Benjamin Sire is a composer and journalist. His latest album, Electronica Cinematic was released on April 8.
Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak knew her sentence would go viral on social media.
She immediately recognized it when Guillaume Erner, who received her this Thursday on the set of France Culture, pointed it out to her.
The phrase ?
“
All music is equal [...] Everyone can find what they are looking for.
»
And it did not fail.
Internet users have been torn about this question of value, some highlighting the predominance of emotion in the perception we have of listening, while others have maliciously mocked the sacrilege of a possible comparison between Bach and Booba, between classical and rap, between supposed high culture and popular culture, between conservatives and moderns.
Eternal debate which will have already concerned all the artistic fields and will undoubtedly not cease before the annihilation of the world.
But in the circumstances, the Minister's remarks go beyond the simple question of each other's appetites, or the complexity of this or that partition, and questions the relativism that irrigates our entire society and for which everything tends to be worth it. .
Facts can no longer stand out from mere opinion, science from beliefs, debate from aggression.
This is undoubtedly the reason for the anger that such a sentence could have generated, in addition to forgetting that in cultural matters, taste is something that can be learned, which implies that this is possible.
And it is in this that Rima Abdul Malak makes a small fault with regard to his function.
By flattering the listeners of each style and by recognizing in all music an equal capacity for edification, she locks everyone in his bubble,
On arrival, relativism reproduces a form of domination, in addition to deepening even further the divisions that fracture our country.
Benjamin Sir
But there is that.
By considering things from this angle, the bourgeoisie can jealously preserve its class privilege and pride itself on its refinement, while having access to all genres (we consider, without claiming to have scientific proof of it, that we listens to much more rap in the 16th arrondissement, than from Vivaldi to Bobigny), while condescendingly watching the kid from the suburbs, or from the peri-urban, assigned to identity residence between rap, variety, basketball and football.
In the end, this reproduces a form of domination, in addition to further deepening the divisions that fracture our country.
This was already the serious error of Jack Lang, pope of cultural relativism, except that when he took office in 1981,
it was really necessary to shine the spotlight on certain forms of urban culture unknown to many people, even though they were already very popular in certain circles.
Today, the situation is quite different.
Hip-hop cultures (rap, graphic design, dance, fashion) or manga (animated, comics, Kpop, Jpop, etc.), taken in the broad sense, to name a few, have entered all areas of the mainstream in more than being at the heart of the trends that emerge daily on social networks.
According to data from Spotify in 2020, the first streaming operator which now represents 67% of all listening (source: SNEP), rap represents 69.7% of these in the charts, far ahead of the pop (17.7%), electro (8.8%),
while rock and French variety barely reach 1% of listeners (jazz and classical not being counted in the main charts).
Even if these data do not consider radio listening, whose programming gives pride of place to French song, it shows how much less urgent it is to discover a culture... already dominant, on the eve of the monumental concert that the rapper Booba is about to give to the Stade de France.
The irony of fate is precisely that it is now other music that hides itself in niches specific to the upper social classes or representing the famous boomers.
So she is the one
we should henceforth democratize with the greatest care and share with those who see themselves confined with complacent superiority in their cultural ghettos.
And, having experienced it in an associative context, I know how much, for example, the discovery of classical music and its instruments can produce wonder among a young audience that is totally foreign to it and previously rid of initially unpleasant.
There remains the thorny question of the intrinsic value of the music itself, which is, let's say it right away, a false debate... which we will nevertheless very summarily open.
All cultures, all countries, have produced their music, more or less popular, more or less scholarly, and have never ceased to bring them together, if we think for example of Bela Bartók.
Considered by many as an elitist composer, he nevertheless drew a considerable part of his inspiration from Hungarian popular dance music.
And what about a Rabih Abou-Khalil, Lebanese Oud genius, who set his sights on jazz to mix oriental music with popular Slavic and Baltic sounds?
In the great concert of nations, classical Europe,
also has no prize for harmonic or rhythmic complexity.
Indian popular music is a rhythm and meter puzzle that can make a learned conservatory student dizzy, as is Mozambique, which, contrary to what its name suggests, is carnival music rooted in Cuba. sixties, or certain African genres.
As for Arabic music, with its heavily altered scales, and its shifts in quarter tones, its apprehension is most delicate for the rest of us, while gypsy jazz, with its successions of sixth chords, all joyful and dancing either -he, is not a skinning model.
Because in truth, our European music, which fuels Bach's concertos just as well as Orelsan's "instruments", although
offering an infinity of melodic possibilities, is far from being among the most harmonically rich.
Founded on the Greek modes (Dorian, Mixolydian, Lydian mode, Aeolian etc.), it is based on the sacrosanct seven notes and their five alterations (sharps and flats, which show no difference when played on a tempered keyboard), whose use value does not have to be questioned.
After all, a do in the work of Mozart or that of Aya Nakamura remains a do.
use need not be questioned.
After all, a do in the work of Mozart or that of Aya Nakamura remains a do.
use need not be questioned.
After all, a do in the work of Mozart or that of Aya Nakamura remains a do.
It is therefore not the genre that gives music its intrinsic value, but the way in which it is conceived, and the purpose for which it is composed.
Benjamin Sir
On the other hand, the difference can manifest itself through this question: why, for what purpose do we produce music, although everyone hopes to see their work meet with success?
Some music is intended to survey the field of research, while others play on the sole grounds of emotion and the signifier.
They can also belong to the same genre, if we think of the passionate debate that tore the world of jazz apart, between the swing period, simple and effective, specific to before the Second World War, and bebop, then jazz-rock, much richer and more complex to the ear.
It was the same when classical music had to face the emergence of contemporary music, making Beethoven pass for a composer of bluettes.
On the one hand, often the
emotion calls for simplicity and the use of mastered formulas, when the signifier goes through the words.
This gives the song in all its forms, just like rap.
As for research, its goal is to push further the frontiers of the known worlds and its musical apprehension cannot be done without a certain education.
However, if the debate launched by the Minister of Culture deserves some attention, it is because another fact interferes with it, and not the least.
Despite the huge economic model crisis that is shaking the world of music, never has it been so consumed.
And the choice of the verb “to consume” is not innocent.
Music has become a substantial and ultra-competitive market whose industry is dominated by behemoths who avoid risk-taking as much as possible and tend to impoverish what happens on our speakers.
It is the same in the cinema, rendered bloodless by the Covid crisis.
Independents bite the dust while blockbusters, more and more expensive, more and more spectacular,
can no longer afford the slightest fantasy and obey scrupulous specifications which see them all look a little alike, since their manufacturing recipe is the only guarantee of... financial revenue.
However, whether we consider rap or pop produced in the majors or similar, the issues are the same.
When listeners receive a piece, most often pushed by cross-media and limitless promotion, producers need the sauce to take hold immediately.
For this, nothing is better than to constantly recycle the same dishes, to impoverish the harmonic uses, so that the listener has a feeling of familiarity from the first listening to a piece.
And this is where we can talk about the value and depreciation of the domain;
rap, taken as an example by the minister
being by far not the genre most affected by this problem, unlike pop or variety.
It is no coincidence that a considerable part of the greatest international hits heard in recent years are the result of a single production structure, headed by the enigmatic Swedish producer, Max Martin, the man who will doubt the most committed to the impoverishment of music in the world.
Rather judge some of the names appearing in the stable of the Scandinavian magna: Britney Spears, Céline Dion, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Katy Perry, Usher, Maroon 5, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Shakira, Jennifer Lopes, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, Selena Gomez, Justin Timberlake, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Coldplay and more.
It is not a bad thing in itself that
such a roster of stars benefits from the services of one and the same man.
The problem is that he has established a sort of quasi-algorithmic recipe for success, based on the application of eleven postulates, which he applies at will to most of the titles for which he is responsible, regardless of the kind of these.
He admitted it in 2017, in one of his rare interviews given during a masterclass.
However, among these eleven postulates (which are obviously an approximate synthesis of the work of the producer), several explain the impoverishment of a good part of the music that reaches us.
Among them the fact of not only simplifying the melody to the maximum, while making it as effective as possible - which is nothing
obvious – but above all to decline it cleverly both in the verses and in the choruses of the same piece.
Where you think you hear a song in different parts, it's actually always the same one that comes back to you in different forms, so that when the chorus comes in, it seems obvious to you.
Alas, this also means that the song you're swinging to is bound to be musically poor.
Business is business
...
It is therefore not the genre that gives music its intrinsic value, but the way in which it is conceived, and the purpose for which it is composed.
It has always been so and it will probably always be so.
Perhaps, alas, when the goal is only financial…