read this week's assignments I was struck by the use of the word lyric. The the focal concept of lyric has, I believe, changed contextually for us. When we think of "the old days," we think of lyric as poetic verse(s) that has a song-like quality, that is, perhaps, meant to be sung. Currently, the word lyric is most often used to described those words that accompany the (instrumental) music in songs. Thus, to my thinking, lyrics have receded from the forefront of what we consider music to be. Lyrics have, in a sense, been somewhat removed from music and have been reduced (if we can say reduced) to just words.

We may say that this is the case, as Frith suggests and Citron exemplifies (for the most part), because lyrics as artful words, or "literature" (Burke) can be deconstructed in a familiar, formulaic method. Nonetheless, when deconstructing the efficacy of form (primarily lyric, but some instrumental), we may mistake certain procedures (such as repetition) as simple--the result of "unschooled common folk rather than sofisticated lyricists" (Citron 22). Still, these operations are effective in their ability to be remembered. We remember choruses and old folk songs based in repetition, while verses, despite their rhyme scheme, often escape us. The form of repetition may be simpler, but not lacking in sophistication, as more complex emotions (for which more contemporary writers may rely on lyrics) may be conveyed by the music (i.e. tone through melody, etc).

Bearing in mind our temporal removal from the origin of these songs (esp. those we listened to), what particular progression is prevalent in the fulfillment of form and how and to what extent are our desires fulfilled or confounded (through conflicting forms) in these songs?