In comparing French debates over their country’s musical identity between 1870-1920, I see similarities between Cocteau’s style of writing – in which he uses seemingly disjunct metaphors and fragments of explanations – and certain styles of pop music today in which artists often convey their beliefs in brief musical phrases and perhaps metaphorical lyrics. In both contexts, the author’s message is not entirely clear at the beginning, but over time it reveals itself to the audience as the author adds more clues. I also see traits of pop music today aligning with Milhaud’s descriptions of “French music” of the late 18- and early 1900s. His statements include “express[ing] one’s self with…conciseness” and composing with “proportion and design” (The Evolution of Modern Music in Paris and in Vienna, p.3). Today’s average pop song is crafted within the a standard verse-chorus structure, which confines the songwriter to conveying their ideas through the lyrics very concisely as they have only a few syllables per musical line. A lot of today’s pop music also focuses heavily on expressing emotions, a point which Ravel touches on. He explains that “sensitiveness and emotion constitute the real content of a work of art,” and I feel that this sentiment applies well to the purpose of songwriting in the musical pop world today — particularly stemming from current political debates and social struggles.
I feel that Ravel’s concepts of “racial consciousness” and “national consciousness” are relatable today, but not in the way in which he tries to apply it to countries. It seems as though Ravel’s definitions come from a framework where a nation equals one racial group — his terms are defined by physical borders. Today, especially in the diverse melting pot of the U.S., I would argue that we do still grapple with concepts of racial and national consciousness — but today’s social-cultural ideologies are based in a framework of looser cultural boundaries that are less reliant on geographically-outlined borders. The movement of defining “French music” and having nationalism seems to be focused on France as a nation, while today we have musical groups that identify with multiple cultures and geographic areas (for example, in my global musics class last semester, we studied the migration aspect of music — Lila Downs crafted an American-Mexican mixed-style medley of “Pastures of Plenty” and “This Land Is Your Land” in order to speak to her ethnically-mixed immigrant audience in Mexico).