The Popular Song and Entropy | American Dance Bands

In Physics, one of the Laws of Thermodynamics theorizes that as complex systems age, they exhibit increasing “entropy”, that is, their elements become more and more disorganized. For instance, as a gas cools, the paths of its ions exhibit increasingly random and unpredictable behavior.

The popular song appears to be exhibiting entropic tendencies.

The American popular song was invented for singing, then for dancing. During its evolution from Stephen Foster’s time to the present it has become so disorganized that the concept of a “song” has devolved into a collection of noises – rhythmic, but disorganized.

Take the “standard” 32-bar pop song, promulgated from the 1920s to provide music for social dancing: fox-trot, waltz, and other steps. It traditionally followed a rigid format of AABA or ABAB, each letter representing an 8-bar segment. A 32-bar song conveniently fit into the 3 minutes provided on a 78-rpm record, with 2 to 4 choruses played, depending on tempo.

The performance of this music was by musicians and singers who read the music score and maintained the appropriate time, provided by a leader or conductor. Groups of musicians varied from a soloist to dance bands of up to 20 personnel. By the 1920s the larger units had grouped into ”sections” of similar instruments. The elements of an arrangement were melody, chords, rhythm, and lyrics.

As related by Artie Shaw and others, many instrumentalists and vocalists. tired of the commercial approach to music – according to the notes – and began to improvise or “jazz-up” the music. At first they played around the written melody. As time progressed, starting in the late ‘40s, they dropped the melody completely and improvised around the chords. “Bop” music was created in this way. Vocal improvisation frequently ignored the actual lyrics. In each case – vocal and/or instrumental soloists – the greater the level of improvisation, the “hipper” or “cooler” the musician was considered. ”Rock” music – heavily employing amplified string instruments – further de-emphasized the ensemble. And since each group tended to write their own songs, in time the roles of composer and musician became merged.

Further disorganization was facilitated by the introduction of the long-playing record, tape recording, and the CD – each of which allowed a composer, musician or singer to completely abandon the structure of a traditional song, or to improvise in “free-form”, frequently with no reference to chord-structure and little time constraint.

Also the amalgamation of the traditional pop song with elements of ethnic, country, soul and other music further induced variation to the formula.

Thus, in a little over 50 years, the generic popular “song” has disorganized into a sort of cacophony through the partial loss of three organizing elements: cohesive melody, chord structure and lyrics – thus exhibiting a sort of entropy. What is left is typically rhythm-based (or in Harold Arlen’s words: “percussive”) or somewhat atonal music.

It may be noted that classical music – to an extent – has undergone entropy, at least in melodic and rhythmic structure: “modern” music seems to be atonal and arrhythmic.

This subject brings to mind a Sid Caesar TV sketch where the bandleader, played by Caesar in a “bopper” beret and glasses, introduced one member of his combo as “playing radar – to tell us when we get too close to the melody.”