The NRx Hillbilly - Restoring A Traditional Music

These pages rarely mention matters of music, the chief reason being that the author is himself musically illiterate. At a young age he decided to concern himself with literature and painting – silent arts - and to forgo the arts which were more popular among his peers, namely cinema and rock. It is not a choice he regrets, although he does feel that his insensitivity to music is an impairment of sorts. He is very aware of its universality and especially its pride of place in the traditional Platonic/Pythagorean curriculum. Other than an incidental exposure to the ubiquitous and banal rock/pop of his youth, the only time he has come into close proximity to anything resembling real, living music was a period of two years adrift in an Irish Catholic bluegrass scene in his early twenties and then, at the higher end of the scale, exposure to Chopin and classical piano in the home of a mentor later in life. 

The truth is, though, that he rarely listens to music and instead relishes the increasingly rare pleasure quietude. Indeed, it seems to him that there is rather too much music in the world. The world is awash in music, especially in the pop genre, such that it is very hard to get away from it. People now do everything accompanied by music – recorded music. The worst of it is in eating establishments. It is almost impossible to find a restaurant or café that does not inflict inane pop tunes upon its patrons, often at volumes such that patrons have to raise their voices just to speak to one another. This seems to be a worldwide malady now. Throughout his recent travels the present author found that eateries everywhere are infected with loud music. The idea that people might like to eat in peace, or enjoy a conversation over dinner, has been lost. Similarly, in buses, taxis, lifts, shopping malls – everywhere – we are bedevilled by music. In some areas of Japan they pipe pop music into the streets through speakers attached to lamp-posts. 

Why then play music at home? Home becomes the only place where one can escape it and find the joy of silence. The very worst of it - the pits - is that the same music prevails everywhere. It is all post-70s hits and memories. If there is alcohol on the menu in an eatery in any tourist town in Asia then you’ll almost certainly be made to listen to endless loops of Bob Marley, while everywhere you go – everywhere! – there is John Lennon’s Imagine, an anthem of our era.

In view of this background, the author encountered two items on music recently, both of which caught his attention and, to him, were mutually illuminating. One was a short account of the ‘Tyranny of Pop’ by the doyen of conservative aesthetics, Sir Roger Scruten, (see below) and the other was a very fertile entry on the Neoreactionary reddit entitled, encouragingly, ‘How To Restore Aristocracy: Step One’ by a gentleman signing in as Hansderfieldler, see here. 

Sir Roger’s contribution was predictable in itself but did contain a number of stimulating points. The main target of his critique was the atonality that he claimed had ruined modern art music. The point of interest he made in this was that until this breach with normative aesthetics there had been a common language of musical values shared at all levels of society, from the dance venue, the work song and the private family parlour to the church and the concert hall. This unity had been shattered in the early XXth century, he said, with dire consequences not only in music itself but throughout all levels of society. Pertinent to this he made the further point, moreover, that “our civilization was built upon music” and that the degeneration of music in our times corresponds therefore to civilizational decay. This writer was very happy to hear him complain about the intrusion of bad music into all aspects of life, and especially restaurants, and to hear him relate the common experience of being treated as a strange old weirdo when one asks the waiter or restaurateur if the music could be turned off or at least down. Sir Roger is the foremost and most articulate spokesman for a civilized philosophy of aesthetics today, and his account of the Tyranny of Pop is on the mark. Architecture is perhaps the art he knows best, but his knowledge of music – and what has gone wrong in Western music – is almost as impressive. Some comments in response to his diatribe beg to differ about his dismissal of modern composers, and no doubt he is guilty of generalizing, but it is not without cause. One only needs to tune into the relevant BBC or ABC art music programs and listen to the latest compositions to appreciate how distant they are from the great canon of Western high music. This or that contemporary composer might have merit, but Sir Roger’s critique still stands. It is hard to argue with his claim – made elsewhere – that Scriabin was the only decent composer of the ‘modernist’ school and the last sweet note in serious Western music.

This grim view of modern Western music is reiterated in the account of the reddit contributor. He makes the sweeping claim that nothing decent has been composed since the 1940s, or so. As with the Scruton claim, this was subsequently challenged by responders citing this or that recent composer and the counter-claim that music is not really in such a bad state after all. But again, the general claim seems justified despite exceptions, and quibbles about this or that recent artist miss the point. In this case too, the contributor is not primarily concerned with music qua music, but rather with music as a cultural force, and his case is that the decline in music mirrors and shapes the broader decline in the fabric of civilization. He goes beyond Scruton, however, in being concerned with a remedy for such decline. This is what makes his brief ‘How To Restore Aristocracy: Step One’ so fertile as an item of NRx commentary. His thesis, rendered merely as a sketch, is that music – a musical tradition – is the very lifeblood of an aristocratic culture, and that in order to restore aristocracy it is necessary to restore an aristocratic music. He proposes that this is largely done through the proper relation of patron and artist. In contrast, the decadent condition of modern music is a result of the perverse distortions of music industry patronage, on the one hand – a corrupt capitalism - and the state sponsorship of approved “arts” on the other hand. Only when these two degenerate modes of sponsorship are replaced with a traditional patron/artist relationship will the cacophony of modern music end.

Herr Hansderfielder makes many startling points in his short proposal and in the reddit discussion it provokes. He starts with: “The duty of the Aristocrat is to preserve culture.” A good start. Then he follows with: “Culture develops around a music scene.” This, he says, is “the secret generative technology of culture.” He adds: “Everywhere you find an instance of authentic culture and unified identity, there you will also find a thriving music scene.” He gives some examples to support this hypothesis, including the “thriving subcultures” of Post-WWII such as “punks, goths, hippies…” in which the “charism” of the culture was carried in music. He then follows with the broader assertion that “from this charism came the other diverse arts – fashion, visual art, drama and fiction, poetry.” Thus, according to this account, music is primary, and the other arts follow. The present author is reminded of Schopenhauer’s thesis that music is the prime art because it “imitates nature least” and, of course, the elevated attention which Plato devotes to music in the Republic and elsewhere. Indeed, it is a truism of Platonism that a degenerate music will lead to a degenerate civilization, and conversely a noble music a noble one. Once more the present author notes the ways in which Neoreaction – rethinking from first principles – arrives at distinctly Platonic conclusions.

In any case, this is a reddit post worth contemplating. It is surely proper to draw attention to the role of music in the creation and maintenance of a healthy traditional culture, and it is surely right to draw attention to the way in which aristocratic patronage creates and maintains such a music. The reddit author’s analysis of degenerate corporatism leading to what he calls the “dilapidation of authentic culture” is surely on the mark as well. Nor, therefore, is he to wrong to announce his panacea. “Here is the solution,” he proclaims. “Create a music scene!” How do we create an aristocracy? His recipe is: “Those who have enough money should seek musicians whose work-product facilitates the appropriate ethos. By funding this music scene the wealthy person acquires aristocratic status.” These are, no doubt, only half-baked ideas, and one looks forward to Step Two, but if we accept Scruton’s assertion that Western civilization was built upon musical foundations, and we embrace the wider nexus between civilizational health and a healthy music, then this recipe is not untoward. Assuredly, a new civilization will need a new music, and perhaps it is not putting the cart before the horse to suppose that a new music needs to come first.

The truly surprising claim made by the reddit writer, however, comes in the discussion that follows. Someone inquires as to what exactly such a music might be like? If the way forward to creating a new aristocracy is to sponsor an appropriate music, then what music is appropriate? Here Herr Hansderfielder makes a sensible distinction between high and low, between art music, or high music, and low music, or “demotic” or folk music. There is much to discuss regarding such distinctions, of course, and especially the relationship between the two – does not the ‘high’ music of the European tradition largely arise out of ‘folk’ music?, and if so why, and how, and what is the difference, etcetera – but amidst this discussion he makes one concrete suggestion that caught the present writer’s attention. Concerning what he calls “demotic” music, the reddit writer suggests that the appropriate mode of music for aristocratic sponsorship is none other than… bluegrass. This is because, he says, it still retains certain aristocratic characteristics, most notably the patronage of the “hills gentry” in the relevant parts of the United States. He is not so much concerned with the nature of the music itself; it is the social function of the music that recommends it. High music, art music, is another matter: but when it comes to ‘low’ music, a music of the folk, it is to bluegrass that we should look for an appropriate example. The NRx hillbilly.

He does not elaborate on this recommendation, but he might. As a “folk” genre – and leaving aside “progressive” forms and fusions such as Western Swing - bluegrass is especially well-preserved as a “roots” music with deep connections to Irish, Scottish and English musical traditions going back into the premodern past. Perhaps the fact that it is white, southern and Christian and relatively uninfected with African motifs recommends it too. It is a self-consciously traditional European music alive and well in contemporary America. No doubt much of it has been turned into Nashville treacle, yet it still retains an integrity – and a very rich repertoire – that is relatively unadulterated by corporate exploitation. George Clooney singing ‘Man of Constant Sorrow’ in the Cohen’s O Brother Where Art Thou? is a black mark on the genre to be sure, but all things considered we might agree that, compared to other genres, it is in a robust state. Like any genuinely demotic music it is also adaptable to local players of diverse standards: it is a family and community music in which most everyone can play or sing along. As related at the outset, the present author spent some of his early adult years in the company of a bluegrass sub-culture. It was a wonderful experience. Late nights. Old time songs. Impromptu performances. A shared heritage of melodies and lyrics about heroes and tragedies, homes and journeys, loves lost and found. It was an education in the natural aristocracy, if we can call it that, of a living demotic tradition. Herr Hansderfielder’s observation that bluegrass offers a genuine prospect for cultural renewal is therefore astute. There is no reason to doubt his claim that its health is due to a vestigial aristocratic patronage in the Appalachias and that this constitutes a foundation upon which to build. (And it prospers well beyond its heartland. It is booming, they say, in the Czech Republic.)

The cure for a degenerate high music is less straightforward, but it surely lies in restoring the same nexus of proper patronage. The question is: what were the conditions that created the great music of the western canon in the first place? And the next question becomes: is it possible to restore such conditions and herald a new age of great music in some imagined future? The general NRx position seems to be that if you remove the impediments and dismantle/defund the false egalitarian culture of modernity then, left to itself, nature will take its course. This suggests the interesting supposition that modernity is not really a mode in itself but rather the negation of tradition. Bad music is not really a music in its own right but rather the negation, the deconstruction, of good music. Perhaps so. We can be certain in any case that it is not something that can be engineered in either state committees or corporate boardrooms; it is necessarily and intrinsically organic. The best you can do is create the conditions in which it is likely to thrive. We can also be certain that you cannot simply revisit the past. For a start, the whole matter of artistic reproduction and distribution has been changed fundamentally by technology and is likely to be changed yet more in times hence. Technological determinism is always, at least, a factor. Was not the piano forte – with its taut strings of steel - the very embodiment of the industrial mode? On this account alone it seems very unlikely that a music of the future will resemble the music of the past even if it returns to the same system of harmonies and aesthetic foundations. All the same, though, we must agree with Herr Hansderfielder that if it is to be any good, and if it is to function as a unifying cultural force, then it is bound to be aristocratic. Mass man produces abominations like John Lennon’s Imagine. A sacred music over and above the aristocratic is another matter again. It is a question surely related to the broader question of liturgical renewal. There again, perhaps it is the music that must come first and, once more, a proper culture of patronage is the precondition to that.

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Faded Coat of Blue by the Carter Family

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black