Old and Neo
When something becomes too difficult and not worth pursuing, we often take the easy way. Rock ‘n’ Roll was an easy way of obviating music education. Audio art, once a sub-department of Music, had revolutionized pop music over forty years ago, as a kind of easy way of being a musician by saying you were really a non-musician by nonchalance, implying that music education was passe, and your main instrument was the studio.
These tropes always repeat themselves, when old ways of doing things have enough nostalgic energy to make them resurface in the future as traditional Music, with the “Neo” label. (Again as coy nonchalance, i.e. “I’m not really a musician, but I am really, just in this new way).
“Post” and “neo” labels are too easy to use to obfuscate the reality that it’s really not neo, and stripping away the labels. If you want to turn music back to a raw “three-chord” state, just put the focus on the music rather than its production and see what happens. If you can play music stripped down to its rudiments (including words), then it can be Music. Otherwise it is audio art. Both can stand alone as Art, but adding post/neo prefixes is almost the same as the new iPhone version, that is mostly the same with little tweaks. Same thing with pronouncements that certain forms are “dead”. That’s just sour grapes. There’s always a next one or a revival.
These tropes always repeat themselves, when old ways of doing things have enough nostalgic energy to make them resurface in the future as traditional Music, with the “Neo” label. (Again as coy nonchalance, i.e. “I’m not really a musician, but I am really, just in this new way).
“Post” and “neo” labels are too easy to use to obfuscate the reality that it’s really not neo, and stripping away the labels. If you want to turn music back to a raw “three-chord” state, just put the focus on the music rather than its production and see what happens. If you can play music stripped down to its rudiments (including words), then it can be Music. Otherwise it is audio art. Both can stand alone as Art, but adding post/neo prefixes is almost the same as the new iPhone version, that is mostly the same with little tweaks. Same thing with pronouncements that certain forms are “dead”. That’s just sour grapes. There’s always a next one or a revival.
