Page 184 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

178 CULTURAL STUDIES

Ray’s observations on the relationship between recording and performing may
reflect his own circumstances and one possible set of relations within the
industry (in which artists’ performances are market-driven promo-appearances to
boost sales), it is simultaneously possible that this relation is actually reversed by
a majority of the bands that are out there playing their hearts out and hoping to
sell a few independently produced CDs out of the back of their van so as to cover
gas expenses for the night. And mind you, it’s not that these bands don’t want to
be hyping monster discs, it’s just that they haven’t gotten that far in their careers;
the point here, however, is not about musicians’ intentions, but rather, about the
actual relationship between their role as performers and their role as salespeople
for mass-produced commodities.
The question then, is not so much about performing vs. recording (or, to use
Ray’s vocabulary, between the modernity of performance vs. the post-modernity
of ‘construction’), as it is about the extent to which one’s recordings exist as
commodities. This brings me to Michael Jarrett’s important essay, ‘Concerning
the Progress of Rock & Roll’, in which Jarrett offers a schematic yet highly
useful methodology for analyzing the dialectical process by which performers
and styles challenge and/or verify the inescapable commercialization that follows
increased popularity. Jarrett’s thesis is that there are four dominant moments in
this dialectic: 1) Conventionalization, the stage in which different styles and
players, engaged in competition for ‘a cut of the market’, attempt to elaborate
their ‘code’ as conventional; 2) Aberration, the stage in which the struggle for
ascendancy has produced market-driven homogenization of sales-effective
sounds and styles. This moment of homogenization has the simultaneous effect,
however, of driving innovative artists to greater lengths to attack existent norms
and, accordingly, to produce what Jarrett calls ‘aberrant’ ‘mis-readings’ of the
conventionalized codes. 3) Disputation, the stage in which innovators compete
with conventionalized codes ‘over which musics are and are not innovative,
legitimate, authentic, original, etc.’, and 4) Ratification, the stage in which ‘a
perceived innovation gains legitimacy by soliciting, gaining, or, in some cases,
inventing institutional support.’
The connection here, between Jarrett’s four stages of development and my
reading of Ray’s essay, is that Ray’s theory speaks exclusively to those performers
whose work has achieved a certain level of ‘ratification’. It is a hard-luck reality
of rock & roll, however (again, regardless of the intentions of musicians), that
for every artist who reaches the sought-after level of ratification, there are
another 1,000 artists struggling on the levels of ‘conventionalization’,
‘aberration’ and ‘disputation’. The importance of Jarrett’s method of analysis is
that it enables us to recognize clearly that Ray has mistaken one moment in the
dialectic of an artist’s career as indicative of the overall status of ‘rock & roll and
culture’. Ray’s essay therefore reflects the fact that his band has been signed by a
major label and has arguably achieved ‘ratification’, whereas my band is still
struggling along with thousànds of other bands at the levels of
‘conventionalization’, ‘aberration’, and ‘disputation’. And mind you, I am not