Dr. Norman Stanfield

The Quartet, by Chrisopher Levenson

After the velvet hush
the first chords assail us
gathered in darkness to watch
the intent, horn-rimmed, screwed up
concentration
of four foreign, middle-aged gentlemen
consorting maestoso,
bowing and scraping.

Out of the fidget
Brahms slowly emerges
like the Brocken, misty
and far off and under
another name.
Four spotlights, one over each
perfectly preserved specimen
(a 1750 viola, a violin
from 1672)
skewer these aural butterflies
to their sheets, only the frockcoats
and the black forelock of the one
who is not bald (but perspiring)
presume
to follow other rhythms.

By now the mind has wandered
so far from the auditorium
that it takes a whole avalanche
of flurried sound to return us
to darkness and the strings’ predictable
twitter. The lento massage
of rich sound,
plangent agonies over-rehearsed into
monochrome, are barely in time to
dither once more into a final
reverie, and chase it with a frenzied
rush towards silence.

At last they are bowing, the four
earnest musicians, and leaving
allegro for refreshments, ma non troppo,
to our half-lit applause.

From the author’s book of poems entitled Stills (1972) with permission

This insightful poem illuminates a troubling debate in Western Art Music, where the reception of music has become the topic of discussion. It follows a line of inquiry founded partly by Stuart Hall who formulated a Theory of Reception within the confines of Cultural Studies. Now countless musicians and music scholars are following suit by investigating the highly diverse ways that music is received by the listening public, not always to the good.

What began as a blog entry about performativity grew to an unwieldy essay on the topic. Rather than clog up the blog pages with reams of pages, I have decided to added it to my column entitled Music Matters. Please have a look at the discussion, then come back here to add a comment.

For the Reading Journal assignment in the second week of 2012 Fall classes, students were asked to summarize John Baily’s excellent essay, “Ethnomusicology, Intermusability, and Performance Practice,” found in The New Ethnomusicologies (edited by Henry Stobart, 2008). As I re-read the article, I suddenly realized that his wife is the amazing Veronica Doubleday.

I say “amazing” because her research on women’s music-making is extraordinary. She accompanied her husband, John Bailey, to Afghanistan and discovered music performed entirely by women, with the tambourine at its centre. Out of that encounter came her wonderful book Three Women of Herat: a memoir of life, love and friendship in Afghanistan (2006). The book partly culminated her research on the prominent place of the tambourine among women throughout Central Asia, the Middle East and southern Europe. Her findings are seen in Ethnomusicology volume 25, number 4 (1999), pp. 101-34, in an article entitled “The Frame Drum in the Middle East: Women, Musical Instruments and Power”.

I learned about the work of Veronica Doubleday when I was doing my own research on the history and culture of the tambourine among women in the Salvation Army.  My article, entitled  “The Tambourine and the Salvation Army: Rebellion in the Service of Authority,” can be seen in the Canadian Folk Music/ Musique folklorique canadienne, volume 41, number 4 (2007). The project began almost as a lark. I was wondering what it would be like to research a lowly music instrument that was found at the far end of the spectrum, opposite to the lofty Western Art Music instruments like piano and violin. Coincidentally, I was carrying around a memory of an explosive, singular newsflash from my days as a Resident Artist at EXPO 86. The Salvation Army tambourinists, or more properly, timbrelists were performing a kind of “flash mob event” on the main “street” of the fair with their tambourines and brass band accompanists, and everybody who witnessed it were gobsmacked. The delight and surprise crackled over the network of walkie-talkies, but I was unfortunately too far away to rush down and see them.

When I conducted my fieldwork among the SA timbrelists years later, I discovered the art of the tambourine in their hands was certainly not a lark. They took their performance art very seriously, and expended countless hours perfecting it. The performance art involves intricate hand and arm movements, sometimes enhanced with stage blocking, all the while striking the tambourine in complex rhythmic patterns, in unison with other timbrelists, and in rhythm to music selections provided by a glorious Salvation Army Brass Band. My best sighting occurred when I was invited to watch the North York timbrelists march through the streets of north Toronto at the head of the Salvation Army congretation,  brass band, a big bass drum (the sound most admired by the founder, William Booth) , flags and banners. Since then, I learned that a similar, even bigger production is seen every New Year’s Day on television across North America. In the morning, the Salvation Army massed brass bands and their massed timbrelists lead the massive Rose Parade. They also participate in the Calgary Stampede parade, to great applause, also in the same manner. But those are all faint echoes of the original context of the marching, when the SA would courageously and defiantly march down the slums and shantytown streets in cities and towns around the world, including Vancouver, broadcasting their message of joy and hope to the desperate and the disenfranchised.

As I looked further afield, I came across an inspirational tambourine soloist, Layne Redmond, who has embraced the tambourine as a vehicle to express her feminist interests.  She has tied together the history of women’s traditional place as spiritual mentors and guiding lights in pre-historic Europe, with the tambourine (and its kin, the frame drum which is a tambourine without jingles). At one time there was an explosion of research that suggested ancient Europe was a matriarchal society before the arrival of male-dominated newcomers and their patriarchal, violent ways. All of these interests are recorded in her book, When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm (1997).

Although the theory is now refuted by authors such as Cynthia Eller in her book The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future (2000), Layne Radmond’s  musical-theatrical productions of women re-enacting the spirit of ritual services while using the tambourine to enhance their songs and movements are really something to behold.  Her tambourine ensemble is called A Mob of Angels and I highly recommend looking for them on Youtube. While you’re on the web, be sure to look for Layne Redmond’s website, where you will discover that she is a major force in the world of percussion.

Another name I’m keeping an eye on is Allesandra Belloni who specializes in the tambourine of Southern Italy. When you look into that corner, you discover the truth about the Tarantella; it is a dance of ecstacy, not the hysterical response to the bite of a tarantula. In Spain there is the women’s tambourine ensemble Leilia which maintains the tambourine traditions of the Galician area in the north.

Not all the prodigiously talented tambourine players are women. There are brilliant male performers such as Glen Velez and Xabier Berasaluze “Leturia”, one of the duo of Spanish Basque musicians called Tapia and Leturia. In Brazil, the tambourine, called pandeiro, has taken on the status of national instrument. It is played by men and women. Back in Italy, in the province of Calabria, men dominate tambourine performance, a radical departure from the tradition. There’s probably a great story there.

I acknowledge that among female timbrelists, I am clearly an outsider. Julie C. Dunbar has provided people like me with important insights in her new book Women, Music, Culture: An Introduction (Routledge, 2010). Still, I suspect there is there is a level of appreciation entirely beyond my understanding . No matter. I love what they do.

On Sunday (September 10) I attended a conference devoted to the century-old history of music in Vancouver, in celebration of Vancouver’s 125 birthday. Called Vancouver Snapshots 125, it was organized by David Gordon Duke on behalf of the Turning Point Ensemble and featured a week-end of performances devoted almost entirely to the music of Vancouver composers. I use the word “almost” because a Sunday concert at the Dr. Sun-yat Sen Gardens included the Orchid Ensemble performing Chinese music that would most likely have been heard by the Chinese community. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the concerts so if any of you can shine a bit of light on the concert repertoire, I would appreciate the news.

The conference and evening concert took place in the Roundhouse Community Centre, a very appropriate setting, given its history as a bastion of Vancouver’s railway culture, especially its steam engines. A brass band was present at the arrival of the first train, housed in the Roundhouse. As a member of the Little Mountain Brass Band, I have played several times beside the engine, as we joined with the Roundhouse Community Centre in celebrating its historical arrival.

David Duke is well known as a distinguished college music educator and administrator, and an influential music critic and composer. He is an old friend of mine from music school days. But more relevant to the conference, he has had a long and abiding interest in the music of Jean Coulthard, a prominent Vancouver composer, going so far as to co-author a book on her life and musical output. More about Dr. Coulthard in a moment.

The Saturday afternoon was brilliant and beautiful as only Vancouver can be. Perhaps that explains the modest attendance, with fewer than 25 people in the room, but I fear it may also be a measure of interest. All the evidence suggests that Vancouver is rushing headlong into global status as a hub of financial and real estate activity between Asia and the rest of Canada. Its British parochial and colonial past is becoming increasingly eclipsed and progressively irrelevant. From the perspective of the South and East Asian populations of Metro Vancouver, both recent and long-standing, the city has evolved from the bleak days of draconian Canadian immigration Laws, a by-product of British Imperialism, to a welcoming cosmopolitan centre that has replaced Britain with multiculturalism at its core.  Vancouver’s music history is, for better or for worse, a by-product of the former, no matter how benign.

Mr. Bill Bruneau opened the seminar with a paper about the first 100 years of music-making (up to World War II). He expressed regret at the short amount of time, given the profuse detail he has uncovered, and despaired about its neglect. He offered us a surprising list of great composers who performed concerts in Vancouver, greats such as Ravel, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. The explanation given for their interest in such a modest, little city was the simple fact that they could pause between the end of the railroad line, and the dock of Pacific-bound steam ships, in order to pick up a few dollars and admirers.

George Laverock, the next speaker, described Vancouver as a city ”on the edge of the continent”, requiring special efforts to attract musical talent. His point was that many organisations, especially choirs, rose to the challenge. (Mr. Laverock is also a witness to one of most monumental occasions of Vancouver’s music history, the visit of Stravinsky who had been engaged to conduct a number of concerts here. George was in the Vancouver Symphony at the time, as a trumpeter. A full accounting of the event is available on the net and in person at UBC, thanks to the efforts of The H. Colin Slim Collection.)

Janet Danielson focused on two of Vancouver’s earliest and most important composers, Jean Coulthard and Barbara Pentland. In David’s introduction, he observed that Vancouver’s music history is particularly unique in that its most important composers are women, a point that Dr. Danielson amplified. Finally, David spoke on Vancouver’s musical exiles, the great composers who had to leave in order to find a career and a following. I was reminded of an expression I have heard many times; if you want a career in Vancouver, you have to leave. In the questions and answers that followed, a fascinating observation emerged about the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Thanks to its unique form of distance education, its piano certification program offered across Canada became a viable and very popular lifestyle alternative for women who wished to create a career instead of submitting to the restricted options offered by a patriarchal society.

As you can see, what was left out of the proceedings was the vast world of folk, popular, and “ethnic” music. As to be expected, Western Art Music (WAM) was privileged by the speakers, although they did acknowledge the presence of non-WAM music-making (as seen in the Chinese music concert and passing remarks during the conference).

Perhaps interest in Vancouver’s music history could be rejuvenated after ethnomusicologists lead the way with research directed towards a new, more inclusive history by foregrounding Vancouver’s multicultural past. Some of this research is evident in the articles about Chinese opera, seen below in my select bibliography. Pop music scholars would simultaneously create vast murals of Vancouver’s past and present everyday with Elvis Presley and Jay Chou on equal footing. First Nations music would be placed centrally in the picture while respecting their rightful claim to intellectual property. Once this work is well on its way to completion, Vancouver’s parochial music history, both folk and WAM, could then be inserted as one record among many cultural expressions, divested of its privileged status from the past to reveal the pre-occupations of just one segment of Vancouver.

Select Bibliography

Dale McIntosh History of Music in British Columbia, 1850-1950 (Sono Nis Press, 1989)

Ivan Thackery, Fifty Years of Theatre Row (Hancock House, 1980)

Lawrence Aronsen, City of Love and Revolution: Vancouver in the Sixties (New Star Books, 2010)

Red Robinson and Peggy Hodgins, Rockbound: Rock’n’Roll Encounters: 1959-1969 (Hancock House, 1983)

Red Robinson and Greg Potter, Backstage Vancouver: A Century of Entertainment Legends (Harbour Publishing, 2004)

Philip J. Thomas Twenty-five Songs for Vancouver, 1886-1986 (Vancouver School Board, 1985)

Philip J. Thomas, Songs of the Pacific Northwest (second edition, edited by Jon Bartlett, Hancock House, 2006)

Kaija Pepper Theatrical Dance in Vancouver: 1880s-1920s (Dance Collection, 2000)

Carolyn MacHardy “Evidence of an Ephemeral Art: Cantonese Opera in Vancouver’s Chinatown,” in BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, number 148 (Winter 2005/06), pp. 55-92

Elizabeth Lominska Johnson, “Cantonese Opera in Its Canadian Context: The Contemporary Vitality of an Old Tradition,” in Theatre Research in Canada/ Recherches Theatrales du Canada, volume 17, number 1 (Spring/Printemps, 1996)

Huang JinPei and Allen R Thrasher, “Cantonese Music Societies on Vancouver: A Social and Historical Survey,” in Canadian Journal for Traditional Music (1993)

“To textbook, or not to textbook; that is the question.” (Sorry, Will!)

I have struggled with this question since the very beginning of my teaching career. Each time my “Introduction to World Music” (M328) course rolls around in the school calendar, I re-visit my dilemma by looking at the fresh stock of World Music textbooks newly published. But I have never found the right fit. Now that we have arrived in the age of the webisphere and sites like Wikipedia, the question becomes moot. I should add that I entered the study of ethnomusicology at the graduate level, so I don’t have a fondly remembered and well-thumbed undergrad book to act as a role model.

Here is my problem in a nutshell. I teach a very unique set of lectures which are not mirrored by any one book.

Be that as it may, I want to take you on a quick tour of the World Music textbook literature created for undergraduate students. A more thorough survey is preferable, but this is the wrong place for such an ambition. Another, far better option would be for you to physically browse through the titles in the Music Library. Many of them include music examples in CD format, and online access to yet more information via their publisher’s website when you buy the book. I have added some example titles and their library location at the end of this blog entry, in case you take me up on the challenge.

As you casually flip through the pages, you will discover that many of the texts have virtually no music notation examples. This is because they are destined to be used in general interest classes comprised of non-music students in the same mold as campus-wide Music Appreciation classes. In fact, World Music Appreciation, and its close neighbour, Pop Music Appreciation, may be overshadowing that old standby called, anachronistically, Music Appreciation (that is, Western Art Music Appreciation, although units devoted to pop, jazz, and world, make brief appearances these days). This shift in interest is foreshadowed by the hundreds of undergrads who enrol for the Pop Music course at University of Toronto each year, and the dire statistics of the steady decline of WAM audiences and piano students interested in learning classical music. “Roll over Beethoven!”

World music textbooks are indescribably rich in information, delivered somewhat in the manner of a travelogue – one country, then the next, and so on as you travel the world, gobsmacked at the variety. Heather Sparling, one of my colleagues and a great friend in the CSTM (Canadian Society for Traditional Music, conducted a detailed comparison of three of them in a recent edition of MusicCultures, vol 34/35 (2007/08), the scholarly journal of the CSTM. Her interest was in the area studies, physical characteristics, costs, and supplementary goodies that come with each book upon purchase.

But all of the travelogue texts have two problems, in my opinion.

First, each book contains a vast amount of facts that likely would require intense and sustained study that could easily collapse into a “cramming” fest, given the many other course demands made of students. Oxford University Press, under the guidance of the editor Bonnie Wade, created an interesting solution to this problem of saturation. In addition to a general text on how to listen to World Music, Oxford publish a number of mini books devoted to individual music culture areas, to be chosen by the ethnomusicology teacher.

Second, I am hugely irritated by the lack of Canadian content. Each textbook casually and constantly employs references to America when making one or another point. No doubt American readers enjoy seeing familiar names and places in their textbook. (“I didn’t know that about Cleveland.”) But Canada is utterly invisible. Given that the textbooks are written and designed in America to service the huge and lucrative American university market where many World Music classes have enrolments in the hundreds, the lack of Canadian content is understandable.

So why are there no World Music textbooks specifically created or adapted for Canadian students, especially those who are new to Canada? An obvious answer might be that there simply aren’t the numbers to warrant the time and investment. But this answer does not hold water. Oxford University Press made a superb adaptation of their standard American textbook, American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3, for the Canadian market. It is entitled Rock: A Canadian Perspective (2008). Ryan Edwardson has written an excellent textbook called Canuck Rock: A History of Canadian Popular Music (2009) which has no American precedent.

Be that as it may, there are two general World Music textbooks that I am very fond of. First, there are the Rough Guides to World Music. They are cheeky and irreverent, but unfortunately too succinct to get under the skin of any one genre. They have a tone similar to Rolling Stone magazine, with a quick survey of each country’s traditional music, followed by a detailed look at its indigenous, hybrid pop music. Another favourite of mine is Music of the Whole Earth by David Reck (with photos by his wife, Carol), now out of print. It was savaged in the Ethnomusicology journal book review section, partly because of the author’s” gee whiz” tone and Pollyanna attitude. I loved it from the first moment I looked in its pages. The book has an irresistible sense of wonder, even if several facts are tossed about in a cavalier manner. The book has the same breathless rush of discovery as a great public lecture delivered by a charismatic speaker. It is ahead of its time as a “graphic text”, and the author solved the central problem of presenting music notation examples for non-music readers by devising a brilliant system of graphic notation. It is on reserve shelf in my course, M328, if you want to have a look at it.

Select Bibliography:

William Alves, Music of the Peoples of the World
ML3545 .A48 2006

Michael Bakan, World Music: Traditions and Transformations
ML3545 .B24 2007

Dorothea Hast and others, Exploring the world of music: an introduction to music from a world music perspective
MT90 .E97 1999 (Okanogan Library only!)

Terry Miller and Andrew Shahriari, World Music: A Global Journey
ML3798 .M53 2009

Bruno Nettl, Excursions in World Music
MT90 .E98 2008

William Malm, Music cultures of the Pacific, the Near East, and Asia
ML330 .M3 1996 and its companion volume (both published by Prentice-Hall as a set),
Bruno Nettl, Folk and traditional music of the western continents
ML3545 .N285 1990

Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Soundscapes: Exploring Music in a Changing World
MT90 .S53 2006

Jeff Titon, Worlds of Music
ML3545 .W67 2009

David (and Carol) Reck, Music of the Whole Earth
MT6.R273 M9 1977 (on reserve, in the MUSC 328 section)

Bonnie Wade, Thinking musically: experiencing music, expressing culture
ML3798 .W34 2009
Also look online for her collection called Global Music Series

Students in my class, Introduction to Popular Music, are required to be able to recognize 50 iconic Canadian pop songs for two listening exams — 25 songs per exam. This assignment may seem to be a no-brainer to many, given the enormous popularity of almost all the songs, but not surprisingly, there are many Millennials (aka Y-Generation) and new Canadians who are new to the repertoire.

So which songs qualify for iconic status? And why did I choose the number “50” (given the popularity of terms like the Top 100, and This Week’s Top Ten)?

In 2005, CBC radio ran a show called 50 Tracks: The Canadian Version, where panels of Canadian industry insiders, successful recording artists and the faithful listening public, all led by Jian Ghomeshi systematically chose 50 titles. The episodes were organized according to decade, with a new panel for each time frame. The complete list was then arranged according to popularity, with Ian and Sylvia’s Four Strong Winds topping the chart.

After the list was finalized and published, it was raked over the coals by angry or crushed fans of various artists and songs that were missing from the list. Glaring omissions, such as Celine Dion and Shania Twain, point to the bias of the panelists that excluded Middle-of-the-Road, Soft Rock, and New Country. Still, as far as lists go, it is remarkably complete.

Since the publication of 50 Canadian Tracks in 2005, other lists have emerged. I am thinking especially of Bob Merseau’s wonderful compilations, The Top 100 Canadian Albums (2007) and The Top 100 Canadian Singles (2010), also ranked according to popularity. In his Top 100 Singles, Four Strong Winds falls to ninth place, replaced by Guess Who’s American Woman (number 5 in the 50 Tracks).  The quirkiest list to appear in the last few years was another CBC project. To commemorate the election of Obama and his inaugural visit to Canada, CBC decided to give him an iPod consisting of top hits chosen entirely by the listening public. The final list of 49 songs (commemorating the 49^th parallel) are not ranked in popularity, only listed alphabetically. Finally, a remarkable, on-going list I least  expected is coming out of the post office. They have issued 3 sets of four stamps, each featuring top-ranking Canadian rock and pop musicians.

At one point this summer, a very perceptive student spotted an error in my CBC Top Fifty list. I had Fly At Night by Chilliwack at number 48, but they had looked at the list in Wikipedia and saw a different title occupying number 48 – Fly By Night by Rush.

I re-examined my downloaded hard copy of the same Wikipedia article and confirmed that number 48 was the Chilliwack title, but the current online list does indeed have the Rush song. Trolling through the Net confirmed that the Rush entry was the correct one. It was championed by Emm Gryner. Evidently the entry in 2007 was a mistake, corrected by an anonymous editor. Yet more evidence of Colbert’s “truthiness” in Wikipedia entries, I suppose, although it’s encouraging to see that the mistake was corrected, as predicted by advocates of 21^st century social media.  I was sorry to see Chilliwack, one of BC’s great bands, disappear from the roster, even though their hits such as My Girl even came to the attention of Rolling Stone magazine.

There is still a cloud of mystery surrounding number 48, now understood to be Rush’s song Fly By Night (which is also the name of the CD where the song is found). It is not one of Rush’s iconic hits. It barely gets a mention in Chris McDonald’s great book, Rush, Rock Music and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown (Indiana UP, 2009) and it does not even rate a place in Mereseau’s books or Obama’s Playlist. Nevertheless, the album highlights the first of many brilliant performances (and lyrics) of their new drummer, Neil Peart, and it continues to have an important place in the rotation of rock music stations.

What if a younger Britney Spears had enrolled in a traditional music conservatory or university School of Music?

That is the premise of the movie Brave New Girl (2004), based on the book A Mother’s Gift, co-written and produced by Britney Spears and her mother. Of course, it’s a teen flick, and in some ways entirely predictable, but look at the movie (again) with the eyes of a sociomusicologist or even an ethnomusicologist and see, perhaps for the first time, the clash of values. For example, who is the most reviled character in the movie? The teacher of music theory, portrayed as a humourless disciplinarian, is by extension, a reflection of  music theory itself, or so say the film-makers. The final outcome of the movie is most revealing, where pop music emerges victorious in the war to win the hearts and minds of even the music professors at the school. Interestingly, the movie was filmed on the campus of the University of Toronto, just a stone’s-throw away from the Faculty of Music and the Royal Conservatory of Music.

A similar movie, called Raise Your Voice, with Hilary Duff in the lead role, was also released in 2004. However, Hilary’s persona sets out to perfect her ability as a pop songer during a summer camp, unlike Lindsey Haun’s character in BNG, who attempts to cross over to the world of classical music in a bid to become “legitimate”. In both movies, Western Art Music (WAM) comes across as a necessary grind on the road to attaining vocal technique and musical knowledge, whereas the performance of popular music is seen as liberating, more in tune with the tempestuous emotions of a teen-ager.

Something entirely opposite to the tweenie flicks mentioned above, but with the same subversive message, is The Visitor, where the protagonist confronts the regimen of traditional piano lessons, taught in the dry, hushed atmosphere of disciplined and emotional restraint. Soon afterwards, he abandons his piano lessons for the boisterous passion of hand drumming in a community-driven drum circle. Whereas the piano lessons only served to deepen his profound sadness about the recent death of his wife, the latter releases him from the grips of grief.

What is debated in the background of these movies and perhaps even in the mind of society in general, is the privileged position of WAM as emotional catharsis and intellectual superiority. Audiences had already turned their back on modernist WAM long ago. In academia, the process of de-privileging “classical music” began in the Seventies with the introduction of jazz studies. Even within the confines of Western European Art Music scholars, one finds controversy about the restrictive attention given to certain music eras and compositions, resulting in the decanonization of the classical music literature. This introspection is not unique. English Literature, that bastion of first year Arts programs, is experiencing the same painful process, with Allan Bloom and Neil Postman fighting valiant rear-guard action to defend their canon (or, is it our canon?).

Is it right for modern classical music musicians to sacrifice instruction in their standard repertoire in favour of music from a fringe genre? One less Chopin; one added Colin McPhee transcription of gamelan music. One less Handel flute sonata; one added transcription of a Chinese ti-tze prelude.

When I think of this topic, I’m always reminded of the complete lack of accompanied, or rather collaborative, music-making in the final ARCT (Associate of the Royal Conservatory of Toronto) exam in piano. In order to accommodate a new category of piano examination, piano accompaniment, and all the social skills it requires, one of the categories of solo literature would have to be cut. I doubt that pianists are ready to make the sacrifice, although almost all the other examined instruments and voice use accompanied music from the very beginning of their studies. They would not shed a single tear of sympathy for the pianists.

Is there anybody who hasn’t seen and heard Friday sung by Rebecca Black?

130 million hits! Her very own Wikipedia entry. How could this happen? I suspect that when her music video first went viral, a number of people believed it was an actual commercial release. It fulfils many of the requirements of a pop hit – catchy hooks, infectious lyrics, stress-free ambiance. Contrast The Suburbs by Arcade Fire, a song that explores the same cultural roots, albeit from the vantage of Indie Rock. Even Rolling Stone online magazine captured the ambivalence of the song’s reception.

Eventually the truth came out. The music video production was a gift to Rebecca from loving parents with deep pockets. Only in California can you find a company (Ark Music Factory) that makes music videos on demand, in the style of vanity publishing. In a later YouTube video, we see that in fact, Ms. Ford can sing, despite accusations of Autotune hanky-panky.

And yet, the song has become spectacularly successful. And in a surprising turn of events, the singer has garnered enormous criticism, even death threats, allegedly for inflicting the song on the gullible general public. Why?

I suspect that after the video came to wide public attention, a number of rock critic gate-keepers went ballistic, seeing new lows from a buying public that continued its descent into banality after embracing Justin Beiber. Of course, there is always a valid market for singers that satisfy the needs of tweenies, but when the video views crept past one million, there had to be more buyers than the Saturday afternoon mall crowd. The critics worst fears were coming true — the lowest common denominator of musical taste in the world had plummeted to new depths. And further, echoing their derision became popular.

Or is the song a welcome relief from the pretensions of recent rock music? Regardless of personal opinion, the amazing fact is that the song has gone way beyond its original self-indulgence, into the vast landscape of public taste and popular culture as a singular icon.

My students in M403J (mid-June to end-of-July) will be investigating this cultural oddity in week 7 when we look at “high and low” in Western Art Music and Popular Music.