1. The Death of Context Plenty of session musicians never received credit in the “golden” age of the 60s and 70s check out some documentaries about the Wrecking Crew and the Motown Musicians. Even Eric Clapton played “uncredited” on the Beatles While My Guitar Gently Weeps… Context is always fleeting, perhaps we can list every sample, microphone, guitar string vendor, pick manufacturer for posterity, interesting for engineers, but the public just wants a hit song to sing along too… With instant access to the entirety of human recorded sound (and knowledge) we now live in the land of a thousand niches. What determines value of one genre over another? Relevancy in the age of electronic distribution is nonexistent beyond personal and social opinion.
2. Commercial Radio Thank ClearChannel’s monopoly of radio markets for the death of Independent DJs and Program Directors. Radio is just another Ad-Network just like FB and Google, trading Freemium content for Advertising Revenue. Payola still runs rampant, just like the 50s…
3. The Media Suffering from the same irrelevancy in our streaming multi channel content world. Why does one Media outlet matter over another? Usually people tend to follow outlets aligned with their personal views, disregarding other outlets in search of like minded information, however narrow the sources or points of view. Much like genres of music…
4. Conflation In our pluralistic world view and global village of course we want more choice of how to spend time than a simple playlist, look there’s a list of films, tv, games, books, websites, we could also participate in. How is this a bad thing? Maybe I wasn’t really in the “mood” for music?
5. Anti Intellectualism Another Non-Issue, There’s been plenty of stupid limericks, bubble gum pop songs blue humor and fart jokes since the beginning of history. There’s also plenty of cutting edge brilliant pieces of music being made, IF you know where to source it from. Applying musical snobbery towards one genre or another is sonic classism, yes we all prefer certain styles, for various reasons, but we can also learn from other styles and cross-pollinate constantly. Case in point, Club Tracks vs Hip Hop, one is for twerking and booty grinding in the club, the later is a community voice expressing views on current events. They have context of place and purpose, No one likes fast food everyday, but it’s nice for a quick lunch once in awhile.
6. Movies & Games More musical snobbery, saying the game soundtrack is sub standard to Shostakovich, Did the game have the sort of budget to hire an A list composer? No they hired who they could afford, look a working musician! Furthermore whole genres of soundtrack music from both film and games are highly adored by generations think of the Conan The Barbarian Sndtrk or the Mario Bros Theme. The 20th Century Moving picture is our Opera, and anyone the world over can hum Star Wars. How does Shostakovich go again ??
7. Music in Schools Aww look the cute kids playing terribly on cheap instruments for their parent’s cell phone cameras, used to embarrass them when they grow up. I certainly agree music education is de-funded, however the way music speaks to people, the way music makes someone feel, the immediacy of producing a sound from your voice or instrument, does become an obsession for some of us, we love to dive down the rabbit hole which is a life long journey, Ever notice how blues musicians are all old dudes. They’ve lived life, with its full range of emotions of love, loss, success, failure, and have the tools to express themselves. That is ART!
