zoēpolitics

Monday, June 2, 2008

"You Don't Know Diddley?": Reflections on Knowledge, Power and Popular Music

At the end of the Second World War, as is well known, the aesthetic constitution of the American popular music soundscape - and thus of the citizen-subject that it played a particularly powerful role in creating - was transformed on the most fundamental of levels, through the rise of what was initially dubbed by white enthusiasts as "rock & roll".

While black audiences had for nearly ten years been calling the phenomenon "rhythm and blues" or "jump blues" (even while Billboard derided it as mere "race music", unworthy of listening by white ears), millions of Euro-American youths began listening to and playing the emergent genre once it had been renamed, thereby ensuring that it's aesthetic sensibilities would break not only with all previous African-American genres such as blues, jazz and gospel but also with country, bluegrass and folk.

Simultaneously of course, the Civil Rights movement was well underway, as blacks strove for structural equality with whites on all levels; how then, did this aesthetic shift influence the organization of Euro-American sympathy once it entered into full swing, and what were the most important elements influencing this?

John Mowitt insists in his book Percussion: Drumming, Beating, Striking that, aside from notational structures (which didn't change drastically), the single most important introduction was that of the backbeat into the Blues.

While I wouldn't disagree with such an assertion, what I would add to that, particularly in light of his recent passing, is that it was the singular figure of the late Bo Diddley who composed not only the most influential style, but also the most influential beat, that which progresses along the lines of "dum-de-dum-de-dum, de-dum-dum".

Indeed, it is difficult to overstate his influence on American popular music in the postwar period, since without his efforts at what Deleuze, citing the painting of Francis Bacon, called "deformation", there would be no "How Soon is Now?" by the Smiths, no "Desire" by U2, no "Magic Bus" by the Who, no "1969" by the Stooges, no "Hateful" by the Clash, no "Panic in Detroit" by David Bowie, and no "His Latest Flame" by Elvis Presley, nor would there be metal, hip-hop, punk rock or anything else that originated as a spinoff from rock and roll, and in particular, his incredibly singular approach that established the larger portion of its characteristics.