In Offense of Christmas Music

At the risk of being labeled the world's biggest Scrooge, I will come right out and say that I don't like Christmas music.* Sure, Trans-Siberian Orchestra is good, and anything Frank Sinatra ever touched turned to gold, but that's about as far as I'll take it. It's not the repetition or mass appeal of Christmas music that bothers me. It annoys me, but I fancy myself enough a populist to not make a value judgement about the music in that way.


My problem with the music is the way that I typically consume it- unwillingly. Starting at Thanksgiving (and earlier every year, it seems), the airwaves and shopping centers play Christmas music constantly. I know that when I go "home for the holidays" (which was on the N*SYNC Christmas album, I believe), it will be a ubiquitous fixture of the house, almost as much as the trees or lights. My objection finally got a voice yesterday, when we were discussing the music and ideas of Canadian environmental composer R. Murray Schafer. His philosophy is that music can be any sound, but that sound/music become "noise" when they are unwanted, like the sound of someone opening a candy at a "classical" concert, or the sound of an airplane in the woods. To me, who genuinely does not want to listen to Christmas music, the genre becomes noise. While I agree with Brian that serious study can occur about the subject (and while I am equally surprised that it hasn't, perhaps because of its pervasive nature in our culture today?), it won't be undertaken by me.










* As much as I would like to make a distinction between Christmas carols, popular Christmas songs, and newly composed songs with Christmas themes, I don't often see such a distinction being made by those who play or sell or program Christmas music.

In Defense of Christmas Music

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Of course, today also marks another significant holiday tradition: open season on Christmas music. Turn your radio to the 24-hour Christmas station and don’t touch the dial for the next month.

I must admit that I broke the Christmas seal a little early this year. Yesterday, I was overwhelmed by the Christmas bug, and my immediate response was to seek out the sonic equivalent of being wrapped in a warm blanket sitting by the

fireside, otherwise known as Christmas music.

If the thought of 24-hour Christmas music stations give you a feeling akin to

fingernails on a chalkboard, not to worry, there is still hope of converting you into a Christmas music lover by the end of the season, I will be trying my best. I must make clear, however, that I in no way mean this with any religious connotations, in fact, with apologies to Bill O’Reilly, I see Christmas as almost entirely a secular holiday.

At the mention of a Christmas album, it seems that the obligatory response from any “real” music lover is to give a roll of the eyes and a haughty laugh, “Of course, everyone knows that these highly commercial “sell-out” albums by otherwise distinguished artists don’t actually count as part of their oeuvre.” And yet, they exist, and in very high numbers at that. These works are apart of the soundscape of nearly every public space for an entire month each year; from Starbucks to elevators they are virtually inescapable. Despite this ubiquity and cultural prominence, a search for scholarly studies of 20^th-century Christmas music in the UB library catalog and JSTOR brought up almost no relevant sources. There was one book, Publishing Glad Tidings: Essays on Christmas Music, however, this was much more concerned with traditional hymnody than Christmas music in popular genres. I am sure I have overlooked some studies because I cannot believe that this subject is as overlooked as my futile searching would imply. However, even if I have missed something, my guess is that a serious ethnographic study of popular Christmas music would receive the same condescending response that has been given to Daniel Goldmark’s studies of cartoon music; an amused chuckle, but no serious consideration.

I promise I will eventually post the rest of my thoughts on AMS, however, it will likely be after the end of the semester. For the next few weeks I will be posting some “musicological musings” on Christmas music and its role in society, as well as some reviews of great, and not so great, Christmas albums (just listened to Bob Dylan’s, will probably post something later tonight). I need some outlet to escape from the stress of the end of term scramble to finish writing papers, Christmas music musings seems as good as any.

China and Facebook and Criticism, oh my!

Despite my growing disenchantment with NPR's music website, it's still a great way to kill time. I just read a story that was interesting, but reveals why my disenchantment has grown. The article is about the growing punk scene in China, and there are some nice quotes (including one that reveals a bit of how Chinese popular musicians consume American popular music, from Bob Dylan and Woody Gutherie (!) to the Ramones), but the article does not consider what seems to me the obvious ramification of the article: China has a growing punk scene?!? Does the author understand the political and social ramifications of this? The Chinese government clearly does not, else they would have nipped this in the bud. The article also does a terrible job of contextualizing the scene, saying China has "the fastest growing" everything else, making it seem that punk music is the predominant style and that those darn Chinese beat us to the punch yet again. However, by their own admission, the musicians realize they are 20-30 years out of date. Can you really have "the fastest growing" scene of a trend that stopped dominating 20-30 years ago?

I also wanted to talk a bit about facebook. I've joined the dreaded menace, as that's how the Music and the Written Word Conference is organizing travel and lodging arrangments, which makes a good deal of sense. I want to comment on two things. The first is what facebook is doing to the concept of friendship. I have about 25 facebook friends, which is roughly the number I would consider to be my friends in the "real world." Yet, I see these people who have 400 or 700 or 1000+ "friends," and know by their own admission they don't even KNOW some of those people, much less have a "friendship" in the traditional sense of the word with them. Maybe its symptomatic of our growing isolationism (ironically* because of a technology designed to keep us closer together), an issue others smarter than I have touched on and that I won't rehash. But, those who use facebook would do well to consider its effects on their perceptions and labels of "friends."

Labels are my second point of criticism. I spent a lot of time procrastinating reading peoples' "info" yesterday. It was telling, as with facebook, we can label ourselves, in effect construct our identities, as we WANT to be seen and percieved. Granted, that tells one almost as much as the actual "info" itself, and is a suprisingly revelatory feature. However, I think this too is symptomatic of our technological age, as we spend time carefully constructing these somewhat virtual identities for ourselves, yet sparse time realizing them in a non-virtual world. Just some things to think about.






* This is not *actually* ironic.