单项选择题
Early attempts to appreciate popular music concentrated almost exclusively
on the American scene. For example, the music critic Adorno focused his
analysis on the cultural hegemony achieved by the ruling classes through the
Line manipulation of musical semiotics in rapidly developing forms of mass
(5) communication. The primacy of American forms on radio and record at this time
was pronounced, but it seems unfortunate that Adorno, in particular,
concentrated his gaze exclusively on the most commercial forms of mainstream
pop, ignoring counter-cultural developments within the USA, such as blues,
jazz and gospel, or without. Although he was writing into the sixties, the
(10) explosion of rock ’n’ roll and the proliferation of forms that it yielded seem not
to have affected him, nor that of the rapid development of a radically different
form of popular music in the Caribbean, such as Calypso. His trenchant analysis
offered much in understanding the hegemony and manipulation of meaning in
advanced capitalist societies, but less laudable is his tendency to perceive
(15) popular music as an exclusively American form, and as monolithic and
undifferentiated.
(A) Adorno failed to account for rock ’n’ roll as a musical form largely because it wasn’t commercial enough.
(B) His methodology was advanced on the whole, but failed to take into account enough categories of music to be comprehensive.
(C) Adorno ignored non-pop music largely because he felt its cultural influence was negligible.
(D) Adorno’s greatest failure was in ignoring the music of non-capitalist societies.
(E) Adorno’s work was near-sighted largely because it focused on the primacy of radio and record, ignoring less popular means of transmitting music.