Authenticity & Perception
In-Lesson Reading SelectionFor our final lesson here, we’re going to investigate the concept of authenticity in popular music and how it colors our perception of particular musicians. However, we need to do a little bit of clarification in terms of what we mean by “authenticity” in the first place.
Generally, when people refer to something as “authentic,” they’re saying in effect that it is “real” or that it conforms to a certain set of expectations, as with “authentic” Tiffany lamps or “authentic” Greek food. When we refer to a person as “authentic,” we generally mean that he or she is genuine, honest, and without a sense of pretension or artificiality. When we apply this idea to music, things get a little complicated and can be thought of in a couple of different ways:
- When we are dealing with people who play older styles of music such as country blues or bluegrass, we might say that their performance is “authentic” if they perform well while sticking to the traditional musical style. This is sort of akin to the way we might talk about authentic Greek food.
- A musician can project a sense of honesty and genuineness in their performance, giving us the sense that their music comes from a deep personal expression and is emblematic of their personality and their experience. We don’t feel as if that performer is acting or putting on a show.
The second of these ideas is the one that most concerns us, as it presents a nifty tangle for us to attempt to unravel. The question becomes how you as a listener and participant in popular music recognize authenticity when you see it. There is a lot in play here. Music fans often tend to think of certain musical genres as having some sort of innate authenticity, often having as much to do with the style’s relationship to the music industry as with any actual musical attributes. For many, the more blatantly commercial a musical style or musician seems, the less authentic they are. Authenticity also seems to have a lot to do with a sense of local identity, that the musical style or artist is the product of a music scene somewhere. For example, when we think of grunge bands like Pearl Jam we tend to think of Seattle. In contrast, pop singers like Celine Dion seem to be from nowhere (and everywhere, paradoxically). This obsession with location becomes particularly clear in genres like rap, where being from “the streets” can be so important that young suburban men like Vanilla Ice feel the need to lie about their backgrounds.
The concern with someone’s background also seems to come into play when musicians or celebrities alter their musical styles or fashion in order to appeal to a wider or different audience. For many fans, this amounts to a betrayal, a “sell-out” of artistic integrity and authenticity in search of financial gain. Doing this somehow makes the musician less “real” or it makes us question if they were ever real to begin with or were only in it for the money – although one might consider that if someone is truly only after financial wealth, there are much more secure paths to it than being a musician!
The most important thing to note about these types of authenticity, though, is that they are as much a product of the audience’s perceptions as they are of the musician themselves. For example, most rock music has tended to present itself as a sort of purely artistic genre that works outside of the music industry, as opposed to the more commercial side of pop music. But rock music is marketed and promoted along the same channels as pop music; it just tries to downplay the marketing, and the fans are happy to play along. People also often point to the age-old question of whether so-and-so writes his or her own music, a litmus test which perhaps seems to work for musicians who want to be the next Bob Dylan, but doesn’t seem entirely applicable to people like Frank Sinatra or any number of Tin Pan Alley-era singers who based their careers solely around performance. Indeed, it would seem to be clear that it is possible to be seen as “authentic” while performing music that one clearly did not write. Otherwise, the vocal coaches on American Idol and other singing competition shows would not critique their performers by saying that they didn’t “believe” the performance or that the singer didn’t “own” the song.
For most popular music listeners, the fact that you believe it is all that matters, even if the things that make you believe it (raising one’s fist at a high note, singing to individual audience members, putting a foot on a stage monitor, etc.) are planned theatrical gestures. Performers of all stripes cultivate these gestures, perhaps unconsciously, as a way to perform with “authentic” emotion even when they may be tired, bored, upset, or otherwise distracted. The best and most lasting performers tend to know that in order to convey emotion to the audience, they don’t have to feel something themselves; they simply have to do the right things and the audience will have the experience they paid for. Whether it’s real for the performer is kind of beside the point because the audience ultimately makes the call.
One of the benefits of placing authenticity mostly within the audience’s perceptions is that it frees us from the trap of assuming that one particular type of music is essentially more authentic than another. It allows us to evaluate musical styles on their own merits. For example, performances by disco artists in the 70s rarely featured live musicians and were often concerned mostly with glamour and spectacle. Rock fans often found this to be unbearably fake and shallow. The disco audience, on the other hand, celebrated the glitz, the superficiality, and the fakeness, creating an alternative system of authenticity in which a performer could possibly be considered “authentically fake” because he or she fulfills the audience’s expectations and desires.
But of course, various musical genres approach this in their own fashion. In this unit, we’re going to explore the crisis faced by country music in the 1970s as it was torn between tradition and the pop mainstream and the way authenticity informs our perceptions of gangsta rappers. Finally, we will meet the glam rocker David Bowie, who has made a career out of constantly manipulating and changing his image and who exerts a powerful influence on pseudonymous performers like Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga.