What is Authenticity?

I think it's probably just a term used by some people to make the music they like seem like it's more important.

Generally used as shorthand for experiences/sounds/records which feel more unmediated than others, I'd guess.

Also used by genre policemen on patrol - see f'r instance "Is No Doubt's Hey Baby real dancehall?" on a thread near you. The signs of authenticity here are musical - the riddim and producer are 'authentic' to dancehall. The signs of non-authenticity are contextual - it is being done by No Doubt who do not make dancehall records and played on your radio.

Robert Johnson doing the "Crossroad Blues".

Yeah but is a record of Robert Johnson doing the Crossroad Blues being played by me in my comfortable rented Oxford home still authentic? What's more important in determining authenticity - the circs a record gets made or the circs a record gets played?

Rob't Johnson was just a Tommy Johnson wannabe.

my point being: arguments about authenticity can easily degenerate into oneupmanship of esoterica, so "realness" and "purity" and "authenticity" don't end up being very useful indicators of anything.

The word "blues", and its canonic form, had (to all intents and purposes) been invented in the 20s by record companies as a device to signal discs aimed at a black audience: what was still somewhat unformed and even open-form as a genre in 1922 had — thanks to the formation of audiences by massive sellers like bessie smith — codifed into a fairly clear style (or delimited variety of styles) in "discussion" [disc-cussion haha] with their record-buying fans, , via supply and demand. This honing came to constitute The Blues as we Now Know It: a specificity unknown to Blues Pioneers lie Charlie Patton, whose style was much more wide- ranging than their surviving recordings suggest (the Lomaxes, who recorded CP, fairly ruthlessly chopped out or ignored any Patton matreirla that didn't accord with their concept of appropriate folkroots expresson). The country bluesmen like Johnson — something of a youngster and a latecome anyway, with a trickily oedipal- competitive relationship with his immiediate rivals — was already operating within a complex web of COMMERCIAL judgments, made by earlier performers (black AND white: cf "Blue Yodel No.9"), and by those who agreed to record him. In particular the songs RJ actually recorded were determined by the (white, duh) owners of the record companies that released them: ie he might WELL have liked to record the bing crosby covers etc he played so successfully at dances, hs main means of income and erm "authentic" engagement w.his primary audience, because who knows, they might have sold well, but ARC (or whatever they were called), consciously niche-marketing at rural blacks, believed — possibly correctly — that these would be seen as attempts at crossover, and (relatively speaking) be shunned.

It is mentalism to attempt to discover an "untainted" era in rural American music where the commercial imperative does not apply. "Authentic" means: yay we still like it and have things to say about it (and to find it, and ourselves through it).

"give them the authentic, baby" sez the positioning specialist.
"hey, i thought that niche market died in 1920(or 30, or what ever)" sez the culture consultant.

Never mind Ziggy Stardust - Screamin' Jay Hawkins? Dr John? Al Jolson?

Authentic = by and for a community. Alternately: the artist and audience share the same psychosocial use-construct of genre w/r/t the work in question.

Mark S - easy on the trigger! First of all, get your facts straight, or correct me if I'm wrong. Patton was never recorded by the Lomaxes! Charlie Patton recorded commercially for Paramount then Vocalion. Henry Sims, a fiddler, one of the few people who actually recorded with Patton and Muddy Waters did have a session with AL/LOC. Also, wrong again about Patton. "His {Pattons} repertoire was more versatile than the typical Mississippian's" as the Yazoo lps state. "It encompassed Blues, ragtime, covers of popular tunes, hillbilly, folk and gospel," AND by the way, "Pony Blues" could be considered a hit for Patton considering the time and circumstances. Same with "High-Water Everywhere." They sold well through out the south, and were played, and played and played... till no sound could be heard on these discs. Robert Johnson: What are you trying to say? Your making no sense with these assertions. Johnson's work, however modeled after a pervious era of Bluesmen, (Son House and Lonnie Johnson for example) seems to be a radical restructuring of the nature of the genre itself, which bore its fruits in the urban electric blues of the early 1950's. Listening to Robert Johnson's recordings one can only hear a deliberateness of arrangement and focus of intention that seems to suggest a complete awareness of this radical departure. Even with alternative takes of a tune he hardly changes inflection or delivery. A sure sign of serious practice and study, of innate performance genius. I hear no sign in RJ's recordings of beleaguered conflicting intentions, i.e. commercial pressure. His Terraplane blues btw sold very well. Even by this time, the late 1930's, the recording industry hardly had a clue what would or could become a big seller (low thousands) in these fields, i.e. Blues, Gospel and Hillbilly. As far as niche marketing, this is the nature of the commercial beast. Yes, some material by many artists may have been missed or not recorded (even Charlie Patton had a bum day now and then) but a great wealth of variety in all genres was.

bob i don't really disagree with any of that, except the r.johnson not conflicted bit [?most conflicted man in blues?]; what you said all backs up what i'm trying to say (i wasn't dissing rj, just arguing that the auteured focus of his work was an inauthentic artefact according to the standard-issue defn of authentic...) (which is good as far as i'm concerned, tho i wd like to have heard his crosby covers also heh)

lomaxes claim = me writing from memory not looking something up and bitching it all up (lomaxes DIDN'T RECORD PATTON WHEN THEY COULD HAVE because he didn't fit their preconception is what i guess i was after ahem)

Mark- About RJ, I mean no commercial pressure to perform his or any compositions a certain way, as pressure from the "man", to play it for $$$, not pressure from inner demons, devils and the like...about Lomax family and archive, they are primarily field recordings. They recorded far and wide across the globe for decades. Material both commercial and non, black/white and everything in between. What preconceptions? btw, Leadbelly crossed over in his day, performing a variety of material. Josh White, (yawn) also.

Lord C- lighten up, What is Authenticity? Ziggy itself was/is an authentic expression, It's like questioning why the actor on stage is "acting." Better question, "Why is half the ZSATSFM lp a stinker?

yeah sorry i'm just compressing and free associating too much to be clear and now i'm at work again and away from my books and records, so will make MORE HORRIBLE MISTAKES if i write more here now

like i said i don't disagree with you much at all anyway, i was overreacting to what it now occurs to me was only a semi-serious aphorism, not a definitive announcement eg "what is authentic? ans = robert johnson"

in the interim i have had a stonking massive life-changing "idea" abt all of this which i will formulate this afternoon if i have time (or quietly drop if it proves goofy)

'Why is half the ZSATSFM lp a stinker?'

Easy, typical art- school timidity about rawking out (fear of people missing signifiers of 'intelligence' [ie distance]), which is why it's produced to sound like a musical-comedy sountrack (the Kinks kover is no accident). 'Aladdin Sane' was probably DB's idea of a 'hard-rock' record, but it was only 'Pin-Ups' where the 'real thing' was achieved, probably because DB had been in America doing coke long enough to put Ken Pitt and Lindsay Kemp behind him.

Whoops - 'Man Who Sold the World' blows a hole in my theory doesn't it

To understand the role of "authenticity" as an indicator of aesthetic value you need to look beyond popular music. In most contexts the value placed on "authenticity" (if you are not an existentialist, for whom it means something almost opposite) is a carry over from Romantic ideas about art. It doesn't derive from popular music, it was just lying around as a useful tool for discussing it.

The following oversimplifies, but the Romantics believed that the proper subject of art is the artist himself. His own psyche was the subject he was best equipped to understand, and deep insights about it should have universal significance. His insights needed to be deep, and perceptive rather than banal; and they needed to be genuine - or authentic.

This has been the predominant aesthetic in Western culture for most of the last couple of hundred years. It has not been as dominant in the twentieth century as in the nineteenth but it has still been enormously influential.

Certain types of art lend themselves to being judged in these terms more than others. Blues artists, for example, could not compete with musicians trained in the Western Classical tradition in terms of musical sophistication, but they could be praised in terms of the depth and sincerity of the feelings that their music articulated. So, using "respectable" arguments accepted by the academy, the concept of authenticity could validate your preference for Howlin Wolf to Glenn Miller.

Of course there are problems with the concept of authenticity. If a music created by a specific motive - the desire to communicate felt pain, for example - can be replicated exactly by someone whose only motive is to make money, how is the listener supposed to be able to differentiate?

I suspect no-one nowadays would subscribe to the proposition that authenticity is a necessary badge of good art, but problems still exist. Some art forms, such as blues, soul etc are created with the sense that authenticity of feeling does matter, and it is difficult to make aesthetic judgements about these art forms without taking authenticity into account. But how do we compare these with more conceptual, deliberately artificial works which implicitly reject authenticity as a measure of value? Can the relative merits of Britney and Aretha be meaningfully discussed and if so how?

Whoops - 'Man Who Sold the World' blows a hole in my theory doesn't it

Ergo, Bowie knew about hard rock and decided to do something more. Led Zeppelin in miniature!

'Why is half the ZSATSFM lp a stinker?'

This opinion leaves me absolutely speechless. I don't even know where to begin. To me, this is a perfect LP, each track its own glittering gem. I love them all.

Even "It Ain't Easy," yup. Something about his falsetto there, and the way Ronson's guitar just rips in on the chorus.

A given musical style/artist ceases to be authentic when the chosen few realize that they are no longer the only people who have heard of or enjoy it. Therefore, if an album is recorded and never shown to anyone, it never ceases being authentic because the requisite hipsters never have a chance to embrace and then reject it. I believe it is that simple. Speaking of which, why are hipsters never actually that "hip." I mean no offense by this... they just seem so bitter and deem everyone that doesn't agree with them to be shallow. Why should only a select few be allowed to enjoy a given musical moment?