Hole In The Soul Analysis

Martha Bayles argues that modernity has removed the humanity so essential to early to mid-twentieth century African American music from contemporary music. She furthers the contention that vernacular musicians, specifically those from the African American idioms of blues and jazz, were not primitives. Rather, they were seasoned professionals with an ability to interject soul and passion into their music. However, to make this argument, Bayles takes aim at the post soul music era as a counter narrative to further her thesis. Bayles posits in her 1994 book, Hole in the Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music, that the majority of music recorded after the soul music movement of the 1960s and 1970s revels in artificiality …show more content…
Advanced technology and unlimited studio time did profoundly effect the evolution of sound recording in the late twentieth century. The sound created since the advent of the modern studio may have strayed from the “African American idioms” of early twentieth century blues and jazz, but music, like all artistic forms of expression, is an ever evolving medium. It is the historians task to track and explain that change over time and not harken back to a romantic past when everything was “better” or “simpler.” Bayles derides Mick Jagger and Griel Marcus, primarily from his book Mystery Train: Images of American Rock and Roll Music, for their romantic notions of past blues musicians as primitives. However, she also falls into the similar “things were better in the past, because they were simpler” trope that she repudiates in others. Bayles creates a ‘straw man’ out of late twentieth century music and proceeds to beat the stuffing out of almost every artist and genre who dated to record for more than a few hours on more than four tracks. While she promises to offer solutions to music she readily admits she does not like nor thoroughly understands, she simply leaves her target scattered on the ground with a gleam of satisfaction that the offender has been dismantled and that should be enough to prove her …show more content…
Such narratives help future historians to get away from the “authenticity tree” that will bear them no fruit and only satisfy those readers who already agree with the author’s subjective outlook. Karl Hagstrom Miller’s Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow, Charles K. Wolfe’s A Good-Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry, and Benjamin Filene’s Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music are excellent representations of this narrative. Each of them contend that notions of authentic forms of music can be traced back to academic or commercial attempts to define and market music to a specific audience. To make their arguments, each author accesses a wealth of primary source material and oral