495
T
he 1970s was a time when musical audiences seemed to splinter into
ever-smaller factions, as evidenced in the growing number of popular
music subgenres. Throughout the decade, that process was increasingly
refl ected in the larger culture. The election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency
in 1980 coincided with an intense period of “culture wars,” characterized by a
polarizing of conservative and liberal political affi liations. Already in the late
1970s, advances won by ethnic minorities, women, and gays led to backlash
movements: the discrediting of affi rmative action as a “quota” system, a growing
distrust that immigrants were “stealing” jobs from native-born Americans, and
the rise of the religious right and the Moral Majority, a political lobbying group
that espoused evangelical Christian values. An anti-intellectual ethos through-
out the 1980s cast suspicion on professors, artists, and others who favored the
social changes that were afoot.
Yet trends within music during the 1980s suggest a relaxing of the tensions
of the so-called culture wars. The aesthetic issues of the 1970s were framed as
dichotomies: music could be simple or complex, elaborate or primal, ambitious
or accessible. In the music of the 1980s those dichotomies seemed to fade, or at
least grew less emotionally fraught for both musicians and audiences. In their
place was a new emphasis on eclecticism and hybridity, as well as a celebration
of differences for the variety they could bring to our collective musical culture.
Across the many styles of American music, the 1980s can be considered a post-
modern moment, when musicians took a more relaxed posture to both their
own musical traditions and the traditions of others.POSTMODERNISM
As discussed in chapter 16, the years after World War II witnessed a widening
gap between popular musical styles and the new music being composed for the
concert hall and especially for the setting of the academic music department.
Within the classical sphere, moreover, a smaller yet signifi cant divide separatedCHAPTER
20
AMERICA’S MUSIC IN
THE 1980s
172028_20_495-513_r3_sd.indd 495 23/01/13 11:14 AM