El discurso sobre la música popular contemporánea: crítica artística y divulgación periodística

Abstract

The cultural meaning of music is produced by musicians, critics, musicologists, audience, and record industry. According to Pierre Bourdieu, this meaning is related to the symbolic value of music as a field where social fights take place to raise cultural capital. Specifically, the discourse on contemporary popular music, as shown in newspaper articles, is based upon some features that run counter to classical music: corporeality, emotion, and femininity. Thus the articles are full of metaphors on irrationality and energy. Although those values were once subversive-they actually resisted highbrow culture-, jazz or rock have been assimilated while at the same time other music styles such as dance or pop have been relegated because of their commerciality and unintelligence.