Professor Schaff posted an excellent piece on music and culture few days ago. The general idea is that American culture is more fragmented than it used to be because we don't all listen to the same music anymore. I think there is certainly something to this, but his sources show that it is difficult to pin down. When did the fragmentation occur: in the 70's, as David Brooks argued? Or in the 40's, as Mark Steyn claims? Moreover, the sources seem to contradict one another on the more basic question: you can argue that we have no common culture, or that the common culture is debased ("If Steve Van Zandt is our canon, mores the pity"), but you can't argue both.
I suspect that we did have something more like a common musical culture in the 30's and 40's, and that it lasted well into the 80's. As Professor Schaff indicates, it was largely the product of broadcast technology: first radio and then television. The whole family gathered in front of a single radio and, wherever they lived, they listened to shows coming out of New York. Much the same would be true when the first Television was brought into the house. That culture was largely intact when I was a child. There were three channels to choose from, and I knew the streets of New York and Los Angeles a lot better than I did those of my own state's capital.
It is true, as Mark Steyn says, that the music of the 50's and early 60's defined itself as counter-culture. That doesn't matter. Rebellion and revolution can be elements of a common culture. If you don't believe me, read almost any pre-Soviet Russian fiction. The counter-cultural elements of rock music from the 50's to the 70's had universal appeal, and for awhile you couldn't get away from them. Just look at the side burns in 1972 high school yearbooks, whether in South Dakota or in Arkansas. The horror. The horror.
What "fragmented" popular culture was the diversification of the various media. Cable TV and CD's made it possible for smaller markets, like jazz or Christian rock, to reach an audience. Once the internet emerges, almost any musical taste can generate a market to serve it. However, while American culture may be more fragmented now than it was in the 40's, it is certainly less so that it was in earlier periods when there was no radio and all culture was local culture. When New York was divided into real ethnic enclaves, only a bare hint of culture tied new Americans together with older populations, and it didn't have a sound track.
It is not true that parents always hate their kids music. I like a lot of the alternative music my daughter listens to, and my son is listening to Jimmy Hendrix. The real cultural divide occurred between my father's generation and mine. I didn't like any of the music he liked, nor could he understand why anyone would listen to my music. The same was largely true of the movies and TV we watched. There was real cultural fragmentation, but I suspect that it was a rare phenomenon, and one worth thinking about.
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