Neos & Posts
If one 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. Future music then was Henry Mancini, Perry Como and Guy Lombardo. 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 Mancini 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 borrowed from architecture where new structures are built on the base of an older structure. Up until now futures have been all "neos" or "posts". That's good too. The 90s are now up for Neo, a period where we started sampling the past. These days, everything might be Posts.
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 Mancini 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 borrowed from architecture where new structures are built on the base of an older structure. Up until now futures have been all "neos" or "posts". That's good too. The 90s are now up for Neo, a period where we started sampling the past. These days, everything might be Posts.
