Absctract
This short essay is a discussion of the meanings of the expression popular music. Our starting point are Richard Middleton’s findings on the polysemy of popular music. However, we problematize the discussion of Middleton when we compare it with the perspective of Cultural Studies on what is meant by popular culture, as well as with the perspective of Critical Theory about what is understood by the vanguard. Thus, the expression popular music, rather than a concept, becomes a field for disputing various cultural forces that constituted the contemporary sonority, from folklore to modernism, from mass culture to experimentalism.
Keywords
popular music; cultural studies; experimental music; folk music; traditional music