Highbrow, Lowbrow, Voodoo Aesthetics
I've been meaning to enter an excerpt from this essay by Robert Walser for quite some time... my thanks to Milt Allen for introducing it to me. In this essay, Walser uses the work of guitarists like Richie Blackmore, Steve Vai, Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen, etc. as an example of the perpetuation of the classical music tradition.
This is the closing paragraph:
"Heavy metal musicians' appropriations of classical music help us to see "high culture" and "low culture" as categories that are socially constructed and maintained. Like "highbrow" and "lowbrow", the deployment of such terms benefits certain individuals and groups at the expense of others, and their power depends chiefly upon intimidation. By engaging directly with 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century composers and performers, by claiming them as heroes and forebears despite contemporary boundaries that would keep them separate, and by mastering and recontextualizing the rhetoric and theoretical apparatus of "high" music, heavy metal musicians have accomplished a critical juxtaposition that undermines the apparent necessity and naturalness of cultural hierarchy. The specific meanings of metal's appropriations in their new contexts are of great importance, of course. But for cultural criticism, perhaps the most salient legacy of the classical influence on heavy metal is the fact that these musicians have "comprehended the high" without accepting its limitations, defying the division that has been such a crucial determinant of musical life in the 20th century."
This is the closing paragraph:
"Heavy metal musicians' appropriations of classical music help us to see "high culture" and "low culture" as categories that are socially constructed and maintained. Like "highbrow" and "lowbrow", the deployment of such terms benefits certain individuals and groups at the expense of others, and their power depends chiefly upon intimidation. By engaging directly with 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century composers and performers, by claiming them as heroes and forebears despite contemporary boundaries that would keep them separate, and by mastering and recontextualizing the rhetoric and theoretical apparatus of "high" music, heavy metal musicians have accomplished a critical juxtaposition that undermines the apparent necessity and naturalness of cultural hierarchy. The specific meanings of metal's appropriations in their new contexts are of great importance, of course. But for cultural criticism, perhaps the most salient legacy of the classical influence on heavy metal is the fact that these musicians have "comprehended the high" without accepting its limitations, defying the division that has been such a crucial determinant of musical life in the 20th century."
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