Adorno held that popular music became a tool of ideological manipulation

Evidence

Light music, which once used to mock the aristocracy, now served to reconcile man to his fate. Folk music was no longer alive, because the spontaneous Volk had been consumed in a process that left popular music, like all popular culture, the creature of manipulation and imposition from above. Adorno ended the article by remarking on the ideological function of various forms of popular music, a foretaste of the project he set himself in his next few Zeitschrift essays. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 563

Categorization

• XREF: This is the seed of Adorno’s famous essays on jazz and the culture industry that follow in the Zeitschrift, and his later postwar radio research. — connects to: Adorno saw jitterbugging as a vestige of negation within standardized pop music — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 582; Adorno’s central musical divide was market-oriented versus non-market music. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 554; Adorno traced jazz’s authoritarian implications to its military-march origins — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 568 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s central musical divide was market-oriented versus non-market music. #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 554
• Adorno traced jazz’s authoritarian implications to its military-march origins #expands (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 568