Ahmet Esad Sani
20 October 2021•Update: 20 October 2021
ISTANBUL
A session on popular culture and dissent was held at the TRT World Forum 2021 on Wednesday.
This year’s forum is being held under the theme, Power and Paradox: Understanding Grand Strategy in the 21st Century.
Speaking at the session, Charles Burchell, founder of Lex Sounds, said pop music is a genre hard to define.
Burchell, also a music producer and trainer, stated that pop music consisted of a wide spectrum and noted that the genre usually indicated the periodical demands of consumers or what the record companies as well as the industry invested in.
Burchell argued that the pop music or pop culture elements were mostly part of the entertainment field and it could offer artistic expressions offering something new that would change peoples' perspective or reoffer the previous contents.
Noting that the artistic expression and entertainment industry were two separate things, he added that pop music could contain both of them.
Stephen Duncombe, a professor of Media and Culture at New York University, said there were sharp lines between the culture of elite and common people back in the day, however, this distinction has disappeared now.
Duncombe said that all people are consumers of popular culture. Some still opt to go to opera events, which he said is perceived as a bit of higher culture, but everyone are consumers of TV series, he added.
Lucy Moyse Ferreira, member of University of Arts London, said she does not agree by any means that with the distinction between high culture and low culture, and that this is a way of thinking that is left behind.
Ferreira explained that, contrary to what is often thought, the trends in the fashion field do not start with the elite wearing an outfit, they go up from the street and then luxury design houses have to adapt to them.
*Writing by Ali Murat Alhas
