Making Meaning in Popular Song

Philosophical Essays

Theodore Gracyk (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

256 Seiten

2022
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
978-1-350-24909-7 (ISBN)

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Winner, ASA (American Society for Aesthetics) 2023 Outstanding Monograph Prize

For Theodore Gracyk meaning in popular music depends as much on the context of reception and performer’s intentions as on established musical and semantic practices. Songs are structures that serve as the scaffolding for meaning production, influenced by the performance decisions of the performer and their intentions.

Arguing against prevailing theories of meaning that ignore the power of the performance, Gracyk champions the contextual relevance of the performer as well as novel messaging through creative repurposing of recordings. Extending the philosophical insight that meaning is a function of use, Gracyk explains how both the performance persona and the personal life of a song’s performer can contribute to (or undercut) ethical and political aspects of a performance or recording.

Using Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”, Pink Floyd, the emergence of the musical genre of post-punk and the practice of “cover” versions, Gracyk explores the multiple, sometimes contradictory, notions of authenticity applied to popular music and the conditions for meaningful communication. He places popular music within larger cultural contexts and examines how assigning a performance or recording to one music genre rather than another has implications for what it communicates.

Informed by a mix of philosophy of art and philosophy of language, Gracyk's entertaining study of popular music constructs a theoretical basis for a philosophy of meaning for songs.

Theodore Gracyk is Professor of Philosophy at Minnesota State University Moorhead, USA. He is the co-editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.

Introduction

Part I: Songs
1. Meanings of Songs and Meanings of Song Performances
2. Who Is “You’re So Vain” About?

Part II: Performers
3. Performer, Persona, and Musical Performance
4. Authenticity in Popular Music
5. Pulling Together as a Team: Collective Action and Pink Floyd’s Intentions

Part III: Intertextuality
6. Kids're Forming Bands: Making Meaning in Post-Punk
7. Allusion and Intention
8. Covers and Communicative Intentions
9. Listening With their Eyes: Problems for Radical Intertextuality

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	15.07.2022
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Musiktheorie / Musiklehre
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie
ISBN-10	1-350-24909-2 / 1350249092
ISBN-13	978-1-350-24909-7 / 9781350249097
Zustand	Neuware