Jared Henderson
Ted Gioia is a prolific writer on modern music culture, and has a lot of great insights on the negative effects of the modern music publishing oligopoly in pop music, as well as the ever-growing stranglehold of Spotify over music streaming and artist income. He is a great advocate for music artists, and a discerning lover of music and the arts.
In a recent interview, Gioia proposed something silly that caught my eye. I have a little bit to say on why it's silly, and I will attempt to provide a definition for the term he's throwing out there: Counterculture.
"There is a counterculture out there, but it’s struggling now because it is starved of cash." - Ted Gioia
Gioia commonly presents a pathos for the starved artist, which in a sense is wholly agreeable, but it throws out the logic of what it means to be an artist, and to be part of any kind of countercultural movement.
I'll go for the silliness first: A counterculture with abundant cash is simply the Culture. Money flows to what maintains prevailing culture. Money flowed to Michael Jackson because he solidified what pop music sounded like in the 1980s. Money flowed to John Coltrane (to a lesser extent, of course) because he maintained what jazz sounded like in the 50s and 60s. Money flows to the archetypal beings of their era, because they are iconoclastic and help create understanding of what it was to be there.
Huey Lewis and the News will continue to make their royalties because they defined a period of time in someone's life. Andy Warhol maintained his success because it defined a period of art in the 60s and 70s. These huge artists of past decades and periods defined the Culture, so long as the culture found them relevant.
Money only seeps into those who copied the Culture, imitated it. Your B Tier artists still made some money, because they provided some insight into the Culture. But they didn't help make it. They just rode the wave.
Money does not flow to those to reject the Culture. It is more likely that they have to pay out of pocket to be seen by others, because most people are not going out of their way to experience rejection.
Culture is a set of defined values and principles that are in constant transformation. Culture is like a constant conversation that changes from one topic to a next, getting persuaded into new things or dropping the old. To engage in the rejection of culture is like interrupting the conversation with a fart. And for what gain? To tell the Culture that its conversation is either boring or just plain sucks.
There is little to no money in Counterculture. If there was money—you can already see my first point above—you would immediately have B Tier Countercultural copycats, because money attracts copying. It's actually a foundation of capitalism: The copying of things so efficiently through large capital that it's affordable at scale. A Counterculture doesn't have room for copycats because it's not about the money, and it's not about the recognition, and it's not even about genre.
It's the anti-genre. The ultra-individualistic sound, image, design that speaks to no one, and through that lack of definition, it mistakenly does speak to the very few who want to listen.
If I go to Bandcamp and want to find some Countercultural music, should I have to click on a music tag like "folk" or "drum'n'bass" to find something completely original? Probably not. Tagging is the attempt to attach your art to recognizable Culture. Whether on Twitter or on Spotify, the tag is the Culture-fication of a piece content.
Continuing on. There is no single counterculture out there. There are countercultures that reject countercultures, let alone rejecting the prevailing culture of a locality, region, or nation. What is "The New Counterculture"? Sounds like another Culture to me. Another set of values and principles seeking money and recognition. Alternative pop, alternative rock. Indie. A mass organism absorbing others in the name of a broader movement, even when those others never considered themselves in this broader movement because they never categorized themselves as part of The New Counterculture.
I think what's interesting about Culture, especially in the modern era, is that it's so hyper-aware of itself that large propositions of Counterculture is simply another Cultural habit that comes and goes. I think about Hardcore Punk from the 70s and 80s. Super aware of what they're reacting against. Culture is as culture does.
On the other hand, Counterculture is completely unaware, and doesn't even put itself on the map in relation to the culture. Because once they actually announce themselves as Counterculture, it's dead.
If you're looking for Counterculture, you're going to have to go to local shows, not internet streaming sites. You're going to have to go through a lot of Culture-slop copycats to discover it, because it's not even like 1% of the art that is made in the world. And these people you see are going to be completely unaware of what you're talking about when you try to throw them into any New Counterculture movement. Because they're doing it for themselves.
These artists exist and they're closer to home than you think. And those $5, $10 tickets you might be purchasing to see their work is barely going to support them. Because that's not the point for them. Their point is expression by any means necessary, and they're willing to front the cash to make it happen, and work at Wendy's to keep getting that cash.
Support in whatever ways you can, but let them struggle. Because the struggle is what makes original expression worth it.
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