O behold the 'unfortunate genre' of song-writing : an enquiry into the artistic craft of Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen

Abstract

Song, an essentially instinctual practice, had been understood as a medium of convergence for millennia before the various academic disciplines started to acknowledge its inter-connective wealth and consider its potential social and cultural significance. Because of its very nature, songwriting in particular stands as an undisputed contender for study in the field of literary comparative studies; and the ever increasing number of academics devoted almost entirely to the study of song creation and production, may be taken as proof of the field's own legitimacy. However, one who is inclined to attempt a deeper analysis of the medium might consider taking his/her cue from this very distinctiveness which singing-songwriting exhibits as a genre. This dissertation, in complete awareness of the discipline's recent standing and in the spirit of the very study it aims to carry out, chooses to take from and develop further both academic and less academic theses and concepts; and in so doing, opens up a space for some crucial questions-a space which itself stands to be questioned. Structurally, the dissertation goes through an introductory movement into an encounter with the ever inspiring 'ballad form' and further on moves towards a confrontation of the Bloomian concept of the singer-songwriters' 'anxiety of influence'; a self-conscious position in time and space which has them wrestling for an 'individual talent' within several 'traditions'. In this section, particular attention will be given to the study of Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen's relations to each other's work and their respective 'sense of history'. By the fourth chapter, Bloom's and T.S. Eliot's models are found to be an inadequate representation for Cave and Cohen who in an age of specialization, bridge over to other media to enrich their oeuvre and justify their 'unfortunate genre'. The principally poetic model is also found to be inadequate for a possible new singer-songwriting critical practice, and the dissertation turns to a closer study of Cohen and Cave's 'crafting' of love songs, the explicit parallels to Barthes' concept of the 'lover's discourse' and Federico Garcia Lorca' s study of the 'Duende' in art. The concluding movement takes the shape of a discussion of the inescapability and value of 'cliche' in art; and moves on towards a consideration of the singer-songwriter's 'exploitation' of the authorial powers of fusion and amalgamation that the (possibly) postmodern times we live in, seem to not only allow but encourage. Ultimately, though the dissertation respects its requirements for relative closure, its status is undeniably that of a hopefully just preamble and of an opening up to potentially deeper investigation on the largely marginalized singing-songwriting practices.