| Description | Tracks 1-6: Ewan MacColl talks about the history of pop music in the twentieth century including his belief that pop music is not a revolt, the advent of recording equipment at the beginning of the twentieth century and its impact, the creation of 'high art' by the ruling classes and 'traditional' or 'folk music' by the peasantry or lower classes, the fragmentation of musical forms after the Industrial Revolution, the development of mechanical media, which enabled one class to control the musical taste of the other, the creation of new music, the difference between 'traditional' love songs, which are set in a specific time and place; and modern pop love songs, which 'deal with love as an abstraction' and involve lovers who meet in a featureless landscape at an unspecified time or place - he feels this is 'a negative kind of art'; he talks about complexity in rhythm and melody in traditional folk music and the mass media's concentration on simpler songs, which he feels is a weakness - he compares this with Elizabethan drama and argues that pop music is not a revolution but a retreat from reality.
Track 7: Silence, 1.08 mins
Total: 17.05 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF549C0355980 |