Framing music journalism/criticism

A subject in Popular Music Studies, Media & Journalism Studies and Sociology of Culture.

Between the music industry (record labels and concert promoters) and the media.

Mediation between music production and reception.

Relation with the music industry. Complex issue – requires analysis.

Academic interest: impacts in music consumption, values in discourse, questions of authority.

Pop music criticism acknowledged and canonized within journalism in the Anglo-Saxon context. Critics as writers.

Historical role in legitimating popular music.

1970s: golden age of rock journalism. An active stance in the establishment of music styles and movements (counterculture, punk, hip-hop).

Big names in rock criticism: Lester Bangs, Charlie Gillett, Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus, Jon Landau, Nick Kent…

From a romanticized to a more cinical view of music criticism.

The critic from gatekeeper of taste to cheerleader for the industry.

More formated. Increasing role of advertising. Form (layouts, images, graphism) more important than content in music publications.

Impacts of music journalism/criticism Has to be relativized: “rock critics do not sell-out concerts”.

Helps in the creation of taste communities.

Creates a discourse on artists, music genres and movements.

Knowledge and visibility to more alternative/marginal streams in popular music.

The Portuguese case

Some initial remarks…

Pop-rock criticism a journalistic genre within music and arts/entertainment journalism.

A small space within music jornalism. Few exceptions: João Lisboa, Ricardo Saló, Miguel Esteves Cardoso.

Pop-rock journalism needs to be problematized: issues of autonomy towards record companies for instance.

Historical framing

Music journalism and criticism changes according to: a) Formal aspects: content, editorial line, journalistic formats (magazine, newspaper supplement, website).b) Structural aspects: relation with the ‘music industry’ and with journalism in general; social-political context.

Beginnings: 1970s

Mundo da Canção (1969-1985); A Memória do Elefante (1971-74); Disco, Música e Moda.

Ideological discourse against the status quo of the dictatorship and its effects in music and culture in general. Praise of “New Portuguese Music”.

Agit-prop discourse. Political-cultural manifesto. Sparse music criticism.

(Of music as a consumption object) Bad or digestable music is aimed towards the banal, superficial, transitory and vulgar demands of the great audience. Disposable product which does not chase any other goal but the satisfaction of a market.” (Mundo da Canção, 1970)

“Another eight songs trying to secure a passport to the Eurovision Song Contest. Contest? Yes but of what? One says it’s a songs contest but in fact it’s of performers, authors and labels. Because to win means business, commerce, selling and profit.” (MC, 1970)

“We notice a common tendency in nacional cançonetismo: one catches a few folk chords, mix it with a sophisticated horn section and one or two electric guitars to give it a pop taste and then add half a dozen exclamations of petit-bourgeois anguish/happiness (…) and that’s it!” (MC, 1970)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWQPdSPgi3Ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgHyXlbahkU

Establishment of a popular music journalism (1977-1992)

• Musicalíssimo (1978-82) e Musicalíssimo (1978-82) e Música & Som (1977-1989)Música & Som (1977-1989)

Se7e (1977-1995); Blitz (1984- )

Attention to new releases. Some Independence from an emerging music industry.

Journalist/critic as a “gatekeeper” of taste.

New generation of journalists/critics.

Arguably the first book on pop-rock criticism: Escrítica Pop by

Miguel Esteves Cardoso (1982)

“Militant journalism” Blitz.

Ideological discourse still present In Blitz (in the 1980s) as well as in Se7e.

Aesthetic rather than political ideology. Ideology of difference in Blitz.

Struggle of values: creative vs commercial; diference vs conservantism; present vs past.

“O album demonstra também a possibilidade de ultrapassar a inércia das companhias tradicionais (…) destinando o produto a uma parcela do mercado cansada do situacionismo topístico e do desprezo provinciano pelos grupos nacionais e acentuando a diferença das suas pretensões estéticas e comerciais , colocando-se discretamente à margem das convenções comerciais viciosas do mercado discográfico português.” (Blitz, 24/6/86)

"The album shows that it is possible to overcome the inertia of the traditional labels (...) as it addresses an audience tired of the situationism of the charts and of the provincial disregard for Portuguese bands, and underlines the difference of its aesthetic and social ambitions, putting itself on the margins of the vicious conventions of the Portuguese music market." (in Blitz, 24/6/86)

"[This album] is enough in the Portugal of 1986 to stimulate other artistic search, politically detached from social habits and ideologically constructed in between mundane excesses and solitary anguishes (...) Poor but honored, the majority of the artists published in this double LP showcase the creative vitality of their generation". (in Blitz, 24/6/86) "The new music has to be confidential. To a certain extent, it is necessary that many people do not like it so to create the necessary group dynamics that gives strength to those music movements that aim radically to reassess and create something new." (in Expresso, 22/2/86)

“A 4AD (…) não tem quase nada de um empreendimento comercial. Comunica a espaços com o mundo mas, em praticamente todos os seus actos – da edição dos seus discos à publicidade na imprensa – se pressente e confirma uma noção que está no pólo radicalmente oposto do que é pensamento corrente das editoras comuns: a sua produção não é destinada a toda a gente, o convívio com a multidão anónima que alimenta os tops de vendas não é deliberadamente desejado, é preciso merecer aquela música para ter direito e acesso a ela.” (Blitz, 1987).“4AD has everything expected from a project and from a personal vision of what music is and what it must be and nothing of a commercial enterprise. It communicates with the world periodically but in almost all of its gestures - from record releases to press promotion - the notion that it is radically at odds with the current way of thinking in common record companies is confirmed. Its production is not addressed to everyone. Staying close to the anonymous crowd that feeds the charts is not desired. One must deserve that music to have access to it". (in Blitz, 1987)

"I have been told that this is the difference, the irreverence, the originality. I can accept all that but no one will convince me that such concepts are synonomous with quality and good taste which in my humble and apparently ignorant opinion are far more important (...) From Pop Dell’Arte some good and fresh ideas come to the fore but these are limited by a pretentious difference aimed at a pseudo-intellectual minority that makes of that difference its ‘raison d’etre’" (in Sete, 3/2/88).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc49XsgKxjY

Consolidation (1992- )

Music supplements: Pop/Rock (1990-97); Sons (1997-2000); Y (2000-2007); DN+ (1998-2007). Blitz pós-profissionalização (1992- )

Acknowledgement from the recording industry (ex: Blitz awards).

Influence from media departments in record labels.

Music titles as consumer guides. Synchronized with the market.

Formatting music reviews: word/character limit, ratings, division per genres, journalist as specialist (ex: World Music).

“Desk journalism”, “cheerleader” for the industry (Klein 2005)?

“It is quite curious because when people with similar tastes meet and have some common social activity, they talk about everything but those common interests which are, to a certain extent, implicit. They have a sort of tacit agreement “I know you like it and you know I like it too” and so instead of talking about the quality of this and that, one talks about the special edition, of how one found that edition, and curiously, there is less discussion about values than there was in the past, when music journalism was informed by ideologies (…) People discuss the aesthetics to a lesser degree focusing instead on where to find that special mix with the white sticker in the cover that is heard everywhere but is nowhere to be found.” (former editor, arts/culture supplement)

Recent context

Blitz (now a magazine), arts/entertainment supplements and websites.

Crisis in journalism precarious occupation.

Internet, blogosphere new discursive spaces, easier access to new releases, competing discourse about music (from fans, amateur writers, a.o.).

Death of music journalism?

Problematizing… Pop-rock criticism: what relation to the industry? Autonomy or synergy? False conscience of the listener/music consumer?

“Both the press and critics (…) play an important ideological function. They distance popular music consumers from the fact that they are essentially purchasing an economic commodity, by stressing the product’s cultural significance (…) A sense of distance is thereby maintained, while at the same time the need of the industry to constantly sell new images, styles and product is met”. (Shuker, 1994)

Music journalists as the good samaritans: what attention should be given to Portuguese artists in the press?

Last thoughts…

What is it being written about? Does music criticism exist at all?

Bibliography KLEIN, Bethany (2005), “Dancing About Architecture:

Popular Music Criticism and the Negotiation of Authority”, Popular Communication, 3/1: 1-20.

NUNES, Pedro (2010), “Good Samaritans and Oblivious Cheerleaders: Ideologies of Portuguese Music Journalists Towards Portuguese Music” in Popular Music, 29/1, pp.41-59.

NUNES, Pedro (2011), “Os Jornalistas de Música e a Indústria Musical: entre o gatekeeping e o “cheerleading” in Trajectos, Nº18, pp.53-69. 

NUNES, Pedro (2012), “Das Ideologias Políticas às Ideologias de Gosto: o Discurso no Jornalismo Sobre Música Pop em Portugal Antes e Depois da Revolução de 1974” in Susana Moreno, Salwa Castelo-Branco, Ivan Iglesias e Pedro Roxo (orgs), Current Issues in Music Research: Copyright, Power and Transnational Music Processes, Lisboa: Colibri.

Questions for discussion Think about the music journalism/criticism from your country and discuss with colleagues:a) Is it relevant to your music choices/tastes?b) What are the values (aesthetic, ideological) in the discourses?c) Is coverage of national acts/artists different from the international in any respect? Explain.