Understanding a "bit": Tostaky by Noir Dési

Abstract

How can one analyze a "bit", i.e. music sold to a large audience with the support of the contem­porary music industry with its technical and financial resources? The academic prejudice against the seerningly common and coarse must first be overcome. One must recognize that the meaning of a song, or an album, must be looked for not only in the lyrics, but also in the sound itself and the meaning it acquires. The acquisition of meaning involves the collective action of the nume­rous listeners; it is nevertheless obvious and particularly easy to observe within the transitional discourse of the media'. In this paper we propose to decode the meaning of an album, Noir Désir's Tostaky, a best seller since its release in 1992. We will combine musical analysis and a study of magazines and newspapers, the latter demonstrating that musical meaning is construc­ted with both compositional choices and ways of conceiving and perceiving these choices.