Frith — Performing Rites

Author: Simon Frith
Title: Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music
Year: 1996
Publisher: Oxford University Press; Harvard University Press
Type: Book

Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music is a book by the British sociologist of music and rock critic Simon Frith, published in 1996 by Oxford University Press and Harvard University Press. Its publisher describes it as treating popular songs as meriting aesthetic judgment and also demanding it, and as asking “what we talk about when we talk about music.” Frith argues that listening is itself a performance, both a social gesture and a bodily response, and Kirkus summarized his case that music is sorted into categories linked to social distinctions and that judgments of value are made in a particular language suited to particular social situations. The book has three parts, on the language of value and the rules of genre, on music itself, and on why music matters. Publishers Weekly called Frith a true fan first and a critic second, and Kirkus found the book strained and patronizing.

Frith, a British sociologist of music and rock critic who taught English at the University of Strathclyde, published the book with Oxford University Press and Harvard University Press in 1996.¹ Its publisher’s description opens by asking who is better, “Billie Holiday or P. J. Harvey? Blur or Oasis? Dylan or Keats?” and states that Frith “argues that listening itself is a performance, both social gesture and bodily response.”² The description adds that it treats popular songs as “meriting aesthetic judgments but also demanding them” and that Frith “asks what we talk about when we talk about music.”² Kirkus summarized the argument: people express themselves through other people’s music, music is sorted for consumption and linked by artists, producers and listeners to social and cultural distinctions, and judgments of value are made in a particular language and are appropriate only in certain social situations.³ Publishers Weekly described its questions as what values justify “high” and “low” art, what defines the genres of pop and what role technology plays in listening.⁴

The book has three parts. “Music Talk” covers the value problem in cultural studies, the sociological response, common sense and the language of criticism, and “Genre Rules.” “On Music Itself” covers where sounds come from, rhythm, songs as texts, the voice, performance, and technology and authority. “Why Music Matters” covers the meaning of music and ends with a chapter toward a popular aesthetic.⁵

Publishers Weekly called Frith “a true fan first, a critic/cultural commentator later,” and wrote that he “sometimes waxes academic at the expense of his reader” and that his questions are not fully answered.⁴ Kirkus called the book “a strained and frequently patronizing evaluation” of the ideological, rhetorical and sociological elements in popular music that says little about why a young fan’s enthusiasm counts as a judgment.³

Key contributions

• Popular music treated as worthy of aesthetic judgment, with its judgments examined as social acts.
• Listening as a performance, both social gesture and bodily response.
• Genre as a set of rules that links music to social distinctions.
• A study of the language in which listeners and critics express musical value.

See also

• Distinction — Pierre Bourdieu’s study of taste and social class, published in English in 1984
• Authenticity and its discontents — the debate over authenticity in popular music
• Pop as craft — the debate over pop as a craft
• The songwriter-performer divide — the division between writing songs and performing them