Clueless Uncle In Pieces?

[koganbot]

Remember when we all used to listen to Conway Twitty?

In case you didn't see this piece by David Brooks in the NY Times, it's nothing extraordinary. Even he says the fragmentation of music listening is an old story, but he says it continues on apace.

I like David Brooks a lot of the time. He's like a clueless but friendly and curious uncle. And he takes "hairstyle" seriously ("hairstyle" is my shorthand both for culture that is considered frivolous and for cultural differences).

Actually, in real life I'm a clueless but friendly and curious uncle too. Just clueless on slightly different matters.

So, here's my question. Is this "fragmentation" in fact occurring? If it is occurring, why do we call it "fragmentation" rather than "diversity"? (Steve Kiviat asked this question when we were discussing this issue 15 years ago in Swellsville.)

Here are some hypotheses:

Interconnectedness and knowledge generally increasing in "advanced" nations. General actual differences among different societies decreasing. Knowledge of other cultures increasing. People able to identify with groups outside their immediate face-to-face environment much more. Within that face-to-face environment this can give the appearance of greater "diversity" or "fragmentation," but this doesn't mean that the world overall is getting more socially fragmented.

Music is something of an odd case anyway, where a particular low-status local music of the early 20th century - black and white music of the United States' southeast - absorbed and changed the general popular music it was coming into contact with and created hybrids that swept a good deal of the world. With the rise of this music came the decline of the idea of a stable cultural center, given that this music (1) was made by people who legitimately felt themselves to be outsiders, (2) seemed to be coming from the "outside" to people who hadn't been the primary audience for r&b or country, (3) seemed to be coming from the "outside" to people who still felt themselves to be the primary audience for r&b and country.

My own experience is that it was possible to be a white teenage music fanatic in the 1960s and not know of Conway Twitty's existence, barely know of James Brown's existence, never have heard classics like Little Richard and Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry except for a few cover versions, to have only heard occasional bits of Elvis Presley and to assume that his impact was long over, to have no idea what was happening in contemporary "serious" "classical" music, and so forth.

Other than the ignorance of "classical" music, which continues for later generations, I don't think it's possible for the equivalent teenager (an endlessly curious music fanatic) to be so ignorant of recent and contemporary music that wasn't quite in his neighborhood - this is because other musics would penetrate his neighborhood far more. Where he or she is ignorant, this would be because there is simply far more available to know, not because of "fragmentation" that is restricting access, and not because of any indifference on his or her part.

What do you think?

Comments

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

"lex to thread" would be the obvious cry, but i'm pretty certain that he is an outlier in terms of how the [ahem] young people consume their musics.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

But recent and contemporary music is exactly what I'm NOT ignorant of!

I think - though it isn't showing, as it were, quite yet - that ignorance of old stuffz as currently practiced by moi is going to become more prevalent as the sheer volume and availability of current here&now music (and music scenes) overwhelms The Kidz - at least I do so hope so because otherwise we'll have a generation of people taking on board their parents' tastes and aesthetics, and I can't imagine anything more dull...

Poptimists has taught be though that it is always possible for people to be unaware of recent and contemporary music no matter how ubiquitous it is.

THIS HERE NOW

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yr argument makes no sense at all lex -- you really are the simon reynolds of R&B sometimes

i. i know nothing of the past hurrah!
is not commensurable with
ii. ppl embracing the past will be dull

if the past becomes a mystery then exploring it will become a thrill

(SR is also someone totally hopeless at anything except his own quite parochial version of recent/contemporary, confusing "contemporary" with his own over-idealised specific momentary virgin energy, at just-post-intellectual-entry age, same as you do)

yr tastes are difft but yr aesthetics are his: HE IS YR PARENT

Re: THIS HERE NOW

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

- tastes being difft is KEY: mine are better!
- i am allowed to have recent/contemporary aesthetics cuz i am youngz and he is oldz, plus i change my mind all the time anyway
- people embracing the past INSTEAD OF the present = dull
- ps i am v drunk on PORT and STILTON

Re: THIS HERE NOW

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

1. you have never heard a SPOON record
2. i am drunk on GIN? and other things

Re: THIS HERE NOW

[koganbot]

But your "recent/contemporary" aesthetics seem little different from my unregenerate '60s aesthetics ('60s not being a monolith, of course, and cannot be reduced to "guitar rock" or "progressive rock").

Re: THIS HERE NOW

[koganbot]

I am allowed to have recent/contemporary aesthetics cuz I am oldz, plus I change my mind all the time anyway

Re: THIS HERE NOW

[koganbot]

ignorance of old stuffz as currently practiced by moi is going to become more prevalent as the sheer volume and availability of current here&now music (and music scenes) overwhelms The Kidz

I don't see this happening (though of course it might), the main reason being that people most esp. the kidzos are primarily concerned with identifying with and differentiating themselves from their peers; parents for instance simply don't count as much in creating one's crucial social landscape, no matter how oedipal you are. Of course, "peers" is something that one tends to define for oneself (e.g., you, Lex, are one of my peers, even though you are 30 years younger than me). But in general the search for models and heroes and enemies and paths not to be taken will encompass anything that's available, and if pieces of the past are abundantly available they will be used. Of my two nephews, one of whom just turned twenty, the other being seventeen: the one who just turned twenty asked for and received some barbershop quartet CDs for his birthday; barbershop quartets being a frequently engaged-in hobby that I would have had no idea existed anymore except that his father (my brother) is in one. Anyway, barbershop quartets, while existing in the present, draw on a liineage going back to at least the 1890s, and there is something self-consciously hokey about them, though I'd guess that to some extent their ancestry intertwines with black gospel vocal groups, and I wonder about barbershop's impact on those groups (and vice versa), and to what extent barbershop is in the ancestry of, say, Boyz II Men and the Backstreet Boys. In any event, a kid into barbershop quartets now is not nearly so strange as it would have been in the '60s. My nephew also tends to way prefer music of the '50s and '60s to that of the present. His younger brother tends to be more interested in movies and video games than in music, but those interests also help create his musical tastes: that is, he likes soundtrack music. I'm not sure of his particular tastes, though I know he (1) thinks the '80s were the worst decade for music, but (2) loves Europe's "The Final Countdown" despite recognizing that it is possibly the epitome of '80s music. It also, with its synthed-up "horn" flourishes, sounds very soundtracky, at least to my ears.

I know a woman in her mid-twenties who describes herself as part of the Rave Generation but who is also a big fan of the Grateful Dead. (I don't find this remotely surprising, and I think that in the U.S. "rave" can still pass as a new thing. Musical taste in the U.S. will surprise you. It's like a whole other country, or something.) The daughters of one of my childhood friends are really into jam bands such as Widespread Panic (descendants of the Dead, I'd say, but not necessarily using the Dead as icons to be imitated, since the whole thing about being a jam band is that you don't know in advance what notes you're going to play). The thing here is that jam bands are part of the present but they also see a definite kinship with the past, and I'd expect that a fan would go for both the past and the present, this having social consequences in the present.

Re: THIS HERE NOW

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

(If I can put on my snot-nosed brat hat for a second...)


"descendants of the Dead, I'd say, but not necessarily using the Dead as icons to be imitated, since the whole thing about being a jam band is that you don't know in advance what notes you're going to play"

If they don't know in advance what notes they're going to play, how come the rest of us can predict so easily?

Re: THIS HERE NOW

[koganbot]

But w/ Lex it is only a rhetorical device and provocation rather than an actual policy; that is, he is not against music of the past in principle or guitars in principle, even when made by or played by men.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

but there are huge swathes of guitar-based modern popular music that you disdain/purposefully maintain an ignorance of!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

guitar-based modern popular music = tiny swathe of modern popular music! also historically worst, so i concentrate on the vast swathes of non-guitar-based popular music...

[koganbot]

"Guitar-based" is not the clearest of terms; in any event, much of the r&b you and I like does use guitars and has in its ancestry music that used even more guitars, and my contention is that Techno (for instance) has more in common with the guitar rock of my youth than does the indie rock of the present. Also, you know far more of the music of, say, the 1960s and 1970s than I knew of the music of the 1930s and the 1940s when I was your age (or than I know now, probably).

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

Lex, your music aesthetics kinda evoke Attridge's Singularity of Literature for me. He writes in his section on the End of Ethics that you can't love someone (something) a bit. Love is a full take-on of somethin. You just love it, with the overwhelming overpowering emotion that is assumed by the word. I feel the same way about music in that once you start cutting music apart and trying to figure out which musical genre you like or dislike, you aren't actually loving music. (To quote Jack White: If you don't like the Beatles of Bob Dylan, you don't love music, you love the idea of being a person who loves music - though I'm not being as reductive here. I think you can dislike Dylan and the Beatles, as long as you come to every band with open ears, ready to love it.) In other words, listening to music should be an experience akin to love. Even if you hate guitar music, every guitar song should be approached with the desire that you'll love this one. (If I didn't practice this kind of listening, I wouldn't have heard half the things I love today). Which I think is related to the comparison between you and Reynolds.

Btw, I'm drunk on sparkling wine. WHEEE.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I hate the Beatles and Dylan! Hate hate hate.

The thing is, amidst my schtick i DO love guitar music, I mean I have professed my love for Hole, YYYs, Ashlee, PJ Harvey et al many a time, ie I can and have approached guitar music with the desire to love it - but a) in practical terms the ensuing low hit rate means there's no sense in me bothering to approach it in the first place - why should I give undue priority to a genre which has historically not pleased me, and which is BUT ONE TINY GENRE in the scheme of things

and b) I am well aware that I have a kneejerk hatred - COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED - of "boys with guitars", but I don't think there's anyone without kneejerk hatreds and blind spots, but I don't think many other people round here are really honest with themselves about it. eg just as I only enjoy guitar music when it conforms to certain standards I set - girly angst - but don't dig it as a genre, I'm sure 99% of poptimists only enjoy hip-hop when it conforms to certain standards (conscious or comedy) - except instead of admitting this they'll blame the hip-hop they don't like.

ie: I am not doing anything which EVERYONE ROUND HERE doesn't do.

("guitar music" = alternative indie blah for these purposes)

I am drunk on TONS OF VODKA! and before that champagne. And I'm only a third of the way through the weekend. aaaagh.

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

I have biases, but I think different than the ones you're describing. My biases tend to be emotional ones - so any music that is passionate and risky (emotionally, politically, socially) I tend to enjoy no matter what the musical style. And cold, dead music leaves me... well... cold and dead. So I dislike Spoon and Paris Hilton for practically the same reason. And I like Aly + AJ and Bob Dylan for also the same reason. (This is, as I understand it, very close to Frank's opinion in Real Punks though he's defining his thematic value as "essential," or "searching" or something that I'm having a hard time pinning down at the moment. I'm just looking for the catharsis of risk.)

So I'm just asking what I think the more interesting question is, Lex. Ignoring your stylistic interests (which I think we've pinned down as not being indie music and not being canonized 1960s music), what are your thematic interests? I like Marilyn Robinson AND Theodore Adorno. What's your link?

[And before you dismiss Dylan, he said something very brilliant to Jonathan Lephem - who risks himself in his own way - in RS a year or two ago. He said: It's alive every night, or it feels alive every night. It becomes risky. I mean, you risk your life to play music, if you're doing it in the right.]

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

Also, I has moved onto Scotch. Cause the sparkling wine just wasn't getting the job done quickly enough.

[koganbot]

This is, as I understand it, very close to Frank's opinion in Real Punks though he's defining his thematic value as "essential," or "searching" or something that I'm having a hard time pinning down at the moment.

I don't understand this, but I'd say that, of the choices given above, my key thematic value is "or something." (But I am sometimes willing to categorize things on bases that are different from "musical form" and "which demographic listens to it." But I doubt that I have one dominant theme by which I categorize things.)

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm thinking of this: "Obviously, I'm identifying hard with teenpop in that just as I don't see a path for the teenpop girls into the future, I don't see a path for myself either - which isn't to say that there's no future for me, or for them, but my path isn't given, my way isn't clear, so we're going to have to invent one."

Or of your comparisons between Ashley and Dylan, where obviously you aren't drawing genre comparisons (or are you?) but rather this thematic sense of "young artists challenging the world" or "balladeers expressing emotion."

[koganbot]

Well, I could draw a standard genre comparison between Ashlee "Whose Name Has Never Contained A Y" Simpson and Dylan - she's a singer-songwriter who likes to rock, for god's sake - or a could even create various Koganesque genre comparisons between the two, Artists Who Can't Find A Pathway, for instance (which is a predicament whether or not it's a theme in their lyrics). I think your word "theme" is what threw me. I don't think I'd use the word "theme" to convey the idea of "drawing parallels between what Spoonie Gee and Mick Jagger are doing," for instance.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Defining my thematic interests is an ongoing project for me! Which is to say, I don't really know, but it's very much tied up in the styles of what I like: I tend to like performers who sound like either a) they're losing/subsuming themselves in the music, and by the music I mean the texture, the rhythm, the sound (Ciara's 'Oh', Cassie's 'Turn The Lights Off') or b) riding the music as a means to dominating the world (hip-hop braggadocio). But in general I think musical style is a lot more important to my tastes than any cross-genre approach: both the above are heavily dependent on the right sort of style. Maybe my stylistic interests are just summed up by the word STYLE.

(Port again, this afternoon.)

[koganbot]

Still don't know the basis of your antipathy to the early Stones, whom I love and whom I would describe as riding the music as a means of dominating the world while simultaneously running a critique of same (and riding a critique as a means of dominating the world, etc.). I find the Stones and Dylan (mid-'60s versions) very Eminem-like, for instance.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I have an antipathy to the Stones - I like the idea of them, or at least a gazillion times more than I like the idea of the Beatles, but nothing of the (v little) I checked out hooked me in. Or at least I liked 'Satisfaction' but not as much as the Britney or Bjork/PJ covers, and I hated Exile On Main Street.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

also, as someone who has always been a dilletente, i'd say it's been possible to keep a handle on a wide-ish range of music since the late 80s...

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

I think complaints about fragmentation are at least superficial. Possibly even reactionary. Compare fragmentation to the alternative - homogeneity. It seems to me that the complaint that artists are fragmented laments the loss of control that labels are having over same artists. It's hard to enforce standards of genre when the industry is in a tailspin. So where Brooks might wish that all artists still had a cohesive sound (and the same 4 influences: Beatles, Stones, Dylan + whoever) it's much more positive to have a diverse community.

Also, another definition of fragmentation is alienation. And it seems to me that artists are far less alienated from their work and from the music scene than they've ever been. Certainly in certain genres they are less aliented from their fans.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

these thoughts seem very close to something i undertook for stylus a few years back, frank, which you took against very crossly!

(ie a bunch of questions the rhetoric of which you found unlikeable)

i think the idea of the "unified work" has collapsed -- i don't believe in "songs" let alone "artists" anymore -- everything to me is an argument among a lesser or greater number of clashing participants

(haha YES EVERYTHING --- as stockhausen and lamont young and lou reed have taught us, the NOTE itself, the very atom of music, is a MILLIONFOLD CONFLICTED HOST CONTINUALLY CRYING) (julio back me up here)

[koganbot]

I have no memory of this undertaking or my response to it, so I will have to take your word for both, but...

Is your third sentence related to your first, or is it a new subject? I don't see the relationship between my discussion above of supposed fragmentation, and your saying the idea of the "unified" work has collapsed. Also, I don't know which idea of "the unified work" you are saying has collapsed; if you make your criteria for unity extremely stringent then "unity" will always be found to have "collapsed," but that's only if you make your criteria pathologically extreme in the first place. In any event, songs do not have to be tightly unified to be songs, nor artists to be artists, and neither have to be vastly vastly autonomous, and I have no idea what this discussion is about.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i am off to visit my dad for three days so usual filibuster applies! (sorry)

i feel that there is a relationship between fragmentation of "the social" and fragmentation of "the work" (by "artist" i meant "oovre" really) -- i will see if i can flesh this out and be a bit precise er some time (remind me)

[koganbot]

everything to me is an argument among a lesser or greater number of clashing participants

Of course, this isn't totally distant from my own view, except that your word "everything" makes your own idea dysfunctional; what I said in "Superwords Revisited," if you set your standard for autonomy at absolute zero, then nothing is autonomous, but all that does is take "autonomy" out of the language, so your word "argument" no longer has any meaning either (it applying to everything, just as "autonomy" applies to nothing). The word "Superword" is useless if all words are Superwords, since that would just make "window" as much a Superword as "punk." (Except this is the discussion that you and Alex consistently refuse to have with me, and I have no idea if you've ever comprehended my objection, since you've never responded to it.)

In any event, I still don't see the connection between thinking that in the '00s people are more likely to hop from genre to genre in their listening than they were in the '60s and your saying that everything is an argument, given that, if everything is an argument, then everything was an argument in the '60s, too.

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

you do not believe in SONGS or ARTISGTS (o god especially either of those) = you are mad

[koganbot]

I assume it is dubdobdee you are addressing this remark to.

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

true, and interestingly enough you and facile koganism are never 'mad'. bears research!

Clueless Uncle in Pieces

[(Anonymous)]

Frank, thanks (I think) for noting my comment in Swellsville 15 years ago. Alas, I had forgotten that. I find Brooks very annoying. I hated his article defending Reagan's Mississippi "States Right" speech, and his attempts to make his conservatism seem more moderate are slick but not profound. The guy won't fess up and admit that Reagan's politics and the Republic Southern strategy since Goldwater contradicts the integration message he's advocating in this article. His Beatles on Ed Sullivan opening and his Steve Van Zandt canon stuff ignore as you noted that fragmentation has existed for quite awhile. I am tired of hearing about boomers or other mainstream media folks prattling on about the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964. I would rather hear about James Brown fans in 1964 or country fans.

Brooks also cites the SFJ and Wilson articles without ever questioning them--he never asks why popsters, and LCD Soundsystem, and jam band Galactic, and Eminem and others are not afraid of utilizing African-American originated styles. As for the Miami Steve stuff, wasn't he listening to the Ronettes and AM radio growing up, and not the stuff Brooks is citing? Did the Rolling Stones in 1965 have a canon like knowledge of all genres of music that happened decades and decades before them? Why not admit that Jay Z sells millions of cds to white and black Americans? -Steve

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

Here's my real problem with the SFJ article, (I'd post it on the SFJ thread, but I'm a little intimidated by the size at this point): He totally ignores passionate music to make his case. Not only is there passionate white rock music (which he can argue, persuasively or not, borrows from black music) but there's also passionate country music, and showtune music, and classical music. Which makes SFJ's statement ridiculous: Why is all the good black-inspired white music black-inspired?

[koganbot]

I don't get this comment. Which SFJ statement are you referring to? His main point was about the relative lack of "miscegenation" in today's indie. He never claimed that only black or black-influenced music was passionate. His description of Arcade Fire makes it seem as if he considers them passionate.

But then, I don't have the time this second to reread his piece. But its major flaw, much more than his not citing the indie that does draw on black music, and his not making anything of the fact that there is all this "miscegenated" music in pop [which makes his claim about political correctness preventing the miscegenation ridiculous], is that he barely gives any reason why he thinks it matters whether or not modern indie draws on black music. Which is to say, he never tells us why he wants Arcade Fire to play "syncopated patterns" or to "[linger] in the low registers," or why he wants a "bit of swing, some empty space, and palpable bass frequencies."

Oh, wait, I did glance at the Frere-Jones, and here's a relevant statement: "Why did so many white rock bands retreat from the ecstatic singing and intense, voicelike guitar tones of the blues, the heavy African downbeat, and the elaborate showmanship that characterized black music of the mid-twentieth century? These are the volatile elements that launched rock and roll, in the nineteen-fifties, when Elvis Presley stole the world away from Pat Boone and moved popular music from the head to the hips." (I just noticed the statement about stealing the world away from Pat Boone, which is ridiculous. Boone was both hugely popular among teens at the same time Elvis was and like Elvis was drawing on black sources.) Yeah, and it is ridiculous to imply that there weren't any white sources for Elvis's ecstatic singing and elaborate showmanship. But again, he's not claiming that Arcade Fire aren't passionate, and he's reporting passionate reaction to them from the audience.

I think his piece was very confused, actually, but if he wanted to make the case that the subset of indie he was citing makes music that is not as black-derived or as passionate as the music of white rockers of the '60s, I think he can make a good case, but those are two different points.