Authentic art […] involves a necessary confrontation with already established traditional styles; ‘inferior’ work is merely the practice of imitation […] (Milner and Browitt 72).
For Adorno—due to what he and his colleague Max Horkheimer referred to as ‘Culture Industry’ (see also chapter 1.5.2.1)—modern capitalist markets (which are necessary to sell music records) and political authenticity of artistic expression can not be combined (see also Adorno 306). Particularly during the first years of her career, Baez had to face this dilemma, when she suffered from a serious “[…] confusion about being rich and famous […]” (Baez Voice 128), which was deeply rooted in this question of political credibility, as her work as a popular singer demands from her to record and to sell music albums. This is exactly the problem which Adorno articulates in his critique of the Culture Industry. Only many years after the beginning of her career was Baez able to find a certain kind of calmness and independence from this continuing expectancy of a popular artist to function as nothing but the producer of a means of trade. In her 1977 self-penned song “Time rag”, she sings that
[…] I really should tell that deep in my heart, I don’t give a damn where I stand on the charts not as long as the sun sinks into the West and that’s going to be a pretty serious test of time […]4.
Adorno would heartily disagree on Baez’s credibility regarding this statement. Artifacts of popular culture—like songs written and/or sung and/or performed by a singer like Joan Baez—for him are artistically interchangeable and therefore not practical for criticism towards society. For Adorno, “[…] popular music is mechanical in the sense that a given detail can be shifted from one song to another without any real effect on the structure as a whole […]” (Storey 106). Adorno is convinced that in popular culture, listeners of songs have to ruminate on (see also Adorno 285) what the Culture Industry enforces upon them, because
[…] the listener can supply the ‘framework’ automatically, since it is mere musical automatism itself. […] Every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine […] (Smith Reinventing 44-45).
Adorno is convinced that any audience—while consuming popular songs—becomes “[…] socialized to passively accept simple formulas and so becomes susceptible to authoritarian messages […]” (Ibid. 46). This argument a priori implies that every listener to popular music is not able to defend oneself against systematic stultification, not to mention his total negation of popular culture’s potential to be of political relevance (apart from the transformation of politically engaged artists into ideological instruments). Adorno does not even consider the possibility that songs can be capable of the contrary, of supporting the conviction of the audience to stand up against authoritarianism. He is not willing to take into account the slightest chance that artifacts of popular culture could possibly be able to offer a pool of protest against social misfortune (see also jourfixe 2006).
Adorno passionately disagrees with such an assumption—particularly in regard to popular songs—because for him, songs are generally something that he would not consider to be of artistic value at all. In Adorno’s opinion, songs as artifacts of popular culture promote passive listening and merely serve to adjust the audience to society’s status quo (see also Storey 106-107). Böning accentuates Adorno’s disparaging attitude in this respect and exposes the criticism he evoked with his unsuccessful academic attempt to silence politically critical singers:
In his criticism of musicians Theodor W. Adorno wrote in 1956: 'Nowhere is it written that singing was necessary'. Walter Moßmann and Peter Schleuning—one a singer of political songs, the other one a musicologist - later spoke of an ‘adornite silence’ and ‘ideology-critical refusal to sing’5 (see Böning 2004, transl. by Jaeger).
Following this estimation, Adorno—deliberately or without intention—promotes a process of ‘silencing’ himself. Adorno expresses this point of view in a generalizing manner, which could easily be described as authoritarian itself. The decisive nature of his rigid elaborations throws a critical light on his own work, which, as already mentioned above, is said to have only one target: authoritarianism. Adorno is a representative for the idea “[…] that music is a ‘force’ in social life, a building material of consciousness and social structure […]” (DeNora 2). Nevertheless, politically engaged artists (a popular singer in our case) for him—consciously or unconsciously—always turn into proponents of mere ideology; for him, the artistic work of popular artists always helps to harden structures of power in society (see also Sauerland 14):
[…] by speaking the truth, truth itself becomes an ideology in the sense of false consciousness. It helps [...] to consolidate the network of lies with which society is spun [...]6 (Sauerland 3, transl. by Jaeger).
Only once in his aesthetic theory does he point out the possibility that artists might at least be driven by good intentions, but in his fundamental attitude they are never able to succeed (see also Adorno 344). In this sense, politically engaged artists necessarily have to turn themselves into instruments of ideology—without exception. The following sub-chapter aims to depict weaknesses of Adorno’s theory, in order to emphasize the significance of the combination of art and activism when it comes to successful and convincing criticism towards society. While Adorno limits his convictions about the relationship between art and society to his radical aesthetic theory, Baez transforms her own beliefs into active work—as a singer on her records and on the stage, but also as an activist within the various political efforts of different social movements.
1.5.2 Words Do Not Change Society: Theory Versus Practice
1.5.2.1 On Fictitious Freedom
Adorno (and his colleague Max Horkheimer) coined the term ‘Culture Industry’ in 1947, while still in US-exile at the University of Columbia, New York, where they spent more than ten years. Ironically, the freedom and openness which the members of the Frankfurt School found in American society on their flight from authoritarian repression in Europe, “[…] were the instruments, so their argument went, of its domination and repression.” (Berger 45). In their opinion, the Culture Industry’s freedom (as experienced in American mass culture) was only a fictitious freedom. Summarily, their argument went: the most important condition for the Culture Industry’s fictitious freedom was the fact that apparently free people were not about to organize their dissent against society’s numerous injustices. People who were convinced that they were free were not to become potential protesters against political misfortunes. Campbell and Kean explain the conceptual relevance of the Culture Industry in regard to possible social dissent—for them, Adorno and Horkheimer
[…] saw mass culture as a product of state monopoly capitalism seeking to mould the minds of working people by encouraging false needs whilst diminishing alternative ways of thinking that might have offered some opposition […] (Campbell and Kean 283).
This kind of brain-washing nature of the Culture Industry is only one tenor of Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s concept, which attempts to examine a general lack of opposition in society. This