2008 Pop Conference Bios/Abstracts

J.D. Considine

J.D. Considine is the jazz critic at The Globe and Mail, and contributes to a number of music publications. He was music critic at The Baltimore Sun for many years, an editor at Blender and Revolver, and has been published in Rolling Stone, Musician, Guitar World, Bass Guitar, The New York Times and The Washington Post.Panel(s):
Vote Music
Saturday, April 12, 2008, 2:00 - 3:45Abstract:

"If This Note Could Vote"
When critics talk about "the politics of music," what they really mean is the politics of musicians — or of song lyrics, or of an audience motivated by musicians or lyrics. The music itself, however, goes largely ignored. No one is going to point to a G chord and say, "That's Republican harmony," or declare E-flat major a Democratic key.

But is music really so value neutral? Although individual notes may not signify a specific political viewpoint, the ways they are deployed — the melodic structure, the rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary, the compositional form — can be analyzed along a right-to-left axis, just like politics. Is the song's approach to rhythm radical, or merely progressive? Is its melody traditional, or outright reactionary? Does the harmony spring from the religious right (that is, old-time religious music)? Is there a liberal rhythmic structure, leaving plenty of freedom for the players? Does the recording reflect a conservative view of sound reproduction, hewing to unadulterated, acoustic values?

Among other things, this paper will chart the current musical landscape by looking at the best-selling titles in various genres (as reported by Billboard) for the week of Feb. 5 — Super Tuesday — to determine which genres are red states, and which are blue. It will then compare this result to the lyric-derived received wisdom on which genres tend to be conservative, and which liberal.