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This Apparent Complexity Of Artistic Experimentation Is One That Was ...

This apparent complexity of artistic experimentation is one that was considered as cultural dissonance and represented the ideas of revolutionary thought and cultural critique that attacked the mainstream likes of western cultures elaborate and romantic notions of genius and/or simplicity in it's wealth of easy listening harmonies.

Marxism, Radicalism, Jazz and Punk

In the early part of the twentieth century that saw the rise of modernism and the arts as an investigation into artistic devise itself, Marxist and cultural critic, Siegfried Kracauer wrote several essays regarding the reality that an advancing capitalism was beginning to produce and the scale in which it was creating art. Positioning the art of capitalism as a valueless investment in the expansion of business that was a resistance to nature, he called into question the role of the elites and purists who were giving much emphasis to the role of genius and brilliance of artistic invention. Alarmed by the loss of organic meaning in the immensity that the capitalist reproduction of mass art and music was creating, Kracauer suggested that music was a part of the mass ornament of culture which reflected the entire contemporary situation, stating that,
‘Since the principle of the capitalist production process does not rise purely out of nature, it must destroy the natural organisms that it regards either as means or resistance. Community and personality perish when what is demanded is solubility; it is only as a tiny piece of the mass that the individual can clamber up charts and can service machines without friction. A system oblivious to differences in form leads on its own to the blurring of national characteristics and to the production of worker masses that can be employed equally well at any point on the globe' (Kracauer, 1963, p.75)
Indicating so many years ago that capitalist production of art and culture would spawn a mass ornamented culture of imagery that would detract from the organic truth of a dehumanised slavery, Kracauer positioned music as well as all art into the centre of cultural thought. Dismissing the notions of purist investigation and composition of structural music as part of the esoteric elite, Kracauer developed a bi-polar definition of culture that positioned the notion of dissonance and consonance at its core. Within any social system it was believed by Kracauer that a mainstream would be marketed and sold on account of commercial viability, which would mean commonly understood music that was easily heard and non-complex based upon the establishment of structure. However, he also depicted a condition in which a resistance to this could be heard through complexity and reaction to the established norm, which signified revolution and a polemic to this mainstream.

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