Aesthetics for Birds

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art for Everyone

Category Archives: Music

March 19, 2018
by Aesthetics for Birds
2 Comments

Bro-country, Walmart Country, and Authenticity

At her blog, L. M. Bernhardt has written a response to John Dyck’s recent post defending country music. In her post, “…but it’s all right.” she articulates something that worries her about Dyck’s presentation of country music as unsophisticated. There is an important difference between the music born from the life of farmers and miners and the music that deploys that life as a sign of authenticity for consumers who don’t necessarily live there anymore. She goes on to explain: it’s a major feature of contemporary bro-country, which tends to be an assembly-line-produced mess of redneck identity signifiers masquerading as “authentic” country music. A pop-country performer like Brad Paisley (who is good at his job — don’t get me wrong!) bears little to no resemblance to someone like Ralph Stanley or Hazel Dickens. He and his usual co-writers produce songs about country as an identity. Hazel Dickens wrote and sang from it, and I think that makes a big … Continue reading →

March 6, 2018
by Aesthetics for Birds
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In Defense of Country Music

What follows is a guest post by John Dyck (CUNY Graduate Center) I used to hate country music. I would hear it at my grandparents’ house. I remember hearing my grandma sing along to those drawling voices and crunchy fiddles. My nine-year-old self cringed inside. The music was so gauche and uncultured. My grandparents grew up poor and uneducated, and I could hear it in their music.

February 1, 2018
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Artist Interview: Michael Thomas Connolly

Musician, recording engineer, and producer Michael Thomas Connolly interviewed by Alex King Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Michael Thomas Connolly is a musician, recording engineer and producer in Seattle, WA. Obsessed with learning new skills, Michael is avid multi-instrumentalist and performs professionally on fiddle, mandolin, upright bass, accordion, piano, Hammond organ, guitar, dobro, bagpipes, flute and pennywhistle. He runs the venue and recording studio, Empty Sea Studios, and has engineered approximately 100 full-length records in approximately 20 years of multitrack recording. He has performed and toured with Coyote Grace, and has appeared on ABC’s The Gong Show. He is a ham radio enthusiast, computer geek, motorcycle rider, and cat lover, and has recently switched to decaf.

January 24, 2018
by Roy T Cook
2 Comments

Punk Rock Philosophy 3: Amateurism and the Myth Of Sid Vicious

In this, my third post on the aesthetics of punk rock, I will continue my examination of Jesse Prinz’s idea (as detailed in “The Aesthetics of Punk Rock”) that punk rock (in its various forms) is characterized by three qualities: Irreverence Nihilism Amateurism The topic of this post and the next is amateurism. (See here for the introductory post, and here for the post on nihilism. As already noted in previous posts, I don’t have much to say about irreverence.)

December 20, 2017
by Roy T Cook
4 Comments

Punk Rock Philosophy #2: Nihilism or Activism?

I began this series of posts here, setting up the issues and summarizing Jesse Prinz’s main points in his groundbreaking “The Aesthetics of Punk Rock”. Readers of that post will recall that Prinz identifies three characteristics of punk rock that he thinks are central to the genre: Irreverence Nihilism Amateurism Readers of that post will also recall that I have nothing at this point to say about irreverence (of course, there likely is much to say about the exact sort of irreverence that is at work in punk rock, but I’m not going to do that today). Thus, we’ll move on to the second topic in the list: nihilism.

October 18, 2017
by Roy T Cook
8 Comments

Punk Rock Philosophy: Introduction

The following is the first post in a series on punk rock. Click here for entry #2. In a 2014 article in Philosophy Compass titled “The Aesthetics of Punk Rock” Jesse Prinz (who guest-blogged for AFB here!) presents an aesthetic analysis of punk rock aimed at both fostering a deeper understanding of the genre and at teasing out larger lessons for the philosophy of music (and the philosophy of art more generally). His analysis comes in two stages. First, he provides a framework for understanding punk rock music (and the punk subculture within which it is produced and consumed) in terms of three central themes: Irreverance. Nihilism. Amateurism. Prinz then uses this three-part story to draw two larger conclusions: Punk rock involves an explicit rejection of traditional aesthetic norms, illustrating the plasticity of taste (and as a result serious consideration of the genre recommends a rejection of global norms of “goodness” or … Continue reading →

March 31, 2017
by Aesthetics for Birds
1 Comment

Vaporwave and Music Theory

Are music recordings their own type of musical instrument? How does timbre (vs. pitch, harmony, etc.) affect musical experience? What, really, is the point of music theory? And is vaporwave really dead? (Do you, Dear Reader, not yet know what vaporwave is – or was?) All these questions and more are addressed in this excellent video (from 2016 that I just discovered…) by YouTuber and musician Adam Neely.