Editing Postmodern music (section)

==The postmodernist musical attitude==
Postmodernism in music is not a distinct musical style, but rather refers to music of the [[Postmodernity|postmodern era]]. Postmodernist music, on the other hand, shares characteristics with [[postmodern art|postmodernist art]]—that is, art that comes after and reacts against [[modernism]] (see [[Modernism (music)|Modernism in Music]]). Rebecca Day, Lecturer in Music Analysis, writes "within music criticism, postmodernism is seen to represent a conscious move away from the perceptibly damaging hegemony of binaries such as aestheticism/formalism, subject/object, unity/disunity, part/whole, that were seen to dominate former aesthetic discourse, and that when left unchallenged (as postmodernists claim of modernist discourse) are thought to de-humanise music analysis".{{sfn|Day|2017|p=56}}

[[Fredric Jameson]], a major figure in the thinking on [[postmodernism]] and culture, calls postmodernism "the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism",{{sfn|Jameson|1991|p=46}} meaning that, through globalization, postmodern culture is tied inextricably with capitalism ([[Mark Fisher]], writing 20 years later, goes further, essentially calling it the sole cultural possibility).{{sfn|Fisher|2009|p=4}} Drawing from Jameson and other theorists, David Beard and Kenneth Gloag argue that, in music, postmodernism is not just an attitude but also an inevitability in the current cultural climate of fragmentation.{{sfn|Beard|Gloag|2005|pp=141–145}} As early as 1938, [[Theodor W. Adorno|Theodor Adorno]] had already identified a trend toward the dissolution of "a culturally dominant set of values",{{sfn|Beard|Gloag|2005|p=141}} citing the commodification of all genres as beginning of the end of genre or value distinctions in music.{{sfn|Adorno|2002|pp=293–295}}

In some respects, Postmodern music could be categorized as simply the music of the postmodern era, or music that follows aesthetic and philosophical trends of postmodernism, but with Jameson in mind, it is clear these definitions are inadequate. As the name suggests, the postmodernist movement formed partly in reaction to the ideals of [[modernism]], but in fact postmodern music is more to do with functionality and the effect of globalization than it is with a specific reaction, movement, or attitude.{{sfn|Beard|Gloag|2005|p=142}} In the face of capitalism, Jameson says, "It is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place".{{sfn|Jameson|1991|p=ix}}