Mike Resler

Does Music Need Lyrics to be Considered Music?

Michael Resler

April 2010 

Everyone loves music.  I absolutely believe that there is an innate appreciation for music embedded in human nature, and that the poor souls out there who think they are ‘musically disinclined’ simply have yet to realize their musical tastes or talents.  That being said, I am often dismayed by the fact that so many people only recognize lyrical music as worthy of appreciation.  I don’t mean to condemn the lyrical aspect of music; in fact, some of the most powerful and influential music ever composed derives its value from its vocal accompaniment, from Richard Wagner’s timeless operas to Bob Dylan’s ballads, all the way to such icons as Notorious B.I.G.  Lyrics have gone hand-in-hand with music perhaps since the beginning of music itself; their importance and legitimacy are undeniable.  What is also undeniable, however, is the fact that modern music is recognized as nearly explicitly involving lyrics – a fallacy which I propose has completely undermined the legitimacy of modern instrumental music in general.  Once again, I have no problems at all with lyrical music; rather, I take issue with the simple fact that a majority of people today are under the false impression that good, enjoyable music must involve lyrics in order to be good and enjoyable.  The fact is, when most people today think of plugging in their headphones and ‘listening to music,’ what plays through their iPod will likely involve a singer, rapper, or some sort of vocalist – whatever the case, the average person’s relationship with their music is governed by an unconscious, automatic condition which requires the presence of another voice.  While there is nothing wrong with the built-in preference to lyrical music fostered by so many today, more people need to realize the value of the instrumental realm, if only for the sake of recognizing that music without lyrics is still music, if not more so.

                Many people today debate over the authenticity of modern music, lyrical or non-lyrical.  Naturally, much of this debate goes on between two distinctly different factions of music critics – the rockists, ever loyal to the typical start-in-your-garage rock n’ roll method of achieving notoriety, and the popists, advocates of the cutting-edge resources and technologies created by the pop music industry.  According to Kelefa Sanneh’s New York Times article “The Rap Against Rockism,” “Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncher” (“The Rap Against Rockism,” par. 3).  While the popist school of thought argues a more open approach to music criticism, their views do come from the biased perspective of the pop industry, so while I can understand why they don’t support the purist views of rockism, I cannot agree with their reasoning: popists only support an eclectic approach to criticism because you can’t sell just rock.  When it comes down to it, I say let the rockists and the popists continue their trivial debates; after all, how does criticizing music make it any more enjoyable? What’s the point? I believe to really love music is to accept and appreciate all of its forms, from rock to pop to jazz to techno to lyrical to instrumental – it’s all music! (Though I will admit I still struggle with country music).  That being said, while I don’t always hate pop music, I do have some serious issues with the pop music industry.

The pop music industry functions more or less for one purpose – selling music.  While this endeavor has helped make music more available to the masses, it has been a major contributor to the general tendency toward lyrical music.  It makes sense – pop music is based largely around marketing, and it’s a whole lot easier to market artists who sing or rap.  It also makes it easier to sell music if artists involve a front man of some sort – anyone whose face can be blazoned across an album cover (Why else do you think physical appearance is such an influential factor for musical success nowadays?).  Because pop music almost invariably features lyrical music, then the majority will only ever appreciate lyrical music.  The problem with this unintentional content filter is that it keeps people from understanding the merits of instrumental music, that it is not just a song with the words taken out.   

                In a way, there is an infinitely larger number of possible manifestations of instrumental music than there are of lyrical music, for the sole fact that the voice is the one instrument required for lyrics, whereas virtually any object can be considered a tool for creating instrumental music.  Because of this diversity I won’t be discussing every genre, only those which I feel best embody instrumental concepts and are relatable to my tastes and those of the rest of the class.  The first of those genres is post-rock, a genre typically regarded as a sub-classification of modern rock, but one which I feel has expanded since its introduction nearly thirty years ago.  As music critic Simon Reynolds writes in Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, “Post-rock means bands that use guitars but in nonrock ways,” something that has helped create “a new model of posthuman activity organized around fascination rather than meaning, sensation rather than sensibility” (Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, p. 358).  Reynolds explains how post-rock can be viewed as a sort of instrumental version of techno, in that both genres create more subjective scenarios than those in lyrical music as “the listener is plunged into plateau-states of bliss, awe, uncanny-ness, or prolonged sensations of propulsion, ascension, free-fall, immersion” (Reynolds, 358).  In short, post-rock is a sort of musical roller coaster – one which creates an experience every time you listen to it, rather than most lyrical music, which simply relates experiences.  Should you watch any of the following videos of my favorite post-rock bands, try not to wait for anyone to start singing – trust me, they won’t.  Instead, focus on the emotions you feel when you hear the experience the buildups, drama, and sublimity of their compositions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JkksFySAiE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBzxGheakj0

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

Instrumental acoustic guitar is another one of my favorites, and it actually exhibits the same concepts as post-rock, but on a simpler basis: although it presents a more basic structure, in many ways it embodies the subjective concepts that post-rock and other forms of instrumentals represent.  In fact, instrumental acoustic guitar can be seen as the very best example of why instrumental music can be so beautiful because of the fact that it is created by just one instrument.  I don’t believe that you need to play guitar in order to understand or appreciate a guitar being played without lyrics.  If you can watch any of these artists and not be impressed, then you’ve proven me wrong:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VAkOhXIsI0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-qgum7hFXk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnbdKMpM3f4

I’ve been trying pretty hard not to use the classic, over-used “it’s all about the music, man” argument for instrumental music, but as easy as it is to say that, I can’t deny the truth in it.  Not enough people today are able to step out of the mindset that lyrics are a requirement in order for music to be considered music.  The fact is, the pop music industry has, in large part, created the misconception that the vocal aspect is present in all music, and that the sounds made by the instruments in the song serve merely as the backdrop for the lyrics.  I encourage anyone who wishes to broaden their musical tastes to put down that false mindset (if you haven’t already) and explore any area of instrumental music.  Doing so will help create a true appreciation for what music really is – sounds that are pleasing to the ears!

As a final note, do yourself a favor and listen to Errors:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZooYqW09F88

Works Cited

Sanneh, Kelefah. “The Rap Against Rockism.” New York Times. New York Times, 31 10 2004. Web. 21 Apr 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/arts/music/31sann.html>

Rosen, Jody. “The Perils of Poptimism.” Slate. Slate, 05 090 2006. Web. 21 Apr 2010. <http://www.slate.com/id/2141418/>

Reynolds, Simon. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006. 358. Print

CE #2

Michael Resler

CE #2

March 2010

Corporal William B. Jones

            William B. Jones was only one of a group of men executed in Kinston, North Carolina for desertion from the Confederate army.  The group, originally consisting of twenty-seven deserters, left the south and joined the Second North Carolina Union Volunteer Regiment, only to be captured by Confederate generals Pickett and Hoke.  Twenty-two of them, including Jones, were subsequently hanged in April of 1864, on the premise that execution would be the only way to discourage further desertions.   In her poem, McDonough addresses the themes of family, religion, and commonality, along with adhering to the traditional sonnet form, in order to shed light on the dehumanizing effects of capital punishment, both in the instance of Jones’s execution and in that of our modern legal system.

            McDonough wrote her poem on Corporal Jones in the Shakespearean sonnet form, which typically consists of three quatrains, each of which contains four alternately rhyming lines and develops an idea which is separate from but related to the other quatrains, with a rhyming couplet at the end.  In the case of this sonnet, the common denominators among each quatrain are Jones’s family, religion, and commonality, all of which McDonough effectively uses to demonstrate the harsh impact of the dehumanization so often experienced by capital offenders.  The first quatrain serves primarily as an introduction, as the first three lines describe the factual details leading up to the execution.  The fact that the first line of this introductory quatrain is indeed the only line in which Jones himself is directly referenced seems a subtle indication of the sonnet’s theme, as McDonough refers to Jones from then on simply as “the body.”  The fourth line, “His wife brought food. Some got baptismal immersion,” introduces two things: first, the familial relevance in the sonnet, seen in his wife’s obvious devotion, and second, the religious focus of the second quatrain.

            McDonough’s description of the preacher’s message to the deserters in the second quatrain demonstrates not only the general attitude felt toward deserters at the time, but also the hypocrisy lying at the core of the message.  As said in line four, some of the deserters “got baptismal immersion,” a rite which would have saved one’s soul from eternal damnation.  That being said, one can easily see the irony in the fact that, while preachers and Christianity as a whole are regarded as those who elevate humanity and bring hope, the preacher then in fact condemns the prisoners, stripping them of their humanity as he “called them vicious, diseased / and wicked, hoped they were prepared for their doom.”  In certain ways, McDonough’s portrayal of the preacher and his message to the deserters serves as a response to the biblical ‘eye for an eye’ argument which has for so long been a supporting argument for capital punishment. 

            Still in the second quatrain, McDonough introduces the commonality among those executed, once again demonstrating the nullification of the individual condition so often experienced by capital offenders.  As she writes, “Two one day, five the next, the third fifteen / hanged from one pole,” one can imagine the coldness and lack of personal discretion by which each deserter was hanged.  This concept is driven further as McDonough again introduces Jones’s wife in order to transition from the second to the third quatrain, writing, “When she tried to bring him home, / the rebels cursed her.”  This transition, as with the rest of the third quatrain, demonstrates the careless treatment of the bodies, experienced from the wife’s perspective.  Rather than being handled as if they had once belonged to real people, “some bodies were sold to surgeons / like common felons, or scooped in a common grave / at the foot of the gallows.”  These three lines make clear that the deserters, having already been stripped of their humanity by a representative of God himself, would certainly not be treated with any more reverence once they had been hanged.  The failure of “the rebels”to honor a wife’s request to bring home her dead husband, along with McDonough’s reiteration in lines nine and ten of the commonality among the bodies, together support the idea that capital offenders, in the process of their execution, are often wrongly stripped of their humanity.

The ending couplet, which, in traditional Shakespearean sonnets, serves as a summary of the theme of the poem, finalizes McDonough’s religious overtone as it incorporates parallels to the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion, portraying Jones as a Christ figure.  Still in the third quatrain, “after a week, their son, / fifteen, went back for the body,” which serves as a loose reference to Jesus’ disciples visiting his tomb after his crucifixion, and Jones’s body, “which was stripped of all covering excepting the socks,” seems to represent Jesus’ near nakedness as He himself was tortured and crucified.  The last line of the sonnet is McDonough’s most telling reference to the crucifixion, describing Jones as “Saved from dissection, buried on a borrowed lot.”  The saving grace associated with Jesus’ crucifixion aligns with Jones’s salvation from dissection, and the “borrowed lot” on which he was buried may represent the borrowed tomb in which Jesus was buried, belonging to Joseph of Arimathea.  The quatrains of McDonough’s sonnet show the reader how capital offenders are often automatically dehumanized and stripped of their humanity due to harsh judgment and misguided preconceptions from those not facing the noose (or the chair, or injection, etc.); in the case of Corporal William B. Jones’s and the twenty-one others, the instant they received the death penalty was the instant in which they were no longer human beings, but only bodies.  Regardless of any arguments for or against capital punishment, McDonough would agree that those on death row should still deserve humanity and respect.

CE #1

Cultural Event #1

I work at Moe’s Southwest Grill in downtown Clemson, and every time I go to work, it’s a cultural event.  A lot of people come to Moe’s every day, and since I started working there, it seems like I’ve gotten to see and talk to just about every one of them.  Whether it’s a whole sports team, a group of sorority sisters, a few friends, or just a lone patron who’s craving a burrito, I’ve experienced a fair share of culture from behind the counter.  To be cultural is to be willing and able to witness and experience the aspects of cultures other than your own.  To me, one’s culture is defined by a unique combination of family, home, religion, race, upbringing, and general worldview.  The fun part for me and my peers at Clemson is that each piece of culture everyone brings to this miniscule town in upstate South Carolina combines to form what I would call the college culture.  It is this culture – this conglomeration of countless different aspects of countless different cultures – that has made my college experience so interesting.

As it is situated in downtown Clemson, it is not surprising to me when the line of people wraps around the restaurant all the way to the back door.  Naturally, with all of the people who come through the restaurant on a day-to-day basis, the place becomes somewhat of a lens through which one can examine Clemson’s cultural diversity.  For instance, many of the Indian people who come through Moe’s order vegetarian for ethnic or religious reasons.  Another example – I can tell when a person is ordering for their family if they get multiple items to go.  This may seem mundane, but living in a college town allows for few opportunities to witness the family life, so whenever I get a chance, it’s refreshing to me, as my family lives across the state.

Another cultural aspect I get to examine every time I work is one that involves income.  When someone pays with their Tigerstripe card, their parents obviously fund a majority of their purchases.  Of course, this is understandable, as this is a college town filled with college kids on college budgets, but when a person pays with cash and leaves a tip, you know that person understands what life can be like for the working student, and that those few extra dollars at the end of every shift make a big difference in the long run.  It’s comforting to know that some people can relate to that.

Everyone has their own special cultural background, and no two are exactly the same.  Working in a restaurant in the middle of a college town, I have found, can really give you a unique view of those cultures, and how they have affected the people who come in for food.  For the most part, the people who come through Moe’s are a part of something bigger – a diverse community where everyone brings part of their cultural background to the table in order to create the consolidated culture we call Clemson.