Social Class and Family Music

I feel uneasy bringing up the topic of social class at all. To assign anyone to a particular class seems so alien to our time, to our unspoken aspirations to liberated classlessness. It might be seen as reductionist to try to describe the attributes of social classes -- to say that a person is from a certain class (in our country at least) is to do violence to that person's individuality, even to deny his or her humanity, in the eyes of some.

Yet so long as the class we're talking about is more or less an abstraction, and if we are at a physical or historical remove from the parties being described, we have less trouble with speaking of social class as a determining force in people's lives. The "working class" of pre-1939 Europe, or the "landless peasantry" of pre-communist China, colonial India, or of Central and South America in very recent or contemporary times are objects of impassioned allegiance with many people in America and in other affluent democracies. The above-named groups, to our minds, have definite characteristics; they can be thought of almost as individuals with their own personalities, thinking and acting in a certain ways which can be charted and predicted. It seems to me also that we have ascribed a great deal of virtue to the class groups mentioned above, as well as to the working classes in many other places around the world.

We read a statement such as "The urban working class in pre-Revolutionary Russia was almost as virulently anti-Semitic as the rural peasantry" (I am not actually quoting, though I could well be), and might be inclined to accept it uncritically, but if we were asked to take in the proposition that "In our times, the American working and lower-middle class is suffering from the effects of weakened family bonds, as well as from high consumer expectations frustrated by reduced spending power", we might well be offended.

Actually, I shouldn't say whether you would be offended or not. But I do know that honest discourse about social class and how it influences people's choices is very rare. I find this baffling, though not surprising in that we don't conceive of ourselves in terms of where we would be ordered in a class system -- the very notion of a class system itself probably seems arcane or irrelevant to most people.

Again, I share your distaste for even broaching the subject. But my interest in the connection between how the middle class (especially the upper-middle class) views itself and the phenomenon of family music is too great.

You may be aware that within the family music genre there is a division between the kind that is viewed as highly commercialized (The Wiggles, Disney, Barney) and another kind that has arisen at least partly in reaction to and even in protest against the first kind: 'independent' kid music: Dan Zanes, They Might Be Giants, Justin Roberts, and many others (the list is constantly lengthening); at any rate the latter category tends to be more home-grown, quirkier, less produced, etc.

The self-aware, conscientious subset of the middle class (which may be wealthier and better educated than the middle class as a whole) has embraced this latter-day flowering of independent family music. But I am struck by how sentimental so much of this independent kid music is, both musically and lyrically -- every bit as much as its 'unhip' counterpart. This is surprising, because the audience for this music is skeptical about institutions and authority figures, and is highly discriminating in how it goes about life in general -- it instinctively rejects the inauthentic or artificial in almost all arenas of life.

But in the music and lyrics of indy kid performers, maybe people are just looking for an appealing reflection of themselves: celebrations of looking for bottlecaps, your favorite childhood dog, sitting on front stoops, going to the thriftshop (this last activity is exclusively engaged in by upper-middle class, when it is done as a diversion). There are no dark corners, no misgivings, no regrets sung about in indy kid music (I am emphatically not referring to 'unhappy' childhoods, only to normal feelings experienced by children). I find this frustrating, because even placid-seeming childhoods are chock full of these things (the joyous experiences of childhood, which I would agree strongly deserve celebration in song, are, on the other hand, often written and sung about with a self-satisfaction that can be off-putting). It just doesn't ring true to me (the irony and the pop-culture throw-aways I hear in some of the music also seems somewhat glib). The indy kid music audience is very demanding about most other things in life: schools, pediatricians, food ingredients, toys, TV viewing (if that is even allowed at all). But I would have expected such people to want music that was a little more challenging (which does not necessarily mean louder or more dissonant).

One theme running through family music (this theme is certainly found in indy kid music as well) is that there may be much wrong with the world, but there is much to celebrate in ourselves. I would not go so far as to call this attitude a smug one, but I'm not sure how much the rest of the world sees things in this way. Or maybe it does, and I am wrong: some of the most prominent indy kid performers are getting mass exposure, and their popularity could prove broader and deeper than anyone would have thought. But the following is either an unscientific, unprovable generalization or a truism: children outside the warm confines of the comfortable, secure segment of the middle-class have not been much affected by indy kid music. Indy kid music (though some of it will certainly stand up to the test of time) speaks mainly to the upper middle-class world-view. And though I am uncomfortable admitting it, I find this view to be unconscionably restricted.
(this essay is taken from friendlyblobs.com/news)