There have been continual attempts throughout the history of popular music to make a claim for itself as art rather than as popular culture, and a number of music styles that were previously understood as "popular music" have since been categorized in the art or classical category. Academic Tim Wall has argued that the most significant example of the struggle between
Tin Pan Alley, African-American, vernacular, and art discourses was in
jazz. As early as the 1930s, artists attempted to cultivate ideas of "symphonic jazz", taking it away from its perceived vernacular and black American roots. Histories of popular music have since tended to marginalize jazz, Wall wrote in 2013. During the second half of the century, there was a large-scale trend in American culture toward blurring the boundaries between art and
pop music.
Progressive music may be equated with explicit references to aspects of art music, sometimes resulting in the reification of rock as art music. While
progressive rock is often cited for its merging of
high culture and
low culture, few artists incorporated literal classical themes in their work to any great degree, as author Kevin Holm-Hudson explains: "sometimes progressive rock fails to integrate classical sources ... [it] moves continuously between explicit and implicit references to genres and strategies derived not only from European art music, but other cultural domains (such as East Indian, Celtic, folk, and African) and hence involves a continuous aesthetic movement between
formalism and
eclecticism". ==See also==