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1 item, 10″ x 8″, silver gelatin on paper.<\/p><\/div>\n
![\"SarahElla\"](\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl117s16\/files\/2016\/03\/SarahElla-247x300.jpg\")
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I always get a little fluttering in my chest when I meet another person who follows vocal jazz, who listens past the remastered \u2018best of\u2019 albums that pop up first on iTunes and really follows the genre. The one thing that holds me back from immediately adding them to my list of possible soulmates? Ella vs. Sarah. If they prefer Ella, I\u2019m suspicious of their taste and style. I have worked to let go of this, because I am generally outnumbered, but the thought still crosses my mind. My preference for Sarah over Ella did not develop over time, but has existed since I started listening to jazz. It\u2019s a firm belief. Why does this matter to anyone besides vocal jazz dorks? For that answer, we\u2019ll have to look to Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, two critical theorists who conceived of something called the ‘culture industry.’ First, let me describe these songs in more detail. Mr. Paginini<\/em> is a song intended for a big band format. The Decca recording of Ella features a full big band arrangement. Fitzgerald was well known for her work with big bands more than any other vocal jazz artist of the time. For listening purposes, I focused on a paired down version performed in 1961 live with a trio at a club called the Crescendo for Ella\u2019s Ella in Hollywood<\/em> album.<\/p>\n
\nTheodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s\u00a0The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception<\/em> presents a critical theory, drawing from Marxism, with chilling implications. While each paragraph of the essay could be poured over individually, each sentence revealing some new consideration, for the purposes of this post, I will discuss the ideas I found to be most pertinent to main focus: Ella vs. Sarah. The essence of Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument is that culture, through trends in mass production, has been reduced to consumption through the process of commercialization. He points to the perceived demarcation in songs, artists and even genres as superficial, having much more to do with market categorization, or as he puts it \u201cclassifying, organizing and labeling consumers,\u201d than the artistic subject matter (Adorno and Horkheimer 3). Adorno concludes that culture, across genre and medium, is essentially producing \u201cruthless unity\u201d masquerading as distinct pieces of cultural import (Adorno and Horkheimer 3). This pronouncement does not sound very good. It\u2019s downright devastating. Even though I did not want to believe Adorno, while reading his work, I began to see his point. \u00a0One experience held me back from submitting to his theory entirely.
\nIn fact, that experience concerns\u00a0my involvements with one of Adorno\u2019s least favorite musical genres, jazz. Specifically, I\u2019m going to look at Sarah Vaughan\u2019s Be Anything (Darling Be Mine)<\/em> and Ella Fitzgerald\u2019s Mr. Paginini<\/em>. Comparing two of the most famous jazz vocalists, who gained popularity around the same time, singing similar material, much could be said about their similarities as I\u2019m sure Adorno would point out. Instead, I would like to discuss how, despite such similarities, these two artists\u2019 dissimilarities, serve as a counterpoint to Adorno\u2019s assertion of the homogenizing effect of the culture industry. These two artists represent more than cogs in a system of mass production\u2014simple tools for organizing people into categories to consume. The differences, including my own personal preferences, are evidence of another dynamic.<\/p>\n