To what degree is Rock music about rebellion?
July 26th, 2006 by jabramo
For those of you who know me, you know that this is a central topic to my soon to be embarked on dissertation. I’ll try not to be verbose as I blog about this: Can popular music in school ever be a site of counterhegemony? Popular musicologists write about rebel music like the Riot Grrls (Warning, there are some expletives on this site, but nonetheless cool) movement of the 1990, Protest songs of the 1960s, some forms of Hip-hop, etc., but to what extent can these practices ever find a place in the music classroom when it comes to students creating their own work? Does the cooption of “rebelliousâ€? music by the “establishmentâ€? (school) immediately render it conformist?  Was it rebellious in the first place? Is it the teacher’s right to expect students to make political statements in their music? Is that just as repressive?Â
I don’t really have any answers to your questions, but the questions themselves are highly interesting to me.
I work in an urban district and have easily been able to incorporate jazz topics into my curriculum and, in conjunction with academic teachers, emphasize the social importance of jazz, especially that of the Harlem Rennaissance. Jazz is easy to do nowadays because it is considered more “main stream” and “conformist” of sorts. But, its origins are really anything but that…
But what about “popular” musics of today? There’s no doubt that it an society are invariably intertwined. Certainly most of today’s young people find more relationship to their lives in hip hop, heavy metal, and other “questionable” types of music. I think there needs to be an understanding of this kind of music and what its musical structure and purpose in society can relate to other music. How does one then incorporate that into a school curriculum in a way that is musically sound (no pun intended)?
I don’t know the answer.
This is a very relevant post. I am seeing the future of music education as moving further towards popular music. In the “old days” aspiring young musicians didn’t stand a chance of being published because of record company domniation. Now it’s point-click-publish and you are a celebrity to at least a small number of loyal fans.
Students are interested in this and see it as something they want to pursue- what a great way to teach musical concepts in a relevant way! I suppose my kids would think that whatever music we studied was “tainted” after we dissected it, but I’m sure the next day they would find something cooler….
Great questions Joe and interesting comments by Ben and Owen. I’ll eventually respond to some of them but in the meantime it’s worth reading this post over at the blog “feministing”. It touches on the “rebellious music” and “establishment” issue you mentioned but in the context of society and the music industry. Which I think relate directly to the points you brought up — but I’ll post on that later.