Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 23. September 12 1977
[Introduction]
Our guess is that most students' reaction to Don Frank's penetrating analysis of Elvis Presley (Salient 21) would be "Oh no, not another boorish Marxist telling us what music we should not listen to".
Although we have been subjected to these sorts of tirades before, it comes as a bit of a shock to learn that Elvis was a "boorish reactionary" and what seemed to be a very pleasant music was in fact "decadent degenerate and ugly .... (and) . . . . rotten(ly) individualistic ".
Students who rejected the "analysis" offered by Mr Franks were absolutely correct, for no-one likes to be preached to, whether it be from the pulpit (see the right-wing Catholic newspaper NZ Tablet for an article on the "decadent" Elvis) or from the lofty heights of "Marxist Correct Lineism".
What makes Don Frank's moralising all the more regrettable is that by adding a dollop of "bourgeois" and a gloss of Marxism he seeks to dress his prejudices about the nature and role of rock music in the clothes of objective analysis.
Marxist moralising is as worthless as any other form of moralising because moral arguments (e.g. is rock music decadent or not?) have no resolution. There is no higher opinion to say who is right and who is wrong for both are opinions and "right" within their own terms.
Marxism has nothing to do with moral judgements, but is a scientific theory which enables the transformation of what is already in existence in accordance with laws that govern the development of human societies.
Marx himself was careful to recognise the progressive role of capitalism in history, because of the development of the forces and techniques of production. But in its development the private appropriation comes into contradiction with the increasingly social nature of production. And if we see socialism as a historical necessity which the contradictions demand for their resolution, then the question of the moral nature of either capitalism or socialism disappears.
Also, we must recognise that forms of music, art and ideas that arise today cannot be pigeonholed as progressive or reactionary because they have the contradictory character of reflecting both the advanced technology (the development of production forces) and the old social relations that accompany this development.
Thus Elvis, as part of this progression in popular music, appears to be "bourgeois" in essence because he can only express progressive aspects (the fusion of blues, country and rock-a-billy) in a form already available—a form in a capitalist society reflecting the dominance of the capitalist class.
It is of little use, therefore, to flagellate Elvis for his bourgeois characteristics. After all, we live in a bourgeois society. Yet poor Don Franks, good socialist as he is, seems quite put out. Perhaps Elvis should have recorded the "Internationale"?
This is probably what Don Franks would class as Western proletarian music, for even though he correctly identifies the existence of class struggle in the field of music, he ultimately fails to give an example of the music the US working class "has fought to create". Maybe he is thinking of the social humanists (e.g. Woody Guthrie) and their music, or isolated trade union songs of the 1920s. He remains uncomfortably silent.
For while the music of the '20s seems a long way away, the music of Elvis Presley (who was incredibly popular amongst both the US and NZ working class) seems very recent. And it is music that is in existence at the present time in which we see the class struggle being fought—the struggle against the manipulation of the masses' music into forms subordinate to the need for capitalist enterprises to realise a greater profit. The unfortunate history of "soul" music, from the harsh almost wailing-like sound of the James Brown ghetto music to the slickly packaged Black acts of recent years, is a classic example.
There have been many spontaneous revolts in the field of popular music (a manifestation of the continuing struggle) of which Elvis Presley is one. For Elvis represented an attempt to get back to a simplicity of communication in lyrics, an "economy" in sound through the use of a few instruments (guitar, bass, drums) rather then large orchestras (either jazz or classical), and for a particular section of the population (young people) a revolt against the rigidity of sexual and interpersonal relations that had characterised the post-war period.
The struggle between advances in the productive forces (with increasing inter nationalisation of the rock market) and a music (which although originally located amongst sections of the masses) that is getting further and further away from the masses, will continue with increasingly frequent spontaneous revolts. It is up to us to analyte them, not morally condemn them, as Don Franks does.
—Kevin Kane and John Ryall.