How Music Empowers: Listening to Modern Rap and Metal

Abstract

telos of jazz, or the stages of social construction a young musician must pass to grow into what Dodds calls “a finished musician” (107). In Chapter 7, “Stylizing the Self: The Mechanic and the Domestic,” Espada-Brignoni discusses the main themes and metaphors that guide the autobiographers. Interestingly, he notes the autobiographers’ ambivalence toward the developing technologies. On the one hand, technology serves them as an effective metaphor (band as “a well-oiled machine” [121]) while, on the other hand, it threatens their livelihood and craft. They fear that some fans might prefer to stay at home with the recordings while others, who attend the performance, might prefer to hear the recording reproduced without the improvisation intrinsic to jazz. The autobiographers often discuss the band as family and tell stories of older musicians protecting the younger members from the hazards of the scene while also disciplining them as they would their children. More significantly, EspadaBrignoni situates the band-family in the context of the larger Black community with its “complex collectivistic notions and patterns of behavior” (126). Espada-Brignoni explores many other issues as well: the advantages and disadvantages of reading music and formal training, the danger of over-rehearsing, the quest of musicians to stylize or brand themselves into an authentic but marketable commodity, the conflict between the group and the individual, the modes and sometimes tyranny of micro-governability, the tension between early jazz and be-bop, and more. In addition, Espada-Brignoni, via Foucault, provides an approach for examining not only other musician autobiographies but also other music genres and their constructions and implementations of “authenticity.” In short, The Performance of Authenticity is a fascinating and perceptive study that makes a significant contribution to the study of pop music and culture that reaches beyond early jazz.