Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
The End of Music
Does anyone else think that music has really cheapened over the past few decades? I had a thought last night; J.S. Bach has been dead for almost 300 years, but people still listen to play, listen, transcribe, and enjoy his music. What music from our time will people listen to in the year 2300? Hell, what music do people still listen to that was popular 10 years ago?
I just think that most modern music, and for that matter, modern movies and modern art, is just plain shabby. Movies are terribly predictable and involve about 4 or 5 stock plot lines, not to mention that heavily political overtones in most of them.
Modern art is simply worthless, and I hold the most contempt for it out of all the things I've mentioned. Beauty is not valued at all. Only newness and "difference" is, as if that mattered. The Virgin Mary in jars of urine? Throwing paint off ladders and onto a canvas? Squiggly lines? What am I looking at? I'm sorry, but if I can't tell what I'm looking at, there's a good chance that it's not art. But that's just me.
I just think that most modern music, and for that matter, modern movies and modern art, is just plain shabby. Movies are terribly predictable and involve about 4 or 5 stock plot lines, not to mention that heavily political overtones in most of them.
Modern art is simply worthless, and I hold the most contempt for it out of all the things I've mentioned. Beauty is not valued at all. Only newness and "difference" is, as if that mattered. The Virgin Mary in jars of urine? Throwing paint off ladders and onto a canvas? Squiggly lines? What am I looking at? I'm sorry, but if I can't tell what I'm looking at, there's a good chance that it's not art. But that's just me.
0
Comments
The garbage shown on ABCs' Good Morning America this Thanksgiving morning is a case in point. Go ahead, make the Muslim world condemn us; feature a woman singer with skirt one eighth inch below her symphysis pubis on national TV! Just watch her sing!
Not that it's any exception to the usual excesses, but still I wanna cry and say, "This is not my people."
Art transports, it does not titillate.
We're going down the drain, the media be praised!
Classical: Berg, Schoenberg, Stravinsky. Glass or Adams maybe. Piazzolla definitely.
Jazz: Bird, 'Trane, Monk, Mile's better stuff, Jim Hall (I'm a guitarist. I'm biased.) Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins.
Latin: Piazzolla again, possibly some of his imitators like Ziegler and Possetti. Possibly Baden-Powell's and Nara Leao's recordings, and if they're not playing Pixinguinha's compositions it can only mean that there's no joy left in the world. Mexican son jaropo and son huasteco. Cuban son mantuno and it's off shoots.
Misc: B. B. King. Bob Marley. Amalia Rodrigues.
Get off your butt and start looking for good music. You're surrounded by it.
Popular with who? Rita Ribeiro, Guinga, Rossa Passos, La Chicana, Juanjo Dominguez, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, Aterceopelados, Ruben Blades, Luis Vargas, Susana Baca, Skatalites, Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Pepe & the Bottle Blonds, Lila Downs, Los Mocosos, Manuel Galban, Robert Cray, Cafe Tocvba, Ozomatli, Bobi Cepedes, Youssou n'Dour, Bela Fleck, Klezmatics.
Define "popular" as something other than what's played on corporate radio stations where the music programming is done at corporate headquarters, and you've got a world of good popular music that was being made 10 years ago.
When was it ever different? Hollywood movies have huge budgets, and in order to recoup the money, they have to go with whatever will sell the most tickets. That leaves them with a choice of about 7 stars and 5 plots, or Pixar.
It's easy to make fun of something by picking the worst examples and ignoring the good. Someone once wrote that good criticism doesn't seek out the bad, but seeks out the beautiful in whatever form it takes and makes you believe in it.
And in closing:
"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
Do wah do wah do wah do wah do wah do wah do wah."
They just don't write 'em like that any more.
Those pesky "uncultured masses"! Let them eat cake I say!
Back when only wealthy, highly educated people could read there actually was not many books, and certainly little to no fiction.
Haha. I really didn't think I'd get impassioned responses about music. I did not foresee the debate shifting to economics and how social statuses affected our quality of music.
There are two types of music, good and bad – Duke Ellington.
So are you interested in the music subject or was it a way of laughing at people when they are drawn into a heated debate by an opinionated comment? If i may be drawn in a smigeon - ignorance breeds hate. You hate modern art...Now i'm laughing
Have you ever heard of the Classics?!?! Ever heard of The Victorian Era?!?!? Literacy rates didn't climb until the 20th century.
Check out the 19th century on this list.
The Iiad 8th Century BCE
The Divine Comedy 1321
Don Quixote 1605
Henry VII 1613
Paradise Lost 1667
Robinson Crusoe 1719
Gulliver's Travels 1726
Well I don't think I'm ignorant of modern art. I've seen plenty of it. I just happen to think it's garbage by and large.
Literacy rates were around 50% in 1800 (in the developed world) and there was plenty to read.
Sorry KOB - was a bit grumpy yesterday i think! So a new avatar then? i feel a long response coming on. brace yourself!
The point i was making was that perhaps beauty is in the eye of the beholder (cliche but true maybe). There will be some out there who think modern art is very wonderful and meaningful for them. To dismiss it all as garbage is to dismiss their right to define what is wonderful and meaningful to them- who made us in charge of beauty? This is my idea of pluralism and Thien Buddhism seems to also work with it - there is no one right and wrong but infinite perspectives.
I know what you mean about modern art as sometimes when i see an art installation (rarely!) i see pretension and a mind-game rather than expression. However i would try to say - 'i don't get it' rather than 'i don't get it so it therefore must be meaningless and therefore worthless'. My sister's an artist and i think if i found out she has made the aardvark umrella stand art I'd just seen i might say to her 'i don't get it'. If she told me what went into it i might change my mind. Perhaps modern art could be accused of being elitist, or perhaps we could be accused of having lazy non interactive attitudes to how art should be presented.
I had this discussion with my brother who believes you must work with absolute values in the world otherwise you cannot make meaning out of anything. We compared Mozart to Kylie Minogue
Bonkers post but enetertaining i hope:crazy:
I wonder if there is a place for 'pop music' and 'Miles Davis'. I know when i was a kid i could only palate certain food and music was similar. Play me jazz then and I'd hate it, like i hated mushrooms too. Now i love Miles and love mushroom sauce too. There has always been music for the masses and music for the connosseurs even way back in the day. Shakespeare seemed to be able to be both popular, accessible and quality -how did he manage that?:eekblue:
I don't know how he did it then, but he wouldn't have managed it today. Who reads Shakespeare now?
Sure there's a place for crap and a place for quality, but as you mentioned, appreciation for the latter requires a maturity that many people aren't given the opportunity to or don't have the desire to obtain.
Yes. I love Shakespeare, but I rarely come across anyone who feels the same way. Shakespeare is now read primarily (and almost exclusively) by students who are being compelled to do so.
There is art in everything, you only have to look to find it. Music is beautiful in so many different contexts. Music is complicated in so many different ways. Music is music in so many different ways.
Music hasn't "cheapened" it's only changed, which is what it's supposed to do over hundreds of years. If you can't find the art and beauty in anything produced today it's because you aren't looking or don't want to find it.
Beauty is everywhere, even in shit. (I don't think the Buddha said that but he should have.)
Quote of the decade!
I listen to alot of music from alot of eras and genres. Each genre has some amazing artists, and some crappy ones. I don't think it is appropriate to judge all music in such a general way.
Eminem? Really? Rhymes about the difficulties of being rich and famous and name-dropping that only makes sense if you watched Entertainment Tonight in the last week, all spouted over a sampled beat? Like most pop music, Eminem's output is highly contextual. It won't make any sense to people decades from now.
We cannot expect a Buddha to come in every generation so why should we expect a Bach or a Bethoven to come forth.
One should also bear in mind that many great artists are not recognized as such in their own lifetime. It takes a while for the cream to rise to the top.
Palzang
When it comes down to it most art is contextual. Who today really understands who Giovanni di Buiamonte was? No one apart from a handful of scholars I'd wager. But that doesn't lessen the works of Dante Alighieri any.
Oh, and speaking of: Dante was another writer who intended his work for the unsophisticated masses, which is why he chose to write it in the vulgar Italian tongue rather than the more high-brow Latin.
It may not make sense decades from now, but it will sure shed light on a portion of the state of American culture during it's time.
Sonny Rollins is eternal.
Many artistic greats could hardly afford to eek out a living during their lifetimes because nobody liked or appreciated it. But decades or centuries later - their art is finally appreciated to ridiculous lengths. So.... was their art at that time "modern crap"?
I wonder if Morris Dancers ridiculed or laughed in disdain at the modern antics of Beethovan?
What about when our modern music becomes "classic".
Not too long ago, I heard Zeppelin's 'That's The Way' done in Muzak style while shopping in a grocery store.
I think they're well on their way to becoming the Bach's of our day.
-bf