What Is Post-Postmodernism, Anyway?

Time for Something New

William Sundwick

Introduction: Postmodernism

Those of us introduced to art and aesthetics through a mid-century lens thought all things modern were products of the twentieth century – especially, the early twentieth century. They included dadaism, surrealism, and theatre of the absurd. These were protesting a tyrannical art establishment controlled by an elite art school aristocracy. The Avant-Garde emerged, spelling the end of modernism. Thanks to new technologies of art reproduction (cinema, wax recordings, radio), art was becoming more accessible to a wider audience. The old elites were losing their power. Cultural relativism replaced scientific determinism, absolutism, in art. Soon, the conceits of late modernism, including cubism and abstract expressionism, also became old-fashioned and conventional.

The twentieth century was awful in many ways. Despite tremendous technological progress and greater egalitarianism, there were those horrible wars, and growing insecurity afterwards. The brittleness of capitalism became apparent with the Great Depression, and nuclear annihilation haunted us throughout the post-WWII Cold War. What’s more, prosperous societies of the global north (North America and Western Europe) were struck by the folly of imperialism – the global south (all other cultures) were recognized as the struggling majority in the world, kept down largely by our heavy boot.

Multi-cultural diversity was now a goal. Variety of cultural experiences, sometimes expressed as moral relativism, became a dominant theme in western art. “Postmodernism” was the name given to this new sensibility.

The Unraveling

Like modernism before it, postmodernism, too, eventually got old. A new art establishment now set the standards, after changing a few rules. Postmodern art may have been more “woke,” but was no more open, thanks to a patronage system that still controlled exhibiting and distribution.

In political culture as well, postmodernism began to show strain. Tribalism made a depressing comeback. Critics saw cultural relativism as ultimately leading to “post-truth” politics in our public discourse.

For young artists, the pressure to conform to standards clearly created by elites who benefit from them is unacceptable. Yet, being anchorless with respect to cultural norms exacerbates the growing depression, anomie, felt by many young people. The retreat into tribalism offers some solace.

In the 21^st century, we are now confronted by the specter of climate change destroying civilization – much as we feared the bomb in the Cold War years. What have we done? Is there a way out? What is the role of art, anyway, regardless of how much time we have left?

Moral relativism does not make us feel better. Our political culture must be more than sheer will to power. We want universal truths. We want to experience them through art. We want unity, not division. I turn to art when I want to discover those universal truths inside me. I know that the world is bigger than my tribe. When I create – when I write for this blog – I want to think I’m giving something to others. And, art is pervasive throughout life. Artistic expression depends only upon the medium chosen by the artist, and the depth of feelings expressed.

Metamodernism

Over the last decade, there has emerged a debate among some cultural theorists and philosophers of aesthetics about the contours of whatever new aesthetic will replace postmodernism. Timotheus Vermuelen, Robin Van den Akker and Luke Turner have each used the term “metamodernism” to describe a pendulum-like movement swinging between modernism, through the space of postmodernism, and into something beyond. This sticky pendulum picks up concepts, styles, and subject matter as it swings. It has been doing this for a hundred years, encompassing the whole epoch of modernism and postmodernism together, depositing what it scoops up at the doorstep (or studio) of today’s young artist. It gives them the material they will work with. It is sincere, more than ironic, experiential more than abstract, and ultimately humane and idealistic as well. Ethics becomes a primary concern. It’s okay to believe in things. In its oscillation, the pendulum becomes acutely sensitive to the demands of the moment. It’s okay to search for meaning. Intellectual exploration remains a noble pursuit.

Students pursuing metamodern truths will study the past, pay attention to their surroundings in the present, and talk with others about the future.

They will recognize nihilism as the most negative product of both modernism and postmodernism. Creativity is not destruction. It is certainly not true that there are no values. The artist’s role is to crystalize and depict those values.

Common experiences should be the primary source material for metamodern art. Cross-cultural (even cross-species?) and very basic – perhaps neurological.

As in the past, when social constraints interfere with art, there will be an avant-garde ready to deal with the situation. Smashing those constraints, and overthrowing the establishment which enforced them, was thoroughly rehearsed when it was time for modernism to be overthrown by postmodernism. And the pendulum of metamodernism will not ignore that avant-garde as it swings past into the post-postmodern future. Revolution is in the air once again in the 2020s. 

Examples

While still speculative, some of the characteristics of the new post-postmodern sensibility might be found in recent works of visual arts, urban planning, theater and film, music, and politics.

In the visual arts, a new school of painters have called themselves “Stuckists,” after a poem written by one of them about being “stuck” on their art. The group celebrates figurative painting and photography, as opposed to abstract, or “conceptual.” They also have coined the term “remodernism” to denote their dedication to rediscovery of some of the fundamental principles of modernism, lost to the postmodernists of the last half-century. Their main aim seems to be dethroning what they call “ego-art,” which springs only from the mind of the artist, without context in real life experience.

Tom Turner, landscape designer and urban planner, has embraced the term post-postmodernism to describe his approach to design of public spaces. He relies on fundamental geometric patterns and Jungian archetypes to create spaces which convey comfort and familiarity to the occupants.

Although cinema is often suborned to the profit incentive, some recent activity in the same direction has been observed by critics. Simple human stories are ascendant over deeply ironic, nihilistic fantasies and dystopias. Despite the need to appeal to a mass audience, indie films and TV are beginning to show signs of change. The new economy of streaming services has enabled much more creative work in television.

One recent big-screen offering, Knives Out, illustrates a complex metamodern relationship to popular detective fiction. It’s a story familiar to fans of the modernist Agatha Christie, or the board game Clue. A famous mystery writer dies unexpectedly following a family gathering at his gothic home. The family is immediately suspected of foul play by an improbable private detective brought in by local police as a consultant. The police favor ruling the death a suicide. Although its script contains much postmodern irony, the basic layout of the story is strictly Agatha Christie modern. Each intuitive hunch of detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is fully explained in concrete real-world context. The overall effect is: “well, of course, that’s what happened.” It’s a fundamentally post-postmodern plot development with characters being slightly exaggerated versions of real-world people we all know.

Metamodernism is also heard in today’s popular music. The current vogue of country, or “roots,” music is indicative of what some critics call the New Sincerity. Folk has replaced rock as a favorite style of the young. The British band Mumford and Sons began life early in the decade with an uplifting folk-rock style, highlighting banjo and vaguely Christian-inspired lyrics. Their hit song “I Will Wait” demonstrated they were onto something. However, by the time they released their fourth studio album, the banjo disappeared, and the Jungian archetypes became deeper than the admittedly fuzzy religious references in their earlier work. If Delta Blues-inspired rock-and-roll was the harbinger of postmodernism (with punk and metal its pinnacle), then Mumford and Sons Delta album should be a prime example of post-postmodern popular music.

In politics, as in other artistic representations of culture, we now have politicians basing their election campaigns on “genuineness” – they are judged by the media, and voters, on how convincing they are about their ideals and beliefs. Both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are experts at this. So was Donald Trump in 2016. Simple human stories, and how well we can relate to them, are presumed decisive. Regardless of the election’s outcome, the continuing drama of the campaign illustrates that metamodernist pendulum swing.

Can We Please Think of a Better Name?

New Sincerity? Remodernism? Metamodernism? Is there any utility in naming schools of art anyway? Labeling the new sensibility in aesthetics may have to wait for another generation, but names give some indication of the direction art is moving. “Post-postmodernism” is clumsy, but here’s what we know: real experience, concrete observable reality, and commonality of all humanity – or even all sentient beings, if you’re a vegan – is a new emphasis in art.

Beliefs can be real and justified. But continuous exploration and study help inform them. Nobody need be left out.

What Does My Music Library Say About Me?

A Rebuttal to the Personality Link

William Sundwick

Ever since I can remember, I’ve liked listening to music. My childhood was spent with a father who was a failed violinist in his youth. (He became an engineer.) But, while he never played for me, he was totally dedicated to the classical, mostly 19^th century, orchestral catalogue. He took off from Paganini and didn’t stop until Heifetz. Listening to music was very serious business to him. It was clearly emotional. I inherited the emotional content, if not the literature.

For me, dramatic always trumped soothing. Heavy was generally better than light. I adored Beethoven -- a love shared with my dad. Schumann, Berlioz, Brahms all get honorable mention. I liked the Russians, too – along with my mother – father not so much (no violinists).

Something happened to me culturally, however, when I got to high school, and obtained a driver’s license. With a little help from my friends, I discovered top 40 radio in the car. It became a social thing. My previous group of friends, intellectually precocious New York Jews, with holocaust survivor parents, had aided and abetted my classical predilections up to that point -- although none of us ever played an instrument. Driving around listening to radio in the car became a liberating experience. Independence at last!

Social acceptance changed tone in college. There, the driving force seemed to be “what’s new.” And, then, what would come next. Thus, the avant-garde invaded my mind, with musical, artistic, and theatrical dimensions. Grafted onto that avant-garde sensibility was social awareness of a different world – an underclass world of black people. Blues and avant-garde jazz were, in my mind as a college student, part of the same “movement.” I had already gained an appreciation for the left from my New York Jewish friends in high school – college gave me the chance to integrate all that into an aesthetic that would become my own.

I still listened to classical music in college but replaced the 19^th century romantics with baroque and more 20th century artists. I liked Shostakovich and Prokofiev symphonies.

After college, it became clear that the future lay with rock music. It was symbolic of the age, and drew from a fabulous, beautiful history of the great migration from the South to the industrial Midwest. Urban blues became my music. As it transmogrified into Chicago Blues or British Blues, it seemed to be part of an evolving tradition. A working-class artform.

I, too, became a worker. I may have been an intellectual worker, but a worker, nonetheless. Adding to that, I was slow to develop intimate relationships – adolescent “sturm und drang” didn’t disappear from my psyche until my late marriage at 35. By that time, I was dedicated to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. The revolution was still coming – in the future.

If there is anything at all to the psychological studies which claim to correlate musical tastes with personality, I might confess being a “systemizer” more than an “empathizer” – like my engineer father. This does tend to support the basic genres of music I like best. I prefer complex melodies and rhythms, and intense music.

One parameter for musical taste which is clearly bogus in my case is age. I’m still discovering new musical genres at age 71. I have only recently become a fan of heavy metal and punk/post-punk. It says something to me which is as valid now as it was when I was 20 or 25. I’ve never rejected my roots. Sadly, I never participated in creating music. But I still appreciate it.

Today the only time I listen intently to music is at the gym. This means I associate my music library with biofeedback (cardio) and may even use it for “productivity enhancement” (makes me pedal harder). This is a departure from my youthful serious listening, although that listening mode is still imprinted in my emotional affect. I still like sad songs (blues), especially when linked to social alienation and emancipation. I continue associating avant-garde with class struggle, opposing the mainstream.

When music stays “underground,” it is better than when it is commercially successful. I’ve never liked “soothing” or “easy listening” music of the pop world. I reject overly sentimental music, as it cheapens my own emotions. And, I steadfastly reject music with a conservative social message. Commercial Nashville usually epitomizes that -- although I still enjoy some Rolling Stones anthems like “Ruby Tuesday” or “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (both examples of Keith Richards lapsing into extolling market capitalism’s virtue).

Blues is good. The purity and depth of its sentiment is real. It’s mostly about struggle, as I see it. The world of rock, whether blues-based or more experimental (like heavy metal), strikes me as great when it features virtuoso musicians – vocalists, guitar players, drummers, especially. Harmonica and tenor sax can often give an extra treat to the ear, as well. They contribute a plaintive tone to a song.

But the beat must remain predominant. Even in experimental electronic forms, there must be an underlying regular, repetitive beat. Sometimes the beat gets lost but is heroically rediscovered in the denouement. Zeppelin were masters of this, especially “In My Time of Dying” and “Dazed and Confused”. “Noise rock,”  like Sonic Youth, has tried the same approach – the beat must be at the heart of the song, even if lost in the middle.

Rock anthems continue to have an appeal to me. They seem to be hymns, crying “we shall overcome someday.”  Often, they take the form of a personal story, but sometimes they preach. The underlying emotion is hopefulness, with a dash of triumphalism – arrived at mostly through resistance to malevolent forces. Two of my favorite anthems are from the Rolling Stones: “Gimme Shelter” and “Midnight Rambler.” The former is the preaching style, the latter more bluesy.

The singer-songwriter folk tradition also contributes much to my music library. But always a folk-rock beat and instrumental backup is added. Mumford and Sons made a big impression on me when they entered the scene about ten years ago. Banjo replaces lead guitar on their first two albums, but it’s unmistakably folk rock.

The main reason I can’t buy the link between personality and musical tastes is that my tastes are way too varied to be pigeonholed. Why would I want to define who I am, anyway? Different studies have come up with different dimensions of personality and music – there is an “extroversion” scale where the most outgoing folks like the music I like, but the introverted folks also like some of the music I like. The “neuroticism” dimension in different studies concludes that people who rank high in neuroticism like totally opposite kinds of music. Go figure.

I think it’s not about musical genres, but more the socio-cultural tradition you live in that determines your musical taste. Mine has been developing for 71 years. There’s quite a history behind it. If I share it with nobody else, I don’t care.

Where Did It Come From?

How Delta Blues Morphed into All the Music I Like

William Sundwick

What is the music I like? I call it “blues-something” or “something-blues” – roots music critics and historians have many names for many variations of blues. But, since the Music I Like is artistic expression, I’m wary of any taxonomy of styles or “schools.” Artists are entitled to mix and match different styles as they see fit.

Most historians agree on the definition of blues as a style of folk music that was common in the Mississippi Delta in the early 20^th century. It emphasized rhythm and simple lyrics revolving around economic and romantic difficulties, sometimes with magical (mystical, voodoo) intimations. Its primary vehicles were homemade percussion instruments, harmonica, and slide guitar – and an emotive vocalist.

The first recordings of this music date from the 1920s. But, there’s no reason to think that its origins don’t go back much further.  Alan and John Lomax, ethnomusicologists at the Library of Congress in the 1930s, embarked on field trips to record much of the music of the Delta Blues tradition.  They used primitive magnetic recording techniques with a hand lathe to press wax cylinders or discs. No electricity required, because there wasn’t any in rural Mississippi then. The music was thus preserved -- and distributed both in the U.S. and Britain -- even if not commercially recorded. 

Also, the music, at this time, was always performed by non-white artists. They were poor black sharecroppers, usually illiterate, and their songs weren’t written down. They learned guitar chords by demonstration and practice. Without the Lomax efforts, few songs would have been recorded.

My own fascination with the genre began in high school, when I decided to let my musical taste make my stand in the civil rights era. I abandoned the classical repertory imposed by my parents – since I clearly was not going to be a musician myself (my father, a failed violinist turned engineer, insisted that I, too, could never make it). The primitive alternative called. These artists had nothing, nobody recognized their talent, they were shunned by white society. And, the social milieu of Flint, Michigan made me pathologically averse to white country music. Those “hillbillys” were the real dregs in 1960s Flint, it seemed. Whatever musical tastes I carried away to college would certainly NOT be theirs! The cultural disconnect was just too great.

In college, I soon discovered that there was a fascinating blues tradition that had bubbled up from the South, making its way during the “Great Migration” into my part of the country.  It was analogous to my own family’s migration, in the opposite direction, from the mining and logging country of the Keweenaw Peninsula to the industrial heartland further south in Michigan. But, they were first generation immigrants from Swedish-speaking Finland, not descendants of slaves.

The Great Migration from the rural South to Chicago and Detroit was driven both by economic and cultural hardship – the black sharecropper was a refugee, not too different from the escaped slave of a few generations earlier. It continued into the 1940s, and WWII. Blacks began to make up a significant portion of the home-front industrial and service workforce in these cities.

They brought their music with them, intact. They performed it in clubs. But, few artists found recording contracts, despite high demand for live performances in both cities. The business side of “Rhythm and Blues” was not very well developed, though. Radio air play (and “payola”) was still in the future – and would find white rock-and-roll or “doo-wop” artists first, when it did arrive.

Friendly record labels and radio stations did exist, however, in selected markets. There was Billboard’s “R&B hits” list, just like there was the “Hot 100” (distilled to “Top 40”).  Two of the larger early labels were Chess Records and Okeh Records. They had already taken chances on some delta blues artists in Memphis, and had a presence in Chicago, as well.

It’s fair to say that there are three distinct generations in the lineage of this music. The first was R&B transplanted from rural Mississippi to Chicago and Detroit (mostly Chicago – only John Lee Hooker is recognizable from Detroit blues in this period). It showed little influence from any other musical styles outside that folk foundation.

The second generation did show some eclectic influences, depending on where it was performed. Most notable was British Blues, this generation’s archetype. It borrowed from delta blues, but there was also something vitally different emerging on the other side of the Pond in the early ‘60s. It was an urban, industrial, white blues -- without that peculiar American country flavor. A second generation also reached California, epitomized by a fusion of rock-and-roll with more back-to-the-roots folk blues. The second generation put blues rock into the mainstream.

As rock became more sophisticated, there arose a countervailing desire to simplify and “get back to the basics.” Blues was waiting. The beat, the emotional power of the lyrics, and those guitar riffs got our juices flowing. We wanted more of that, less of the fancy stuff. The third generation took off. It was a revival of traditional blues. In this more diverse time, however, blues had to compete with roots music in the country/folk vein. Lineage is genealogy, after all. As the gene pool has more inputs, the original markings often are obscured.

My iTunes library includes examples from each of the three generations of blues (or “bluesy” rock): 

•     From the first generation there is John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Dixon. Hooker and King had the longest performing and recording careers of any first-generation blues musician. They were both known as guitar players. The slide guitar was their weapon of choice well. Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf made the harmonica their centerpiece, although Howlin’ Wolf also impressed audiences with his imposing physical presence and voice. He literally howled like a wolf in some of his most famous pieces, covered by many blues rock bands over the years. Little Walter is the only artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame specifically as a harmonica player. Willie Dixon was a bass player, but had an impressive body of songs, covered by multiple blues and blues rock artists. All but Hooker and King were associated primarily with Chicago.       
•     Second generation blues came from both Britain and California. Good examples are early Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, and Cream. On our own Left Coast, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, and maybe Creedence Clearwater Revival, carried on the tradition. Although CCR’s background makes them seem more like third generation revival – arriving early. Bob Dylan must be mentioned here, as well. He uniquely in cracked the New York folk scene in Greenwich Village with roots blues music. It was difficult on the East Coast, because of competition from other established pop forms. His audience was ready when he discovered blues, then rock.
•     George Thorogood and Jack White are examples of third generation blues. They both consGciously brought delta blues and boogie into the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Thorogood with his band, The Destroyers, combines traditional blues/boogie with original songs done in that style. Early in his career he was based in Washington, D.C., often performing in Georgetown opposite the Nighthawks, at places like The Cellar Door. Jack White, a native Detroiter, discovered blues in elementary school. He started an upholstering business before beginning his music career with his wife Meg, forming The White Stripes. They divorced before White Stripes reached its peak popularity in the early aughts -- calling themselves siblings for PR purposes. White now lives in Nashville. He sits on the board of the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Foundation, where he is a fervent proponent of following the Lomaxes in the 1930s. His work with the PBS series, American Epic, speaks to his interest in roots music, especially recording apparatuses. 

A fourth generation of blues artists can be imagined, begat by the children of millennials waxing nostalgic for their childhood exposure to the heavy metal and alternative rock of their parents. Those styles aren’t entirely devoid of blues roots. And, there might even be a folk revival, reflecting synergy of African-American and white country roots. One candidate is the British group Mumford and Sons. They feature an interesting mix of R&B, folk, and Gospel in many of their numbers.

Our affinity for the Music We Like seems to be driven mostly by nostalgia for our respective youths. Hence, age becomes the main predictor of one’s musical tastes. But, cultural affiliation also plays an important secondary role, some would say equal role.

If we remember first generation blues, it might be because of performers of great longevity, like John Lee Hooker, or B.B. King. If we are either slightly younger or were just focused on Top 40 songs in the sixties, we’re likely drawn to second generation blues. Gen-Xers may have fond memories of the third-generation blues revival associated with their youth.

My millennial offspring only know the blues form from me (youngest had never heard of John Lee Hooker until I told him about this post). I’ve succeeded in exposing them to early Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Cream. I’m not sure it has supplanted their own youthful experiences with hip hop and techno/electronic music, though. My oldest knows Jack White but thinks he’s “over-rated.”

Hmmm. Perhaps they’re missing the proper cultural affiliation?