LOCAL' AS A DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCT: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF PERCEPTIONS OF SINGAPOREAN POP AND CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

Abstract

This paper expounds on Singaporean popular music (S-pop) from the constructivist leaning lens of representation through discourse, as informed by Hall and Foucault. Popular music, while having been traditionally sidelined and relegated to its mere significance as sociological phenomenon, has more recently been credited and studied for its aesthetic efficacy as musical aesthetic objects in themselves, as has been ‘serious’ music. Nevertheless, aesthetic judgements are still premised to be highly subjective and the aesthetic efficacy of popular music particularly is better signposted by its commercial success, a trait that global popular music within the academic interest is presumed to enjoy, but not Singaporean popular music. It is, however inconclusive and problematic to assert that S-pop lacks aesthetic efficacy, and explanations that cite institutional and cultural politics, access to markets and perceptions of authenticity tend to be promoted instead. Through the application of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper finds: negotiating around the lack of clarity as to whether works of S-pop innately carry aesthetic efficacy, cultural intermediaries of S-pop employ legimating strategies of proxying aesthetic judgement through linguistics and sidestepping aesthetic discourse in favour of extra-musical legitimating factors. These discursive entities also tend to be subject to sociologically rooted, self-regulating forces that suppress subjective aesthetic judgements and induce positivity bias.