Popular culture in historical times

[Torco]

wait... was that movie with viggo mortensen based on a real practice, then ? neat

[Glenn]

Yes and no. There is indeed a tradition of horse-racing in Arabia, and Viggo Mortensen’s character in Hidalgo is based on a real historical American rider who claimed to have taken part in such a race; however, external evidence suggests that the gentleman in question was prone to telling tall tales about his horse-racing exploits and that the purported autobiography he wrote may be mostly fiction, so the specific race portrayed in the movie probably never took place. (It does make for an exciting story, though.)

[hwhatting]

Interesting. How large scale was it? I know Bedouins raced horses and camels, but I don't know if I'd describe tribal entertainments as mass culture. In Europe, there were jousts. In the Indo-Persian sphere, wrestling existed. Martial arts in widely varying degrees of practicality were practiced in China and Japan. The public sometimes attended these events, but I have doubts about the scale of public involvement compared to gladiator fights.

From what I've read, races were often held at tribal gatherings or religious festivals (often the same thing), so people would travel to those events and provide a crowd to watch the races. In absolute terms, the crowds probably were smaller than in the metropolises of antiquity, but as a percentage of the population it could have been substantial. And then the people returning home would carry the fame of horse and owner into the periphery.

[rotting bones]

From what I've read, races were often held at tribal gatherings or religious festivals (often the same thing), so people would travel to those events and provide a crowd to watch the races. In absolute terms, the crowds probably were smaller than in the metropolises of antiquity, but as a percentage of the population it could have been substantial. And then the people returning home would carry the fame of horse and owner into the periphery.

I suppose it depends on your definitions. If the population is a small enough, even a cult ritual like the Easter Island birdman can count as a spectator sport. In fact, anyone with access to the equipment can count as an athlete, like in precolonial surfing. These are different social relations than, say, being targeted with spectacles by the Patricians to keep us pacified. Maybe the level of specialization involved in that last scenario is not the kind of feature you find salient about "pop culture", but you have to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise, two hunters in a mammoth hunter tribe who decide to have a race one afternoon with the rest of the tribe looking on will end up being classed together with the Olympic Games, given the population density at the time. Maybe the factor that distinguishes the Arab races is the specialized training of the jockeys, the breeding of the horses and the inclusion of pilgrims among the spectators?

[Torco]

another candidate to distinguish just anyone having a race from the olympics is the fact that the latter is an industry, right ? like, people can live off of it, it's a job rather than, or as well as if you're lucky, as a source of fun. this could be a good case for the no-popular-culture-in-premodern-times, no?

cause of course you start having professional musicians and poets rather early on, but there's a difference in being a bard for the duke of whereversville and being, the sorts of musicians that we think about now, professional artists. pro western-classical musicians, or the ones i've talked to at least [that is to say, the sort of people who are rubbing bows on guts when you go to see la boheme or something] tell the following story:

our tradition comes from medieval european music: at some point, some abbots or something came up with the idea of polyphony: at first no one was in love with it, but eventually Bach figured it all out and basically invented western harmony. western harmony is how we figure out what sounds good with what: g major to c major sounds good, if you're playing in c, and you really don't want to use that seventh chord, you know? b diminished? ugly.

Anyway, when bach writes the well tempered clavier that's the baroque period [plays you vivaldi, but also telemann]: there, music is going to be a lot more... intimate. chamber music, the kinds of things you play amongst four friends, or with four other guys for the local baron, maybe, but not in a bombastic, larger-than-life live concert where hundreds or even thousands of people are listening. no, sir, four cellos -or basoons or whatever else, remember, this is shop talk, people care about their own thing, right? simply cannot project as that. they can't produce a loud enough sound for mass performance in this sense. so that's the baroque: three or four guys, at most seven, playing around with their instruments. so you get a lot of counterpoint, a lot of individual voices weaving in and out of the limelight: little solos, like in rock music, right? a guy takes the lead and the rest of the guys support him: the drummer gives him a tight beat to vibe to, the bass guy keeps the harmony SUUPER grounded, and reinforces that rhythm, and the other guitarist maybe just plays half notes with the first and fifth chord for a while, so that you, the guitarist whose solo this is, can go crazy and blow everyone's mind with a lot of fast notes played tightly and virtuosically. rock's chamber music, in a way. and there's a lot of baroque music in metal. famous musicians were mostly employed by aristocrats directly, they were artisans.

anyway, eventually better instruments started to be manufactured, or maybe the cities grew large enough that it made sense to sell 1000 tickets to a concert, especially if you have six or seven shows a day for example. or maybe it was the printing press becoming widespread and enough people knew how to play music, or maybe it was nationalism and the need for rulers to invent like an epic esprit du corps to the nation, or maybe it was aristocrats becoming so fantastically rich than they wanted to put on more bombastic shows. or whatever it is: the character of music changed. we call this the classical period.

in the classical, you start to get your mozarts, your beethovens, your haydns: the music a lot more bombastic, both in its composition [a lot of baroque music sounds whimpy and even effette compared to the dubstep-like drops of beethoven]. biiig moments of WHAM! we all play at the same time, a lot more playing around with pianos and fortisisimos. this has to do a lot with technology: the piano is a much more complex, expensive mechanism than the simple harpsichord, which doesn't let you articulate softer or louder sounds. listen to the allegretoo in that piece: when you're there it really shows. the classical featured a lot of technical advances: better bronzes, more fancy and more consistent materials in general, louder steel strings on violins etcetera... AANYWAY, long disquisition, the point it, at the classical is when you start getting something like pop culture, because you start being able to compose a piece and have thousands of people, maybe a million or so, having heard it and either loved it or gone "meh". so you start getting composers as free professionals, just writing scores and sending them to people like "yo, let's play this piece", and if they were good they could make bank! no need for being the music master of lord whogivesafuck earl of somewhereorother, right? and boy were they good. and orchestras employ so many musicians that it becomes necessary to organize conservatories, trade schools effectively where you go, enroll, and after however many years you're a cellist, or a basoonist, or god protect us a violist. you start having a lot more celebrity composers, and performers too! Bach was famous, of course, but amongst other musicians. by contrast beethoven or mozart, and later chopin etcetera etcetera were household names. the baker and the candlestick maker bought little printed books of mozart's piano duet so maybe his daughter could go and play with the local noble's daughter or something.

the point is, that's probably when something like what we call pop music starts in the west, just like the moment when you start having professional athletes is when you can start talking about things like the olympics. by the question was there popular culture, do we mean like... was there a cultural industry developped enough to support celebrities? to support mass events, with or without broadcasting? to support fandom and widespread recognition of primary cultural workers?

[rotting bones]

By specialization, I was referring to the beginnings of professionalization. I know gladiators were full time professionals, of sorts (more like slaves at first). I don't know if all the athletes competing in the ancient Greek Olympics were full time. I know they trained a lot and put themselves on faddish diets, but they might have had day jobs too. Not sure.

[Ares Land]

By specialization, I was referring to the beginnings of professionalization. I know gladiators were full time professionals, of sorts (more like slaves at first). I don't know if all the athletes competing in the ancient Greek Olympics were full time. I know they trained a lot and put themselves on faddish diets, but they might have had day jobs too. Not sure.

Ancient Greek athletes were probably well-to-do landowners, if not outright aristocrats. Come to think of it, just the kind of people Coubertin had in mind with the modern Olympics

Getting bach to Greek athletes -- one early winner was apparently a cook. There are reports of them participating in contests for profit, which was frowned upon, but still happened which does suggest there were professionals of sorts.

[hwhatting]

My understanding is that the Arab and Mongolian horse races had a wider reach than just one or two villages, and the horse owners let them race at more than one race. I don't know whether professionals were involved - the owners werer rich men who did it for prestige, the jockeys in Mongolia were little boys (because they were light), I don't know about Arabia, maybe the jockeys were retainers of the owners; in any case, they weren't the celebrities, the horses and owners were.
An important element of our popular culture is making money from the public based on celebrity status, either by the celebrities themselves or by promoters or rights owners. I don't think that played a big role before modern mass communication. Before that, making it big would mean to gain wealthy patrons; also keep in mind that before modern urbanisation, most entertainment didn't rely on ticket sales, but was provided by elites for the masses (e.g., the races and circus games in ancient Rome were financed by wealthy patrons during the Republic and later by the emperors to gain / keep the support of the masses).

[bradrn]

Reading this thread, I’m somewhat surprised to see that no-one’s yet mentioned the Arthurian stories. To my understanding those are a good candidate for 'the Marvel comics of the Mediaeval era' — a bunch of heroes getting together to form the Avengers Round Table to fight against evil. Like Marvel, they were developed piecemeal: for instance, I’ve heard that the character of Lancelot was created by the French when they got upset that there was no French knight in the stories; of course, the knight they added had to be the best of them all. As I recall his original opponent was Meliagrance, who was about as cartoonishly evil a villain as you could imagine, and the Lancelot/Meliagrance stories were somewhat separate from the others before 'crossovers' developed. This all overlapped the spread of the printing press, with the lack of copyright at the time encouraging publishers to frequently release new stories and retellings — just like modern comics.

[zompist]

Reading this thread, I’m somewhat surprised to see that no-one’s yet mentioned the Arthurian stories.

The original question was about popular culture. Of course there has always been elite culture. There are oral epics, but so far as I know the Arthurian stories were never that.

[alice]

The original question was about popular culture.

More specifically, although it seems to have become lost, I believe the original poster was asking about preferences within popular culture which were used to poke fun at others.

[bradrn]

Reading this thread, I’m somewhat surprised to see that no-one’s yet mentioned the Arthurian stories.

The original question was about popular culture. Of course there has always been elite culture. There are oral epics, but so far as I know the Arthurian stories were never that.

Hmm… I was under the impression they did exist as oral epics, in the form of the chansons de geste. But rereading, those appear to focus on the Matter of France (Carolingian stories) rather than the Matter of Britain (Arthurian stories).

That said, were Arthurian stories elite? I was under the impression they were genuinely popular culture, consumed by a fairly broad range of the population.

[zompist]

That said, were Arthurian stories elite? I was under the impression they were genuinely popular culture, consumed by a fairly broad range of the population.

They're all over our memories of medieval times, but we know little about the 90% of the population that was peasants-- especially their oral culture.

I'm open to evidence that the peasants were also hearing Arthurian stories, but when the question is when aspects of pop culture started, we can't just assume that pop culture has always worked as it does today.

[WeepingElf]

That said, were Arthurian stories elite? I was under the impression they were genuinely popular culture, consumed by a fairly broad range of the population.

They're all over our memories of medieval times, but we know little about the 90% of the population that was peasants-- especially their oral culture.

I'm open to evidence that the peasants were also hearing Arthurian stories, but when the question is when aspects of pop culture started, we can't just assume that pop culture has always worked as it does today.

Certainly, it did not work as it does today, without mass media. Most people did not have books; and of course, nobody had radio, TV, records or anything like that.

[Travis B.]

Even for notable works which came from elite culture at the time there are often things we don't know, e.g. the only real reason why we know the tune Under der linden was sung to is that it just happens that its meter matches that of a different song whose tune managed to survive to the present.

[rotting bones]

Getting bach to Greek athletes -- one early winner was apparently a cook.

Thanks. I was expecting someone who's both an athlete and a strategos, or at least a more minor role. Greek aristocrats were expected to have roles in government, right?

[rotting bones]

our tradition comes from medieval european music

I'd say Western music originates even earlier, with Greek theories of tuning. The Bengali songs I listen to most of the time don't actually use the Western scale.

[bradrn]

our tradition comes from medieval european music

I'd say Western music originates even earlier, with Greek theories of tuning. The Bengali songs I listen to most of the time don't actually use the Western scale.

My understanding is that Ancient Greek music was very different to modern Western music in many ways. I agree with Torco: we can trace back Western music as a continuous chain deriving from mediaeval European music, but earlier than that it’s no longer traceable. We can identify specific concepts which are similar to those used in Ancient Greek music, but not much more.

[rotting bones]

My understanding is that Ancient Greek music was very different to modern Western music in many ways. I agree with Torco: we can trace back Western music as a continuous chain deriving from mediaeval European music, but earlier than that it’s no longer traceable. We can identify specific concepts which are similar to those used in Ancient Greek music, but not much more.

I mentioned the specific similarity I'm thinking of: The Western scale is based on theories of tuning developed by Pythagoras.

There are glaring discontinuities, of course. The surviving fragment of the Stasimon chorus from Orestes has one or two moments where it almost reminds me of Chinese folk music.

The way I see it, there are many axes of similarities and differences. Classical music might have historically evolved from medieval plainchant in some sense, but that path contains several instances of deliberate rebellion against received tradition. Medieval church music deliberately avoided dance-like beats, for example. These days, the West considers Mozart's music the epitome of what's easy to listen to. It's elevator music. But back in his day, they sometimes complained they couldn't follow it.

Note that Western classical music includes 20th century music in new scales that sound very different from any previous compositions, like Schoenberg's 12 tone technique. Music with deliberate distortions technically evolved from the same tradition, but they didn't want to be associated with that past.

I don't buy the Jordan Peterson-like logic that even though the Enlightenment rebelled against Christianity, it evolved from Christianity, and is therefore a part of it in some sense only geniuses can follow. I'm only interested in specific similarities and differences.

[zompist]

our tradition comes from medieval european music

I'd say Western music originates even earlier, with Greek theories of tuning. The Bengali songs I listen to most of the time don't actually use the Western scale.

I'm not sure what you mean here. My understanding is that Indian music uses pretty much the same tones and semitones as European music... occasionally however chopping them in half. The ragas are IIRC much like what European music calls modes.

(But I'm assuming Bengali music is derived from traditional Indian music, and perhaps it's derived from Islamic music instead?)