Perfect Beat v5 n3 July 2001 THE DOMAIN OF SONGWRITERS Towards defining the term 'Song' PHILIP MciNTYRE INTRODUCTION M ihalYi Csikszentmihalyi contends that creativity can be seen as a system that can be studied by investigating moment s within it (Csikszenunihulyi in Sternberg. 1988: 325-338). He expounds an idea of creativity lhat incorpornl es what he labels person. field and domain in a system of circular causality. Tbe three functional areas in this systems model of crea- tivity can also be described as the individual involved in the process, the social organisation that works with the symbol system, and the information contained in th e symbol system itself. Csikszentmihalyi asserlS that the information the person uses in their creative activity has been stored in the symbol system of the culture, in it s customary practices, the specific language and notation of the "domain" (tbat is the conventions. rules and ideas the person has access to). It is the task of the ·person to produce some variation in this inherited information or domain (Csikszclltmihalyi, 1996). In relation to contemporary westcrn popular music, a songwriter can be sccn as the pcrson who instigates the creative work known as a song. They draw on the specific domain of songwriting, which is a subset of the domain of music. For the western contemporary popular music songwriter work- ing predominantly in ute Anglo-American popular music tradition, lhe western harmonic system. music notation, song structure and lyric construction and all ils conventions arc significum pans of the domain. or symbol system, of this form of songwriling. If, as Csikszentmihalyi's model suggests, what a song is has a direct relationship to what a songwriter does then it would be pertinent to investigate these song- writers' domain, that is, what constitutcs the symbol system that western con- temporary popular music songwriters manipulate. But the very term 'song', once Porfed. Beat lI:I:I .... s n3 July 2001 Mcintyre investigated, becomes problematic. When a precise and workable definition for the thousands of musical works heard on the radio, on CD, and in film, is sought, this supposedly solid entity becomes decidedly slippery and abstract. Copyright law won 't tell us precisely. The anglo-american based popular music industry thut depends on those copyright laws guards it s rights ti ghtly in relution to song- writing and there arc indications that the audiences for songs also have a wide- ranging concept of what may constitute a song. Importantly, musicians who denl with songs every day usually work with WI assumed but increasingly elastic definition. COMPONENTS OF THE SYMBOL SYSTEM Herbert Read makes lhe assertion in his book The Origins OJ Fonll ill Art, thal art is humanity'S ability "to separnte form from the swirling chuos of his [sic] sensations, and to contemplate that form in its uniqueness" (1965: 7). It follows fr om this observation that, in order to be comprehensible, culture must be organ- ised in such a way as to enable communication 10 occur. Culture in this light can th en be secn as organised sensory experience. Musical experiences, for example. are our experiences of organised sound. Within these musical expericnces there arc many forms, one of which is the song. Conversely. not all music could be c1assificd as a song. Form then, in many ways, is a model, a pattern or a con- ceptual scheme that delineates one way of organising sensory experience from another. In other words, for popular music, form is the basic shape or organisa- ti on of Ute musical components or structural elements that defines a song as a song and differentiates it from o th er musical forms. According to James Tenney: ... the song/dance model is manifested at the large-Jonll level primarily ill the orderly recurrence of sections (supported of co urse at the lower levels by all the basic cOllvemiolJs of pre-twentieth cel/- wry music) ... It has largely disappeared Jrom cOl/cert I1Ilfsic, remailling primarily ollly ill papillar genres alld fl/nctional /III/sic. (in Vinton, 1974: 246) Professional songwriters Ray a nd Leary also contend that: "the division of a song into its separate parts, and the repetition of those parts in a parlicular order. are the song's form" (1989: 2). In addition, John Braheny, in The Craft alld Business oJ SOllglVriti/lg, stat es that the fonn of the popular song refers to the way the text is put togcther, the way it is consU1Jcted (1988: 61-71). He th en goes on to outline the vn ri ous forms currently in use by popular songwriters. These not only include, amongst others, the ternary form derived from the European tradition and favoured by pre-war composers bm also the verse/chorus forms typical of African-derived musics. It can be argued that it is the use of these forms that, in mWIy ways, sets the limits on the length of the work, an importunt but critical distinguishing factor, without discounting the determining factors associated with ule requirements of song lengul from corrunercial radio. However simply know- ing the current forms and lenglhs of the popular song does not indicate precisely the variety of elements lilat constitute a songwriter'S domain. Perfect Boat vS n3 July 2001 = "