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

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.