The Death of Music

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My current feeling is that music is clinically dead but still alive in our cultural consciousness (or our collective unconsciousness) that is--music as a commodity has died, but music itself and the effect it has on us is still profound. 

I have become resigned to the notion that music has been dying a slow death since the advent of equal-temperament in the 17th century, and it has become less relevant to making music as we know it.
Equal-temperament is essentially the "operating system" of everything we do with tonal music, at least from a rudimentary standpoint. But in the late 20th Century, (post-1965) music gradually became more of a collage art, with appropriated pieces quickly assembled and placed in ironic contexts and juxtapositions (techniques borrowed from the visual arts). Whereas craft was more of a cornerstone of the creation of works of art, someone got the idea that art should also have cleverness, or what I have sometimes referred to as the "fourth dimension" of art, i.e. the ideas suffused in the art, but not always reflected in the surface. Of course one cannot deny that classical music also had a blithe streak, and one could cite examples from Bach, Beethoven or even Berg where they took a break from dour music-making. But today, the quintessential definition of a true composer of music, is one that can collage together loops, sound samples and readymade textures, not melodies, chords and rhythms. The true suffering for one's art is not by these noble means, but rather by prefabbed concoctions, or found sounds snatched by license set forth by the "Creative Commons". While it is a nice idea that we can share-alike, the upshot is that the average listener attributes what they hear as being created by one person (f/k/a The Composer), when in fact it is a collage like one would make from magazine clippings, or like finger-paintings made in under an hour. Some artists actually make brilliant work very quickly, but they do it using the artistic eye and the use of cunning strategies that play on our perceptions. And one has to wonder when people will tire of "finger painting" from "Sunday" artists. It's not so much about the actual retinal effects of the work, but rather the fame that goes with having your name associated with something hung in a gallery. Or chalking it up to a life accomplishment, like taking piano lessons and not continuing with it--but saying that you did it and can file away another regret. 

This brings to mind a song by the band Art Brut titled "Formed a Band". This is a very clever work of self-reference that seems to be saying in essence: "We can't write songs that well, or sing that well--and don't even classify ourselves as musicians, but look at us-- We formed a band!"

Formed a band
We formed a band
Look at us
We formed a band

Honey pie, I don't know when it started
Just stop buying your albums from the supermarkets
They only sell things that have charted
And Art Brut? Well we've only just started

And yes, this is my singing voice
It's not irony, and it's not rock and roll
I'm just talking
To the kids

I want to be the boy
The man who writes the song
That makes Israel and Palestine
Get along

I'm gonna write a song
As universal as Happy Birthday
That's gonna make sure
That everybody knows
That everything's gonna be ok
I'm gonna take that song
And we're gonna play it
Eight weeks in a row on Top of the Pops

Dye your hair black
Never look back
My past is my business
 

There are hundreds of bands that are essentially playing this song, going through the same motions of fame-seeking without the baggage of having to be actually put in the time and effort to become a true musician or artist. But the irony is that this is actually a good song, at least in its avant-garde, dadaist spirit.
 

Dumb is the new smart

For the sake of argument, let's say we are now living in America 2.0 ("2.0"). Art is made primarily as social adhesive, binding creativity to emotional intelligence. America 1.0 still had the element of art for art's sake, whereby art was made to be retinal (or choclear as in music). The 2.0 environment appears to exploit the evolutionary and survival aspects of art-data, not just the surface elements. Surface elements such as color, shape and texture, or melody, harmony and rhythm have continued to be relegated to "outside" elements, as surface elements are a cheap and plentiful commodity, taken with boat-loads of cheap digital cameras and recording software. What is more important now are the emergent properties of social interaction at the foreground, with the art a mere backdrop or stage curtain. People dancing to lo-fi game-boy music on a stage with major works of art printed on stage curtains, or as digital prints on canvas. In 2.0, the dynamic has become more Darwinian, whereby people gravitate to ideals that promote social status, such as having lots of virtual "friends", and promoting the dregs of the art world to the apex of social value on YouTube (Toto, I don't think were in the Enlightenment anymore...)

Art seems to be used as a vehicle to gain some other value. For instance, recordings of songs are now give-aways that come with the purchase of other items such as T-shirts (souvenirs of souvenirs), concert and sport-event tickets, Starbucks beverages. In fact, recordings are for all intents and purposes,mere coffee mugs. In essence, all music is becoming Ambient--pushed to the background and you can make it foreground if you want.

 

This phenomenon is not unique to the music world. In the book, Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink, he states, "Eating in America has little to do with hunger and more to do with family and friends, packages and plates, names and numbers, labels and lights, colors and candles, shapes and smells, distractions and distances and cupboards and containers" Ergo, we are more focused on the outside elements rather than the core intrinsic characteristics of something or someone. We are still interested in essences, but they have become junior to social bonding or loyalty to one's raw red-state or blue-state affiliation.If one is red-state, it is OK to care less about installing window air conditioners in the stained-glass casement windows of a Frank Lloyd Wright home, for example ("You can't see through the damn things and it's too damn hot anyway!") The owner might justify this by mere virtue of the fact that they own it and can do as they please. Aesthetics or cultural importance are not necessarily sacrosanct, and have no strict intrinsic value, as in The Enlightenment. Being enlightened is so gay!! (or effete, a word whose use has somehow become viral) What is important now is social comfort, and being feeling woven into the fractal iterated rules of emergence--young girls, thinking in graceful lock-step, like a school of fish, or a flock of birds. Being smart in one's own brain is not as crucial to being imaged into the social brain (The Matrix)

 

TBC...