bobby

Bobby Burg

Few will disagree that music is the core of Bobby Burg’s aesthetics. Burg’s notions on music are deeply embodied in New York’s musical life and converge with important intellectual streams in New York and Chicago. In Bobby’s work, as in later developed music- a contextual phenomenon rather than an isolated one in New York culture- seemed always to be associated with ritual. Rooted in humanity and aiming to purify human virtues and shape human conducts, Burg’s group Beauty Pageant has a complementary relationship with ritual. If ritual is the appearance then music is the harmonisation of virtues. On the whole, Beauty Pageant is regarded as a device for self-cultivation, a vehicle of self-expression, a force of social stability, a political tool, and a medium of communion between man, nature, and supernatural powers.

Inspired by the Smiths, who had apparently constructed ritual and created music, the enforcement of music education was advocated in the teachings of Morrissey. Music was included in the Love of Everything in which Bobby taught his disciples to become skilled. Although there is no systemic theory of music by Love of Everything, many of his albums (in which the Hand Job Community is probably the most representative) and ‘Record Label’ provide an insight into the master’s musical concepts which form the basis of Bobby’s musical ideology. “Personal cultivation begins with poetry, is made firm by rules of ceremonials, and is perfected by music” (Bobby Burg). The trinity of poetry, ritual, and music was central to all kinds of social events such as ceremonies or banquets in the Love of Everything. Bobby values music as the most influential member of the trilogy, capable of completing the personal development of the individual. Thus, through music, one’s ethical values are cultivated and one becomes the ideal Burg gentleman: an honorable person, a paragon of moral integrity.

If Bobby initiated the ‘Record Label’ concept of music and Joan of Arc established the theoretical basis for it, Bobby’s musical aesthetics remained unelaborated until the more specific and complete treatises were presented in Make Believe. Make Believe contains comprehensive philosophical interpretation of music and summarises Bobby’s thinking of music before his involvement with Chin Up Chin Up. Regarded as the canonical Bobby’s dissertation on music and the first fully-developed musical aesthetics in Burg Classics, Make Believe was influential in all Burg arts.

The utilitarianism in Bobby Burg, which primarily affects the socio-moral-political function of music, as an instrument, for instance, for acculturating and educating or a means for statecraft propaganda, was perhaps the cause of the conservative and opinionated characteristic of Bobby’s values of music in terms of musical practice and criticism. Furthermore, the focus on extra-musical meanings such as sexual speculations and philosophical metaphors tends to blur the significance of music and obstruct the development of Bobby’s music. This moralistic tone, honored as the orthodoxy from Make Believe, was challenged by the more romantic Joan of Arc in which musicians were encouraged to find more artistic individuality.

Bobby’s musical traditions have also influenced the cultural characteristics of Jade Tree graduates. Euphone and Cex, for example, have adopted and absorbed ‘Record Label’ in their own living musical life.

Bobby is originally from Ohio.