The Aesthetic Judgment of Music as a Historical Category
The distinction between "good music" and "bad music" is not a universal category, but rather a historical construct that emerged with the bourgeoisie as the hegemonic class. Theodor W. Adorno already pointed out how the concept of artistic autonomy developed in parallel with the consolidation of the capitalist market, transforming the musical work into a spiritual commodity. This seemingly liberating autonomy simultaneously created a system of valuation that reflects and reproduces the dominant social relations.
The Fallacy of Purely Aesthetic Judgment
When we evaluate music according to parameters of "quality"—harmonic complexity, formal innovation, structural coherence—we operate within an epistemic framework that naturalizes historically determined values. Pierre Bourdieu demonstrated how these judgments function as "cultural capital," distinguishing the educated classes and legitimizing their symbolic domination. The paradox lies in the fact that even the most sophisticated critiques often reproduce this logic by contrasting "art music" with "popular music," without questioning the socioeconomic foundations of such a distinction.
Towards a Dynamic-Political Criterion
We should shift the evaluation from the aesthetic to the political-material, through this fundamental question: Does this sonic practice contribute to human liberation or alienation in specific historical conditions?
This shift implies two epistemological transformations:
1. From the work as object to music as praxis:
Music does not exist as an autonomous entity, but as a social activity that produces material effects on bodies and communities.
2. From individual taste to contextual analysis:
Value ceases to reside in intrinsic properties and is instead situated in the social influences and relations that music shapes or challenges.
Categories for a Dynamic-Political Analysis of Music
1. Reproductive Function vs. Disruptive function: Does music reproduce the subjectivities required by the capitalist system (competitive individualism, passive consumption, social conformity)? Or does it generate spaces where alternative subjectivities emerge (collectivity, critical consciousness, solidarity)?
2. Political economy of production and reception:
Under what labor relations is it produced? What distribution circuits does it use? Who has access and under what conditions?
3. Body and affectivity:
Does the sonic experience subject the body to external disciplines (industrialized rhythms, standardized gestures) or does it enhance its autonomous capacities?
4. Temporality:
Does it reinforce the perception of time as a scarce commodity (standardized duration, narrative structures that mimic productivity) or does it open up non-capitalist temporal experiences (cyclical time, expansive duration, intensified present)?
Conclusion:
Towards a dynamic-dialectical listening approach
The liberation/alienation criterion does not propose a new dogmatism, but rather a situated method of analysis. The same piece can function liberatingly in one context and alienatingly in another (jazz as an expression of Black resistance in the 1920s vs. its appropriation as commercial music in the 1950s).
The critical task no longer consists of hierarchical categorization, but rather of dialectical analysis: What social relations does this music enable? What subjectivities does it inhibit or empower? Into what contradictions is it embedded?
This approach does not diminish aesthetic pleasure, but rather radically politicizes it, recognizing that there is no musical experience outside the power relations that shape our ears, our bodies, and our time. The true musical revolution will not consist of changing what we listen to, but of transforming how we listen, and therefore, how we inhabit the sonic world that we collectively produce.