"I used never to weep at Great Art, at Couperin or Kirkegaard, maintaining it was too multidimensional for the specific of tears. I wept at the rapid associative revelations of a Piaf, or at Lana Turner’s soapy dilemmas. Crying was caused hence by entertainment, not master-works.
Today tears dictate my first judgment of any works, their levels be damned. What counts is to be kinetically moved. And who says Edith and Lana aren’t art—or, if they are, that Kierkegaard is more so?" Ned Rorem, Settling the Score (NY: Harcourt Brace, 1988), p. 258.
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This passage is one of the two epigraphs in the first chapter of Simon Frith's book Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music [Cambridge: Harvard U Press, 1996]--the other epigraph in the chapter is a little too vulgar for this blog (Take a look, p. 3).
Your work is cut out for you for next week (with the progress report or proposal for your anthology), but the week after (i.e., class on October 26), I would like to turn to criticism of popular music. Frith's book is an interesting place to start. Some of his chapters are: "Where Do Sounds Come From?," "Rhythm: Race, Sex, and the Body;" "Rhythm: Time, Sex, and the Mind;" "Songs as Texts;" "The Voice;" and "The Meaning of Music."
Enticing enough?! Also check out Greg Sandow's popular reviews in his Juilliard syllabus.
Enjoy
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