Is There Still a 'Future Music'?
The Ondes Martenot If we listened to today’s pop from the vantage of 1950, it would sound stupid and/or broken. That wasn’t the future then, at least in pop music. It was Les Paul and Mary Ford, or anyone using electric instruments. This was really the first “going electric”, and I would imagine purists hated it. The future is always in harsh un-patterened noise, that is continually self-fulfilling. Futurization of music is hard to do. Bowie was great at it because he used everything with sophistication, without resorting to pastiche. This is what Miles, Sun Ra and Ornette were doing. Jazz is still the future of music because of its natural sophistication. The past is all there waiting to be used. How do you use what Les Paul was doing and deconstruct it? Would you want to? The idea of neo-big-band is kind of exciting, but the music education armatures are missing. No one would have the skill (or attention) to play it. Musical “facadectomies” are still possible, a device b...
