IN THE THIRD OF a series of essays on the decline in literacy, Thomas F. Bertonneau explores the connection between memory and popular culture. He describes introducing his university students to folk and music-hall songs. He says, “there is a startling difference between the songs that students consume and the songs that their grandparents and great grandparents sang, the memory of which the commercialization of music rudely interrupted, starting about fifty years ago”: 

 People sang folksongs, music-hall songs, and parlor songs; people consume contemporary “pop” songs. The singer is active; the consumer is passive.

He writes:

How else could a culture or a national or local tradition exist except through the intention of remembering? Yet modern culture, especially modern mass-entertainment culture—commercial culture—is predicated on pre-programmed forgetting.

                              — Comments–

Sean writes:

That article makes a great deal of sense. It is shocking to realize how much has been effaced by the commercialized popular culture that sprang up throughout the post-war world. I wish I knew more of the pre-popular folk tradition Dr. Bertonneau describes, but my memory has been corrupted by the new popular culture just as much as anyone else’s.

Let me offer an observation that I think helps illustrate the article’s argument. Many of the original rock supergroups are now defunct or sad jokes of themselves.  So, what to do if you’re a huge fan of, say, Led Zeppelin?  Well, there are numerous “cover bands” out there dedicated to putting on shows that replicate the look and sound of classic Led
Zeppelin. The band members deliberately dress up to mimic the original band members and play a set of the band’s songs.  I’ve even heard of cover bands that will advertise a particular show as a recreation of a particular tour by the original band – e.g., “Come and see Led Zeppelin as they would have appeared on their 1972 tour!”

It’s bizarre, even for those I know who are fans of this music. But it speaks how to tied this music is to a particular time, place, and media,and how quickly it ossifies. If all the electronic media in the world were destroyed, how many post-1950 popular songs do you think would survive in popular memory for more than a generation? I bet it would be less than a handful. Maybe “Blowin’ in the Wind” and a few other singable tunes.

Jenny writes:

Very interesting article! I grew up learning, singing, and enjoying what I consider old-fashioned music — Stephen Foster, Robert Burns, other Scottish and English fare, etc. I think growing up in rural KY around a lot of older kin made this possible. The school I attended was also quite old-fashioned, despite my having attended during the 1980’s. All the songs I learned in music class or while at the piano or even just heard my granny sing while she went about her work have really stuck with me all these years. I much prefer old-fashioned music to most of that on the radio, and I’d much rather make my own music than even play a well-made cd. I remember when my son was a newborn, and I spent many hours in a rocking chair with him. The songs from my childhood really came in handy When he was an infant, I went about my work with a song filling the air and still do in those rare moments of silence that I have now with a preschooler around. For me, especially in the early days of motherhood and being far away from home for the first time, the songs were such a comfort for me. They connected me to my past when I was in what felt like a very foreign land.

I will say one good thing for popular music, there are sometimes remakes of traditional tunes that might be a way to introduce those with little to no background in traditional music to the music of our past. One that comes to mind is Metallica’s remake of “Whiskey in the Jar”. Quite a rollicking take they have of that one!

Homeschool Mom writes:

Not that this completely negates the cultural pull for us to forget who we are (or were), but it is encouraging to see in homeschooling circles a return to accoustic instruments and the making of our own music. Our children play bluegrass to crowds of older people (65+), but more young people with their families are beginning to be seen with instruments in tow. I hope that instead of diverting our dollars to the Hollywood/Nashville music idols and the industry that hates our past, that we will consciously support more and more, the local, traditional, and historical music and musicians who will help us remember who we are. 

K. writes:

There is no firm distinction between pop and folk music.

One of your commenters mentions Led Zeppelin – the musicians in Led Zeppelin were profoundly influenced by English folk music. Anne Briggs, for example, was a very important influence on their music. Most people who enjoy English folk music today came to it first through folk rock bands like Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention. There was a tremendous amount of exchange between trad folk and arena rock in the 70s. Things have not really changed.

Look, here’s dozens of people playing ukelele covers of some cheesy hip hop.

There are people putting all the Child ballads up on youtube.

The Beatles played a lot of music hall. How can anybody listen to Sergeant Pepper and not hear it? One of the great new American children’s folk songs, Little Bunny Foo Foo, was spread in a large part by being sung at Grateful Dead concerts. There is a sizeable minority of people who don’t sing, even to their children, and those people are somewhat socially dominant, but it’s still not normal, and the folk still sing. A huge number of the American repertoire of living folk songs were originally commercial: Daisy Bell, You Are My Sunshine, Yellow Submarine. New songs pass into this repertoire all the time. There is plenty of cultural degeneration without going and looking for some where it just doesn’t exist.

Laura writes:

Good new songs will continue to be written; whether the best are sung by enough people to last is the question. Many pop songs lack the beautiful melodies that make songs linger in the mind.

Rusty Mason writes:

I think about this phenomenon of consuming music whenever I am in church and am obliged to sing one or two ghastly new songs each week, served up to us by some hipster music director who is desirous of pleasing the young people. In a lower corner of the big overhead screen with the changing lyrics and snazzy backgrounds is a notice of copyright. I cannot be the only one who notices the absurdity of this. Not only do our most popular songs not belong to us, neither does a large and growing number of our songs to God. I have been to half a dozen churches in city recently and this situation appears to be universal. 

Can ours even be called a culture if all the most popular elements – characters, TV shows, logos, music, quotations — are owned by someone else, usually a gigantic corporation, and one must have permission (rarely granted) to say, sing, reproduce or use them in any significant way?

Laura writes:

That’s an interesting point. Let these companies have their cheesy hymns. These songs won’t survive in the long run.

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