The Popular and the ‘People’

Since Herder’s writings on “Volk-like” “poetry” and “fatherland songs,” the (often positively evaluated) characteristics of such music have been well established: “simplicity,” “emotion,” “excitation”; not being “artificial” but rather “lively, free, sensual”; being “immediate” and “clear”; “rhythm, and naivety and strength.” These chosen characteristics do not even change in the face of technologically advanced products manufactured by specialists. Those who represent and praise the ‘people’ today similarly count, among the positive qualities of popular works by artists like the Rolling Stones, those works’ simplicity, ‘directness,’ ‘un-artificiality,’ and ‘rhythmic power’ above all.