Review: Performing Rites

Simon Frith, in his 1996 book Performing Rites, explores the theme of musical genres as social constructions. Frith explains the popular music listener’s judgment of authenticity as “a perceived quality of sincerity and commitment. It’s as if people expect music to mean what it says” (71).

Drawing as well upon the work of Franco Fabbri, Frith lays out a series of “genre rules” which he claims govern the way we listen to music. Asserting that “popular musical pleasures can only be understood as genre pleasures” [91], Frith writes that genre analysis is narrative analysis: “It must refer to an implied community, to an implied romance, to an implied plot” [90-91]. Genres are a way for audiences and performers to bond over the retelling of a (believed to be) common story. And when a story is told, Frith argues, certain rules come into play:

Such rules refer to the ways in which “meaning” is conveyed… How is “truth” or “sincerity” indicated musically? How do we know what music is “about”? Consider, for example, how different genres (opera, folk, rock, punk) read singers: as the protagonists of their songs? As revealing themselves? Rules here, in other words, concern musical expressivity and emotion; they determine the significance of the lyrics—different genres, for example, having quite different conventions of lyrical realism: soul versus country, the singer/songwriter versus the disco diva. [91]

In other words, one could take the lyrics from a country song and present them to an audience in a “punk” style (musical interpretation or delivery), and this simple act of reinterpretation could drastically change those words’ meaning. This is especially relevant when considering the “I” in popular music lyrics: does it refer to a personal experience or a collective one? For instance, when Johnny Cash sings, “Well, I woke up Sunday morning / With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt” in his song “Sunday Morning Coming Down” is he speaking as himself, or as the voicing of a regional experience of a hangover? The answer seems to change somewhat depending on the genre in question.

A second Johnny Cash song, his Nine Inch Nails cover of “Hurt” is another strong example of the how a genre can change the meaning of lyrics. When Cash sings, “What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know, goes away in the end” the lyrics can be interpreted as a reflection at the end of a long life. But the original meaning of Trent Reznor’s lyrics changed from a place of despair to reflection. Reznor later lamented that when producer Rick Rubin first asked if Cash could cover his song, he was “flattered” but worried that “the idea sounded a bit gimmicky.” Reznor became a fan of Cash’s version, however, once he saw the music video:

I pop the video in, and wow… Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps… Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn’t mine anymore… It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. (Somehow) that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure. [Alternative Press #194. September 2004]

Frith argues that listening itself is a performance, both social gesture and bodily response. From how they are made to how they are received, popular songs shape our understanding of what all music means. But the listener’s experience determines the “meaning” – making it an aesthetic matter and highly personal. I love the way Frith brings the conversation about musical genre and interpretation into the realm of sociology. The “popular” in popular music demands a further analysis. And Frith does it well.