Music and the Politics of Cool

Course Summary

Be it the slight crease in Miles Davis's back, Chuck Berry's energetic duck walks, or the boisterous self-confidence of Missy Elliott's bombastic rhymes, each of these musicians uses their unique performance style to approach coolness in a manner that entices and captivates audiences. Their panache is magical, intoxicating all who watch and listen. These musicians are not special. Throughout history, musicians have tapped into the elixir that is coolness to achieve their artistic, personal and financial dreams. However, while the allure of these artists is undeniable, we, as scholars, cannot be seduced by a simple reduction to the ineffable. Musicians are only cool through the socio-political context in which they exist. Submerged within these vauntings of the mystique of coolness are implicit discussions of race, class, commercialization, gender, and sexuality.

This class seeks to unpack the relationship between music and the social construction of coolness. As a class, we will work to discuss specific questions such as: What is coolness? What is coolness’s relationship to music? How does coolness alter our perceptions of music? Who gets to be cool? What cultural capital does coolness have? What is coolness's relationship to business? Does coolness still matter today? Through reading articles, in-class discussions, and student projects, we will develop a toolbox of analytic frameworks to approach how musicians navigate the aesthetics, demands, and instabilities of coolness to pull apart the ways coolness has been used (and abused) in cultural discourses. In working through these issues, we will deconstruct how we navigate these questions in everyday life and music as they relate to historical and modern-day constructions of coolness.

Course Layout

Course activities will be divided into three activities that will occur regularly. On Tuesdays, we will discuss a short (15-30 pages) reading that relates to aspects of coolness. During class, we will attempt to parse out the writer’s argument to develop our reading habits. After our discussions, students will be introduced to significant biographical and historical information relating to the week’s chosen artist, and we will listen to a wide swath of music that covers the musician’s entire oeuvre. Before class on Thursdays, students will listen to an album (max 1 hour) by the artist and come ready to discuss specific moments from the album. Finally, on Thursdays, we discuss whether that musician is cool or not. Debates will center less on students’ personal opinions of each musician but rather on unpacking how the musician exists in relation to discourses of coolness and how musicians accept, reject, or attempt to modify notions of coolness.

Class Schedule

Week 1 (Jan 13, 15)-Introductions

Before Class on Tuesday- Complete short introduction post on Canvas

Tuesday- Introductions, Syllabus Discussion, workshop on how to read academic texts

Before Class on Thursday- Read Dick Pountain and David Robbin’s Cool Rules: The Anatomy of an Attitude, Chapters 1 and 2, pages 7-34

Consider these questions while reading:

• Do you buy the authors’ argument that coolness is timeless?

• Is hipness the same as coolness?

• What historical figures do you think of as cool? Through what frameworks did you come to this conclusion?

Thursday- Discuss Cool Rules, Discuss coolness generally

Week 2 (Jan 20, 22)-Is Coolness Timeless?

Before Class on Tuesday- Read Phil Ford’s Dig: Music and Sound in Hip Culture, Chapter 1, 3-19

Consider these questions while reading:

• What cultural values does hipness connote?

• What defines “culture” and “counterculture”?

• What figures in the chapter are you familiar with? Which figures are you not?

• How is Ford setting up the relationship between hipness and music/sound?

Tuesday- Discuss Dig, Lecture on LLiszt

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor (1854), Complete discussion post

Thursday- In Class Discussion- Is Liszt cool?

Week 3 (Jan 27, 29)-Is Coolness Black?

Before Class on Tuesday- Read Robert Farris Thompson’s “An Aesthetic of the Cool”

Consider these questions while reading:

• What rhetorical strategies does Farris Thompson use to support his argument?

• In what ways do metaphors of cool temperatures persist in modern cultures?

• What are the issues with Farris Thompson’s theories of a “long retention” (the belief that significant aspects of modern African-American culture can be traced back to West African cultures)?

Tuesday- Discuss “An Aesthetic of the Cool,” Lecture on Jimi Hendrix

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to Are You Experienced (1967)- The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Complete discussion post

Thursday- Is Jimi Hendrix cool?

Week 4 (Feb 3, 5)-Is Whiteness Cool?

Before Class on Tuesday- Read Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro,” James Baldwin’s “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy”

Consider these questions while reading:

• How does Mailer’s writing relate to theories of modernism (the belief that modern society alienates us from natural humanity)?

• Why does Mailer think Black Americans provide a key to living under modernism?

• How does sexuality factor into Mailer’s argument?

• Does Mailer’s obviously racist rhetoric teach us anything? Is it still something worth engaging with?

Tuesday- Discuss “The White Negro,” Lecture on Eminem

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to The Marshall Mathers Ep- Eminem (2000), Complete discussion post

Thursday- Is Eminem cool?

Week 5 (Feb 10, 12)-Are Men Cool?

Before Class on Tuesday- Read Susan Frieman’s Cool Men and the Second Sex Preface xi-xxiii, bell hooks’s “We Real Cool” 

Consider these questions while reading:

• What specific aspects of masculinity (and what types of masculinity) are connected to discourses of hipness?

• Who are some women who have historically been connoted as “cool”?

• How does Frieman’s rhetoric reflect on the discussions we have had in class so far?

Tuesday- Discuss Cool Men and the Second Sex, Lecture on Drake

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to Take Care- Drake (2011), Complete discussion post

Thursday- Is Drake cool?

Week 6 (Feb 17, 19)-Can Women Be Cool?

Before Class on Tuesday- Read Joel Dinerstein The Origins of Cool in Postwar America, Chapter 4, 165-186

Consider these questions while reading:

• Can/could women define themselves in an authentic fashion?

• Are discourses of authenticity inherently masculine?

• What are the intersections between race, gender, and sexuality in contexts of cool?

Tuesday- Discuss The Origins of Cool in Postwar America, Lecture on Nina Simone

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to Pastel Blues- Nina Simone (1965), Complete discussion post

Thursday- Is Nina Simone cool?

Week 7 (Feb 24, 26)-Midterm Presentations

Tuesday- Midterm Presentations

Thursday- Midterm Presentations

Week 8 (March 3, 5)-Is Capitalism Cool?

Before Class on Tuesday-Read Thomas Frank’s The Conquest of Cool, Chapter 1, 1-33

Consider these questions while reading:

• Is coolness a marketing ploy? In what ways do corporations try to justify themselves as cool?

• Does it benefit corporations to appear to be antithetical to cool while making their products cool?

• Does coolness’s relationship to capital cause it to become conservative?

Tuesday- Discuss The Conquest of Cool, Lecture on Snoop Dogg

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to Doggystyle- Snoop Dogg (1993), Complete discussion post

Thursday- Is Snoop Dogg cool?

Week 9 (March 17, 19)-Is Nostalgia Cool?

Before Class on Tuesday- Read Adorno “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening”

Consider these questions while reading:

• Is coolness reductive?

• Can we tell different styles of cool apart/if so how?

• Does coolness numb us from our humanity? Does coolness restrict our freedom?

Tuesday- Discuss “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening,” Lecture on Greta Van Fleet

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to From the Fires- Greta Van Fleet (2017), Complete discussion post

Thursday- Is Greta Van Fleet cool?

Week 10 (March 24, 26)-Is Emotion Cool?

Before Class on Tuesday- Read Sara Ahmed’s The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Introduction, 1-19

Consider these questions while reading:

• According to Ahmed, what does emotion do?

• What do we get by thinking of coolness as an emotion as opposed to a personal descriptor?

• Does coolness breed specific emotions?

Tuesday- Discuss The Cultural Politics of Emotion,  Lecture on Fall Out Boy

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to From Under the Cork Tree- Fall Out Boy (2005), Complete discussion post

Thursday- Is Fall Out Boy cool?

Week 11 (March 31, April 2)-Is Coolness Dead?

Before Class on Tuesday- Read Gioia The Birth and Death of the Cool, Chapter 1, 1-24

Consider these questions while reading:

• Are sentimentality and coolness inherently in conflict?

• How does the increased visibility of non-white, non-straight cultures challenge notions of coolness?

• Does the internet reward coolness?

• Does coolness matter anymore?

Tuesday- Discuss The Birth and Death of the Cool, Lecture on Julien Baker

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to Turn Out The Lights- Julien Baker (2017), Complete discussion post

Thursday- Is Julien Baker cool?

Week 12 (April 7, 9)-Is The Internet Cool?

Before Class on Tuesday- Read Anna Kornbluh’s Immediacy, Or The Style of Too Late Capitalism Chapter 3, 44-64

Consider these questions while reading:

• Does coolness require an appeal to the symbolic?

• Does coolness require a temporal (time-based) distancing? Can the immediate be cool?

• In the modern world, can someone define themselves as cool?

Tuesday- Discuss Immediacy, Or The Style of Too Late Capitalism, Lecture on 100 gecs

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to 1000 gecs- 100 gecs (2019), Complete discussion post

Thursday- Are 100 gecs cool?

Week 13 (April 14, 16)-Are Stats Cool?

Before Class on Tuesday- Read Robin James’s The Sonic Episteme, Chapter 1, 23-50

Consider these questions while reading:

• Does coolness’s modernist aesthetic fit in with the neoliberal desire for “controlled difference?”

• Does uncool hold as much (or more) cultural capital than coolness today?

• Do cool artists only attempt to take calculated risks?

Tuesday- Discuss The Sonic Episteme, Lecture on Taylor Swift

Before Class on Thursday- Listen to Red- Taylor Swift (2012), Complete discussion post

Thursday- Is Taylor Swift cool?

Week 14 (April 21, 23)- Final Presentations

Tuesday- Final Presentations

Thursday- Final Presentations