Posted on 01/03/2008 8:58:33 AM PST by Milhous
All the inventive go your own way "arteests" are schlock, all the self promoting "I just want to be famous" lip synching dancers likewise, the "please identify with me" image posers, etc. There is fine original music being made today, the distinguishing marks are that it actually sounds good and the people making it are doing it because they like how it sounds themselves, and they are masters of their actual craft.
Tastes vary, those principles do no vary. Athletes worried about their salary suck, soldiers worried about PR suck, teachers worried about politics suck, etc. It is ever thus.
That sounds suspiciously like the horrific cacophony that got foisted upon me a few years ago at the Teton Music Festival. It made tears freely flow from patron dowagers in the audience. From its sheer awfulness I imagine. LOL.
Hey, I’d had enough of listening to people fight and argue over who’s music was better by my second semester in High School, so whatever floats yer boat, so long as ya dig it. Oh, and FYI, the Rock ‘n’ Roll scene has ALWAYS BEEN loud; The Who, AC/DC, and Ted Nugent all pumped upwards of 50kW through their amplifier stacks at some of their stadium concerts dating back into the 1970’s.
Mark Steyn made a searing assessment this past November in a column published right after Thanksgiving about how shallow modern music culture has become; the moderns know next to nothing of the roots of their craft, but just 50 years ago another pop artist, Benny Goodman, could pick up his clarinet and play Mozart. Find me a rapper who can do a cover of “Chatanooga Choo Choo”. Find me a death metal band that can knock out a credible rendition of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”. And lyrics? FEH! I’ve taken up listening to a lot of trance/electronica because much of it has no vocals. The modern scene is eight miles wide and a tenth of an inch deep.
That’s not to crash your case for liking a particular form of modern music, it’s just a recognition that almost none of the people making it have a cultural foundation in anything older than themselves.
It’s something to noodle on, anyway.
Here’s the link to Steyn’s column: http://newcriterion.com:81/archives/26/11/twenty-years-ago-today
All I can say is that you are missing out. The music of Clifford Brown and Max Roach is one of life’s unalloyed pleasures.
The "neo-soul" music renaissance that has revitalized soul music - with artists like D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Anthony Hamilton, Angie Stone, Gnarls Barkley - has begun as an outgrowth of hip hop and these artists are generally produced by hip hop beatmakers.
These singers favor funky, pre-disco grooves of the kind used by singers like Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway and Marvin Gaye in the early 70s - precisely the same kind of grooves most favored by East Coast hardcore hip hop producers.
Well...yeah, everyone knows that. (grin) Thanks for the lesson wide.
Interestingly, like ragtime, the composer (or as he is called now, the producer) rules hip hop and reggae.
A common phenomenon in both genres is that of different vocalists rapping, toasting or singing different songs over the same treasured instrumental backing.
Because of the high cost imposed on sampling by recording companies, the traditional hip hop practice of assembling songs from various recognizable or rare soul and jazz samples has gone by the wayside, and the most respected hip hop producers (9th Wonder, Nicolay, Madlib) now use music composed and performed - sometimes composed and performed entirely by themselves - for the track.
The one Japanese hip hop artist I listen to the most these days is DJ Krush.
The rapper Madlib, who also composes, performs and produces on his own and others' records, has put out a Blue Note jazz retrospective collection called Shades Of Blue, has performed and released his own instrumental tribute album to the work of Stevie Wonder entitled Stevie and has his own virtual jazz combo called Yesterday's New Quintet.
The rapper Declaime - also known as Dudley Perkins - has put out a couple of albums of retro-soul music, with a strong stylistic focus on Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway.
On his last album - one of the biggest-selling hip hop albums of 2006 - the rapper Nas (famously criticized by pro-choice blowhard Bill O'Reilly) featured Chrisette Michele on three songs including two singles from the album. Michele is a young vocalist who is a dedicated student of Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday, who is known as "The Ghost Of Billie" and whose backing tracks on Nas' album had some critics wondering if Nas had sampled 1950s jazz vocal tracks for his record.
Nas, by the way, is the son of Olu Dara - a trumpeter who once worked as part of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in the 1960s.
She and her band, The Dap Kings, do a great take on classic mid-60s Memphis soul.
They are not a cover band, but write their own new music in the Stax tradition.
Sharon came to prominence through the work she did for hip hop/house music producer Mark Ronson.
Oh, and I completely forgot to mention Guru - the rapper from acclaimed hip hop crew Gang Starr - has a whole series of records called Jazzmatazz (up to 4 volumes now I think) in which he raps over newly composed bop, cool and fusion jazz tracks with live instrumentation.
I disagree about Schoenberg who’s music can be beautiful if you are attuned to it. Beethoven’s music was considered ugly by many contemporaries. Even later on, Ravel and Debussy thought Beethoven had no sense of Beauty.
Ravel and Debussy weren’t contemporaries of Beethoven they lived about a century later. Vaughan Williams also didn’t care for Beethoven. They’re relativists? Beethoven’s music is stirring and powerful but lacking in what they used to signify musical beauty (wrapping the senses in Elysium). He can crude and charmless.
Your approval is not required for this to be true.
I know some people will consider this racist but America has let African-Americans dictate our tastes in music, fashion, culture and language for the past 20 years. When can whites get our culture back? Sure, white culture was a bit dorky but it wasn’t particularly violent, misogynist or self-glorifying.
I realize some African-Americans reject the “ghetto chic” and some whites buy into it so this isn’t all about race. But blacks are front and center in the rapping, gang-banging, drug-thug, mumbling, Nike-dressed, need-some-respeck culture and I think America would be far better off if it could crawl back under its rock.
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