smoe.org mailing lists
ivan@stellysee.de
| From | synthhtnys@comcast.net |
| Subject | Re: Caution, May Induce Vomiting. |
| Date | Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:36:03 +0000 |
[Part 1 text/plain (3.9 kilobytes)]
(View Text in a separate window)
I'm always baffled by grand pronouncements that the "good music era" is over.
No one ever phrases it like this:
"I like the music of that era the best and there's not much chance that particular style of music will come back."
It's always that "good music is over" line which strikes me as terribly myopic....
Actually it says more about the person saying it than it does the state of music.
-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Donnie" <largro13@yahoo.com>
> I think the ten year gap the you refer to, since the mid-1990s is
> very real. And I don't know if it will ever be totally fixed. Sure,
> there will be great musicians/song-writers again; but I think it will
> take a cultural change or a cultural realization for creativity to go
> back to the levels that have been witnessed in the past.
>
> Kids nowadays have a lot of other things fighting for their time.
> And I don't know that they have an opportunity to have the
> introspective moments that lead to writing great music, painting
> great paintings, or writing great novels that previous generations
> had. Video games take up a great deal of the their introspective
> time. And then texting takes away a lot of what would have been
> introspective time when I was growing up. In fact many modern young
> people are way over-addicted to texting and spend way, way too much
> time doing it. In fact, texting allows them to know the most minute
> things about their friends that my generation got by just find
> without knowing. With texting, Modern teens are more likely to know
> the last time that a friend sneezed, washed their hair, or took a
> shit, than they are to have time to pick up a guitar and write a
> great song.
>
> I also believe that 'sampling' and 'catering to the lowest common
> denominator' have lowered the quality of music. Sure you can sample
> someone else's great song from the past and have a huge hit. But can
> you write something yourself that's great and will move people?
>
> And then the things that pass for lyrics in modern pop music? I was
> lifting weight yesterday. And a couple of young, college age guys
> had arrived at the gym first and commandeered the stereo. They were
> playing rap or whatever they call it now. And the lyrics: it seemed
> like it was 80-percent the slang word for sexual intercourse and the
> derogatory word for African-Americans! I worked out for an hour and
> a half, and heard maybe 10 or 12 songs; and I don't know, but I would
> have guessed the title of most of them to have been: "F**k N*gg*s".
> And the bad thing is that these songs weren't being sung by the KKK
> or some hate group; it was actually African-Americans singing things
> that were derogatory to themselves. I don't 'get' that?
>
>
> --- In audities@yahoogroups.com, synchro1 wrote:
> >
> > I'm a true-blue boomer (1953 vintage) and I can understand the
> sentiment and agree with the observation the music we hear in our
> impressionable adoloscence becomes a time-stamp we rarely escape.
> >
> > But, I think a strong argument may be made that the true zenith of
> American musical accomplishment is the injection of African-American
> influences into all realms of "popular" American music between 1920 -
> 1970.
> >
> > I consider the greatest contribution to the world from the US to be
> American Jazz - the music came out of the African expatriate
> experience and cross-cultural melding in the deep south. Blues,
> honky-tonk, Gershwin, Stephen Foster, Copland, Presley, Fats Domino,
> Miles, Perkins, Ella, Aretha, Sly, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Disco,
> Philly Soul - it just goes on and on. Although I believe it has
> suffered a horrible decline since the mid-90s and I find recent rap,
> hip-hop, and urban idioms to be a pale shadow of what came before. I
> am not sure if that is me being nostalgic and close-minded or a real
> ( and hopefully temporary) gap.
> >
>
>
>
For assistance, please contact
the smoe.org administrators.