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Played what will be our last show for some time at SummerStage in central park last night. There was an almost constant sprinkling of rain, but no one seemed to mind too much. Pink Martini opened. Incredible musicians, and China Forbes has an amazing voice. I hadn’t seen them in years, so it was a treat. The audience was the youngest I’d seen in a while, which made me feel pretty good. And surprisingly, for New York, where I’m usually feeling tense playing a hometown gig, I was pretty relaxed. We never left for the usual game of encores. Instead, without a pause, I brought on The McCollough Sons of Thunder, a massed trombone ensemble based out of The United House of Prayer in Harlem. I figured that way the audience wouldn’t even have time to even think about leaving before experiencing a little of their incredible sound and energy. They started off slowly, the seven or more trombones (plus sousaphone and trumpet) creating a huge wave of sound, a giant chord, while Elder Babb praised the Lord and exhorted the crowd. It gave me chills. Not just because of the music, but also because here was faith, religion and spirituality that was manifesting itself as joyous, life affirming and uplifting, as opposed to militant, oppressive and death-dealing. We’re getting too much of that these days, from Muslims and Christians alike, so this was a beautiful healthy antidote, and a reminder not to throw out the spiritual baby with the bathwater — those of us who feel the nastiness of fundamentalisms cast doubt on belief of any kind.
It was a good way to end the tour. You can order a CD that features the Sons of Thunder here. You can view photos from the show here.
Staying at a hotel near the venue, the Hollywood Bowl. Out my window I can see a massive triumphal arch, covered in quasi-Babylonian or Egyptian figures, beyond which tower two vaguely Hindu style rampant elephants — more Cecil B. Demil than Mumbai (or Babylon), actually:
This is a shopping center mixed with an upscale food court. This is what draws crowds here in L.A. There are few “cultural” monuments or centers here, so the focus is theme parks and shopping centers. Or the two rolled into one. Consumption and the distant scent of celebrity. This is what passes for a cultural center here — and it is bustling, the place is crowded, and the scene continues on the street leading down to the (former) Chinese Theater. People stop and take pictures of themselves to commemorate their visit to — a shopping mall! Framing themselves under the weird Babylonian arch. (Is it odd that the U.S. has invaded the real Babylon?) Our own hotel lobby is filled with black men with shaved heads and gorgeous women dressed like hos. The BET awards are to be in the adjacent theater tomorrow. It is the same theater where the academy awards are held now. The academy awards are held in a shopping mall. O.K., it’s a theater, but it’s a theater in a shopping mall. Perfect. I am reminded that hip hop and RNB are two of the biggest forces in contemporary music and culture in the U.S. — in much of the whole wide world — a fact that seems to have created a weird fizzy cocktail. There is in this scene incredible creativity, innovation and imagination coupled with sleazy self-promotion, hucksterism, minstrelsy and debasement of the race. Just like what white culture has done for centuries.
Here are the BET winners: BEST FEMALE HIP HOP: Remy Ma
BEST MALE HIP HOP: Kanye West
BEST COLLABORATION: Ciara f/ Missy Elliott “1, 2 Step”
BEST FEMALE R&B: Alicia Keys
BEST MALE R&B: Usher
BEST GROUP: Destiny’s Child
BEST NEW ARTIST: John Legend
BEST GOSPEL ARTIST: Donnie McClurkin
VIDEO OF THE YEAR: Kanye West “Jesus Walks”
BEST ACTRESS: Regina King
BEST ACTOR: Jamie Foxx
FEMALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR: Serena Williams “Tennis”
MALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR: Shaquille O'Neal “Basketball”
BET.COM VIEWERS’ CHOICE AWARD: Omarion “O”
Pretty much all talent, skill and creativity in that list. So, though the awards don’t reward skeeziness, to their credit, lots of the media lap it up and serve it as the representation of black culture. I’ve spent my grownup life resisting the latent racist tendencies I realize I secretly harbor, and it doesn’t help when the corporate media and those who play along reinforce clichés.
Yesterday we did our show at the Hollywood Bowl. Si*Sé, Arcade Fire, The Extra Action Marching Band and myself. Promoted by KCRW. It nearly sold out — 17,500 tickets! Holy Moses! Three years ago in L.A. I couldn’t sell out the Palace, which holds just over 1,000. But maybe that’s because the Palace crowd is not my demographic? More likely it’s that factor, combined with the fact that this is a KCRW-produced show, which means they promote the hell out of it on their own station for months prior. Being the best station around means the audience often follows where they lead. Plus maybe I’m being appreciated by a new generation.
Our whole day is spent teching and rehearsing songs we will do together with Arcade Fire and Extra Action. I had the insanely ambitious idea that the show should be a seamless flow from one band to the next, with inter-band connections and collaborations common. Given that it’s a tightly controlled union hall this is a real challenge. It is hugely ambitious to have this many acts on the bill and to get decent sound checks, but adding the rehearsing of new numbers and attempting untried collaborations makes it nearly impossible. Tempers stay within bounds, but the air is tense.
The show goes incredibly well. The audience is taken by surprise and the flow pretty much works. (In our booking agent’s words, “it was historic.”) There’s a rise and fall in intensity throughout the evening, which feels natural and organic, and apparently turns out to be well-paced. The high-priced seats up front, mostly filled with corporate comps, take a long time to react, as expected. No surprise there. They finally get begin moving when I throw in some popular Talking Heads songs (ugh.) The back half of the bowl has been up for a while already. Hilburn, in his L.A. Times review claims that these oldies are just better songs and that is why everyone was less excited about my other newer stuff. Of course, being me, I would disagree — I would say the older songs are mostly simpler, and often they are more rousing and fun to sing, but that is different than being better. Many other audiences elsewhere react more evenly to both new and old. Hilburn is an old-school rock guy, this we know. But given the size of this audience, the idea of introducing new songs (which I did) is admittedly slightly perverse. So maybe I shouldn’t have tried to introduce new material at an arena show? Ah, why not? If I’m gonna be stuck playing oldies I’ll quit.
The show climaxed with three songs we rehearsed with the marching band — all of us together on stage (there are about 30 of them!) — their flag girls and cheerleaders out front on a semi-circular platform that juts out into the audience. Shaking their butts in the faces of the corporate seat holders, doing things with flags and pom-poms that go beyond wardrobe malfunction.
Everyone seemed to love it, but some of us, in my band and in the Extra Action crew, agree that smaller more intimate venues are more fun. The audience in smaller venues can sense more of the humanity of the performers and when chaos and anarchy does erupt there is a real sense of wildness and even danger… not to mention elation and joy. But we’re all thrilled.
Here I am with Arcade Fire backstage (photo by Adam Travis):
Went for a walk with Malu along the shore right across the street from Humphrey’s, the bayside venue here. We saw pelicans and then further up a woman in a Winnebago with her pet pig and small fluffy dog. The pig, named, Lucy, was happily moving along the grass on this little shorefront park, snorting and sometimes rooting in the grass with her snout. “Don’t do that, Lucy! You did that at the other part of the park!” Lucy was friendly; she didn’t mind being petted, though pig bristles are not soft and friendly. The woman said she has to give Lucy mud baths or Lucy will have problems, as pigs don’t perspire.
After our show the Extra Action crew have another gig, at a local punk club called the Casbah. A few of our bunch partake, and it sounded from their tales the next morning like a wonderful, messy continuation of the show.
The L.A. Times contained an article on the complete and utter failure of the so-called Drug War. This is based on a UN report, which the Bushies will no doubt deny, and they will no doubt provide their own evidence to support continued and increased funding of a “war” which has achieved none of its ends.
Maybe the solution lies in jobs for North Americans combined with supporting small-scale agriculture in Latin America — giving the farmers an economic incentive and choice.
A NY Times article on Italy charging CIA agents with abducting one of their citizens details the different approaches to combating terror between the U.S. and Italy. The U.S. abducts suspects, then tortures and interrogates them. Which, as is universally known, does not provide accurate or useful information — a detainee under coercion will pretty much say anything to survive. The value of the intelligence is very low. (But maybe the satisfaction of abuse makes up for it?)
The Italians, long practiced at secretly amassing information in order to build cases against Mafia suspects, use a different process — slow and tedious infiltration and research, which results in extensive knowledge of a whole network, some of which, like the mob, extend into a multitude of areas and nations. Thus the whole house of cards can be successfully brought down, through the legal process. It’s slower and more complicated, but it actually stops the whole network, or one whole branch of it at least.
The U.S. method seems instead to be about power, revenge, and show of force — and is largely ineffective. In fact, I suspect it actually does more to recruit, create and strengthen the terrorist networks than it does to bring them out in the open. The U.S. war on terror makes more terrorists. Perfect, their work will never be done. Halliburton and others will always have jobs. Endless war. A population constantly in fear. An eternal enemy. The renditions, the torture, the disregard for human rights — have become worldwide hallmarks of U.S. policy. The world knows these U.S. methods and doesn’t believe the claims of installing democracy or even of eliminating terrorism anymore. The ends don’t justify the brutal means. Though they might be seen to do so, if the ends were actually achieved. In most cases, sadly, they are not. Instead there is a wake of carnage.
I believe it is indeed possible to wage a sort of “war” on terrorism. But the Bush administration is hopelessly inept, and is going about it in exactly the wrong way. Bush could never run any of the companies he was handed on a silver tray, except into the ground, so it’s no surprise he can’t run a war either.
The band and I are doing a short run of dates, mostly in the western U.S., and then ending in NYC. Since there was a fairly long break after the last set of tour dates I revamped the set a bit to keep it fresh and added some new songs — the collaboration with Thievery Corporation from last year and a song written with Ryuichi Sakamoto. Last night was a re-match of last year’s Aspen gig. We’d been there a year ago but got pretty much rained out — the blowing rain across the covered stage meant the strings couldn’t play — so we did a short acoustic set, which apparently went over well enough to encourage this return engagement. Aspen is a strange place. Never having been there except for these concert dates my experience is limited. But seeing a glossy magazine in the hotel lobby called Aspen Philanthropist pretty much tells the story. On the cover is a close-up of a gorgeous (white) woman in full makeup cradling a photo of a starving African child. A bunch of us went for a lovely ride on rented bikes in the afternoon. Nothing too strenuous — not up into the mountains that surround this town — but along a gently rolling path that follows the little river that runs through the valley. We traveled maybe 15 miles of pathways, gurgling water and sunshine. You can see why people come up here. My friend Sam and I rented the full suspension bikes. The shop said they retail for around 2 thousand dollars! It’s a beautiful day. Here is the view from our hotel:
In an article on stem cell research in a Scientific American supplement to the Financial Times there is mention of the possible danger of chimeras. I thought these were mythological beings but it actually applies to any lifeform that mixes elements of more than one species. These already exist in basic form. It is an outgrowth of stem cell research and uses a similar process. Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies. And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains. There are now mice with human immune systems (!) and other animals with small percentages of human cells floating around in them. These were created to allow research on human immune systems, for example, that would not be allowed on humans. Seems admirable. However, the article mentioned that at some point a line will get crossed and ethical and moral questions will be raised. Is it an animal or is it human? How much of the animal need be composed of human cells before we consider if significantly human, with the accompanying human rights? Yikes! Probably no one would be concerned if a pig had a human liver, for example, but if it had a human heart? A brain? When is it neither fish nor fowl? (None of the articles implied mythological creatures being imminent — a sphynx, centaurs, mermaids… but why not?) There was however mention of the danger of stem cells in an animal migrating to the ovary of the animal, and then a human child could possibly grow in the belly of a beast. This apparently could happen. Science fiction for sure. As we know, life will find a way, despite the claims of science, so this kind of “accident” seems inevitable. Romulus and Remus for real. And not just raised by wolves, but with one as a mother. What big teeth you have!
HG Wells — From The Island Of Doctor Moreau: Each preserved the quality of its particular species: the human mark distorted but did not hide the leopard, the ox, or the sow, or other animal or animals, from which the creature had been moulded.
From The Island of Lost Souls (The first film adaptation of his story): Dr. Moreau: What is the law?
Sayer of the Law: Not to eat meat, that is the law. Are we not men?
Beasts (in unison): Are we not men?
Dr. Moreau: What is the law?
Sayer of the Law: Not to go on all fours, that is the law. Are we not men?
Beasts (in unison): Are we not men?
Dr. Moreau: What is the law?
Sayer of the Law: Not to spill blood, that is the law. Are we not men?
Beasts (in unison): Are we not men?
One might think these things have existed previously, as they are seen on Notre Dame and Dom Chimera in the Ukraine most famously. So mankind produces these monsters from time to time. At least in their collective imagination. But now we can make them for real.
In an interview with a laughing teacher in Cabinet magazine (yes, she gets groups of people, sometimes individuals, to laugh as a kind of therapy) she proposes that although we think of laughter as the symptom, the effect, the visible outward sign of an interior state, it might sometimes be the exact opposite. She says that sometimes laughter produces the interior state that we think it stems from. The effect produces the cause, in other words. Hence the success of her therapy, or so she claims.
Music possibly works the same way — it can produce the emotions and feelings that we tend to assume generated it in the first place. We assume that a singer sings because he or she is happy, melancholy or filled with anger. We believe the song is an outlet, a manifestation of these emotions and feelings. But I would argue that what is actually happening is that the song they are singing is producing, or more likely, rekindling and dredging up that emotion in the singer. And in the listener. A well-made song resurrects the emotion it depicts — it does not necessarily derive from that emotion. With the exception of method actors (and there are method singers too) most actors don't actually need to feel the emotions their performance depicts before they get on stage or before the camera rolls. If their craft is well-honed and the script is good, then they will convince us, and possibly themselves as well, that they are deeply in love, furious or out of their minds. Their performance — going through the motions, the gestures, the facial expressions — may sometimes stir those emotions in the actor. Or singer as the case may be.
This is heresy to a lot of critics who would like to believe that creative work is reflection of interior states, that a direct conduit links the emotion of the artist and the composition, and of course interpretation of their work. Critics and sometimes the public come to believe that craft is suspect, as it can make us believe that emotion is there when it might not necessarily be. Or at least wasn't there before the performance.
I would say it is not deception to rekindle and reawaken emotions — they have to be there, lurking, to tap into. But they themselves are not always the source of moving and emotional work.
Jan at Färgfabriken has sent an explanation of their Stockholm At Large project. Essentially they act as a go-between and a meeting place for all sorts of people interested in where their city is going. Kind of extraordinary. A real town meeting, neither all top down or bottom up, but sort of all mixed together. Anyway, click here for his short explanation.
James, Arun and I are on an SAS flight back from Stockholm to NY. Danielle took an earlier flight. The testing of the machines and devices that will turn the Stockholm factory building into a musical instrument this coming September ("Playing the Building") went very well. The sounds were louder than we expected, partly due to the reverberant quality of the room, and the metal columns, pipes and girders resonated even more than we hoped, and more musically, at least in most cases.
Jan Åman, who runs this alt art facility (Färgfabriken), a former factory, told us over dinner one night at a Kurdish restaurant that he was becoming increasingly involved in Stockholm civic affairs and urban planning and was making the factory space less exclusively about exhibiting contemporary art. I don’t know if finances motivate some of this change in policy, but he also seems to have a desire to blur the border between the art world and the rest of the community. Some of what he mentioned in his plans was clear to me, and some of it was baffling. I wondered if the confusion in my mind might be due to my own narrow view of what constitutes arty activity.
Regarding urban panning he mentioned that Swedish people like to feel that they are always relatively close to wild nature — that even in a big city there was a desire for easy access to untamed lands which for them is more important than having manicured parkland nearby. What this means in practical terms I am not sure. To me it implied that urban planning had to be able to respond to variations in cultures, as that seemed like a specifically Swedish desire. Different cultures respond to urban environments differently.
I was reminded of a discovery that Jane Jacobs made about urban parks and the quality of urban life. She determined that the size of parks was not so important a factor in how successful they are. Sheer amount of greenery, she claims, is irrelevant, which seems at first glance counter intuitive — don’t we all think that more parks and bigger ones will make for a more habitable and pleasant urban life? What was more important, she discovered, was only partly a result of the quality of the park itself. In a way what is more important to the success of a park is what surrounds it. What is outside the boundaries of the park does more than what is inside to determine what it is and what if can become.
It is more important, for example, that the surrounding community have mixtures of residential, business and leisure activities. And that these activities take turns using the park. That secretaries and assistants take their lunches there in the middle of the day, that moms take kids there in the mornings and that couples and the elderly might stroll there in the evenings. Then the park isn’t ever empty at certain hours of the day, a condition that often leads to its eventual decay. She also states that the multiple uses and activities in the surrounding communities must lead people to walk through the park in order to get to work, to school, home, or to a movie or restaurant that lies on the other side. The park has to be something you need to pass through, not go to, and definitely not go around. If it is placed on the side or edge of a community, for example, it runs the risk of becoming a scary unused place. It needs to be more than someplace to make special trip to. (Except if there is a destination on the far side like a lakefront or riverside to draw people into and through the park.)
Over all what Jan and Färgfabriken are hoping to accomplish in this way was a bit mysterious to me. Maybe on my return trip to install the piece in September it will be clearer.
I began to think about my perception of what art is and if the European perception of it might have evolved to be somewhat different than that of us who had just arrived from the U.S. This musing was based on Jan’s civic planning discussion.
I asked him if it might be possible that due to the fact that the U.S. art world is so completely market-driven maybe we who live there have adjusted our definition of what constitutes art according to, well, what is saleable in galleries and at auction. In NY it seems fairly clear that despite the dream that art exhibitions, whether in galleries or in museums, are forums for complicated feelings and for new ideas, they are possibly more like car showrooms, where the latest models are paraded and applauded. To question the whole idea of what is a car or what it is for in such cases is something that would never even occur. In a similar manner we eventually begin to internalize what we believe art is according to whether or not it fits into a particular system. I wondered to myself whether the sometimes creatively dubious world of European state cultural patronage might have the effect of releasing this “product” (art) from its function as a commodity. If it is state funded it doesn’t necessarily have to be saleable, and therefore what it can be is up for grabs. It becomes completely open — at least open to the extent that some state functionary funds it and isn’t concerned with making a commodity.
State patronage can also have the unfortunate effect of fostering laziness and bad art. Grants awarded based on convincing and properly presented proposals. More traditionally state support funds politically motivated statues of noble workers, soldiers and generals on horses. But we’re talking about contemporary Europe, that’s not as prevalent as it once was. It’s nowhere near a foolproof system though. But, just as easily, the market driven system often fosters slick-looking art about not much at all, and a lot of navel gazing. Art about art.
Cultural relativism I guess it’s called.
For example, it’s been claimed the Japanese traditionally had no word for art, at least not as the West thinks of it. And the idea of art being a personal expression, a flag of individuality, is also an idea imported from the West. In Japan and in other parts of Asia, it’s more about continuing a tradition, evolving a craft. It’s more artisanal than Art, at least Art as the West would view it. In fact, the intense Western focus on individuality seems from the Easter POV almost crass, narcissistic, excessively self promotional — anti-group and therefore anti-social.
There’s also (traditionally at least) little distinction between what the West would consider decorative and fine art. Tea ceremony utensils, for example, are highly prized and revered — the way fine art is in the West — and not because they are “creative” manifestations of their makers’ personalities, and certainly not because of the time it took to make them (often they are raw and simple.) In addition, they are utilitarian objects. The idea of working imaginatively and beautifully within restrictions is admired, more so than breaking free of those restrictions.
So, a contemporary Japanese artist like Murakami possibly doesn’t see a conflict in doing both Louis Vuitton bags and gallery paintings, while for Westerners it seems the two possibly conflict.
Anyway, back to our preconceived ideas about what it is and what it’s for.
I was reminded of Andre Malraux’s statement that painting as the dominant art form over the previous few centuries was due to it being portable and therefore easy to trade and transport from seller to buyer. Mural painting and frescoes metaphorically came off the walls, became smaller, got framed, and eventually were made less exclusively for the church (where they were originally NOT portable — unnecessary, as the patronage was secure and the fresco was not about to be moved to a collectors mansion). The resulting portable objects could be collected, acquired, traded, and valued — and though any art object has no intrinsic value — like paper money or bonds — it is backed up by an elaborate system by which the value of the object generally increases in worth. Museums help validate the value, importance and legitimacy of these objects, as do critics and hangers on.
So, up until fairly recently when one thought of fine art in the West, whether exhibited in a museum or taught in schools and universities, one immediately imagined paintings — mostly landscapes and portraits — as the prime and obvious examples. There was sculpture too, but that was a little bit harder to move. The extent of marketability affects our definition of what constitutes and defines any activity. Well, in this particular system.
So I asked myself, what if the state patronage for culture that has arisen in Europe over the recent decades changed that definition? What if the need to make something portable and saleable doesn’t exist quite as much in some places? Wouldn’t that then begin to open up the idea of what art could be? Set it free? Cut it lose? Alright, the trend towards installations, the ephemeral, odd materials and massive scale was all happening anyway, but it was all still happening inside the rarefied art world, the definitions were still being written by the collectors and insiders. The general public is more or less ignored — they are therefore understandably uninterested and unaffected. Who cares what goes on in the insular nutty world of stamp collecting? As long as they leave the rest of us alone they can charge whatever they like for whatever crazy thing they trade amongst themselves.
Being cut loose also means that the place where art happens and with whom it engages no longer need be limited mainly to galleries, museums and auction houses. It could be more mixed in with the other stuff we do in our lives. Like urban planning or sports or hair salons or…
If the artists and eventually the institutions aren’t dependent on whether or not a thing can be sold then maybe things start to become somewhat unmoored from their meanings. The system begins to unravel. Maybe that is good thing. Our ingrained thinking and definitions about what constitutes this art thing (in this case) become not quite so automatic. Or become completely irrelevant. Artists make projects on the web, as they do now, institutions become activity centers rather than exhibition centers and maybe there is even some civic involvement and community activities which come to be regarded as being as important and as relevant as making concrete once was things.
Well, is that possible? Is it desirable? Is that what I sensed was going on?
Probably not. I’m probably seeing a mountain of significance in a molehill.
Read an article in The New Yorker about how recording has transformed music over the last 100 years. It’s written by a classical music guy (Alex Ross) so it comes from that POV, but he does widen his discussion to include John Cage and Chuck D. The writer says John Phillip Sousa thought that recording would be the death of music. Well, of live performance was what Sousa meant. To some extent I think he was right, but not entirely. He was right in that people now often think of music as something you buy, that you possess and consume — rather than something you experience and possibly even make yourself. Even live shows are sometimes thought of as something you consume — certainly they are something done by professionals. To a large extent what is desired in a live shows is weighed against recordings, not just the recordings of that material, but recordings in general. Audiences have come to expect that a live performance will be a reproduction of a recording they are familiar with, but with a kind of visual enhancement. And a bit louder that your home stereo, too. Much of the article is about aesthetic changes that recording brought about — the increased use of vibrato by singers and strings (it hides pitch issues and records “better”,) increased and obsessive precision (performances used to be sloppier, more haphazard — more real?) and new vocal techniques (Bing Crosby’s whole intimate singing style was based on using a microphone, the writer claims, and all singers have followed his example to some degree.) He also mentions something that is often forgotten, that most recordings have labored long and hard to create the illusion that the orchestra or band were playing together, that the music was not created in a studio, but was a live performance, merely captured. This fake fidelity is obvious in classical recordings where maintaining the integrity of this illusion is paramount, but it applies to a lot of pop music too.
Of course, famously The Beatles and others at that time (the Grateful Dead album Anthem of The Sun was completely created in editing,) and now all of Electro, Electronic, Hip Hop and other genres have all abandoned the need to create this illusion — the sounds are, obviously to my ears, clearly not “played”, not by any known instrument, and are virtually impossible to reproduce live (though bands still try.) Drums on contemporary tunes are mutated squawks, samples and electronic sounds all mixed together, and the “instruments” occupy a host of imaginary spaces (you can tell they were not played at the same time in the same room) and often everything is in your face, sharp, clear, hard-edged. There’s nothing naturalistic about it. Hasn’t been for years. In fact, sometimes there’s an obvious pride in creating something that is profoundly un-naturalistic, completely artificial sounding.
Sometimes the recording medium itself becomes the instrument. Paul Hindemith, the German composer, did performances using phonographs as instruments in 1927! That predates John Cage by a few decades and DJs by even more. But as an instrument vinyl is limited, there are a few amazing virtuosos, but sampling has made that virtuosity irrelevant — anyone with a laptop can loop a beat now, perfectly, and then layer other sounds on top and add a vocal. In one sense this created over the years a disconnect between playing an instrument and the results, but in another sense it makes everyone a potential composer — not merely a player — anyone can now hear their composition “played”, without having to have had music lessons or hiring expensive players. What does that mean for music? For one thing it means there’s a lot more of it. Music is now everywhere. It’s not a special event to hear music as it once was. It’s a constant background, sometimes anyway, like air. Sometimes smelly, sometimes hot, sometimes fresh and clean. You like it, maybe you need it, but you also can’t escape it. One can not only hear the music one chooses all the time if one wants, which seems like a good thing, but one can also seek out music from far-flung places, scenes and from times very different than one's own. At least in recorded form it’s more or less all out there.
I find this overwhelming. Probably as a musician I find music either one or the other — completely invisible, inaudible — even sometimes when it’s playing loud — or completely intrusive — impossible to ignore. As a musician there are times when even quiet background music in a bar or restaurant is completely distracting and impossible to ignore. It’s like the effect of having a TV on in room is for most people — it tends to demand attention. All conversation either stops or has to deal with the TV program. Music is like that for musicians.
In this way the easy access to and ubiquity of music is oppressive. It often feels like a passive aggressive assault. I’d pay extra for silence. I don’t think fewer people go to live shows as Sousa and others have suggested. Not where I live. Not significantly anyway. The social and communal aspect of listening to music outweighs any negative aspects of the poor sound and imperfect reproduction at most live shows. It’s about being with other people, relaxing, feeling a common bond. Of course we all try and do our best as performers to overcome sound reproduction problems and make the music sounds good, it is a constant issue, but maybe it’s not as important as we think it is.
On another level I am aware that I am always walking a tightrope when performing — referring to a known recording in the way in which a song is played, but I don’t obsess over it too much. And whenever possible I try to take that internalized version, the recorded version in our heads, merely as a starting point. But I’m comfortable with all that because I’ve always been a performer. Others, especially those who created their music on a laptop or in a studio and have never stepped on a stage before, seem to feel a weird obligation to perform, and though some of them may be great at it, others should never try. In fact, for some performing does more harm than good — they’d be better off staying in the studio making more music. Sometimes their recorded music is so good and innovative you wonder why they think they have to be a performer too. They don’t. Maybe their record companies tell them they have to get out there and promote their record and that’s the way to do it. For some it’s not.
That’s one way music has changed. There are some styles that purely exist as recordings, that IS the music. These recordings are not a performance of something written, in fact most often there never was anything written. It is not a version, one possible interpretation out of many, of a song or composition, it is the ONLY possible version of that particular piece of music. Most dance club music is like that, as is hip hop. Other pop and even classical music is actually like that too, but it pretends not to be.
That is a new way of making music that Sousa could never have imagined. A new branch has been added to the tree. But he might be right that playing an instrument yourself, for your own enjoyment or maybe for that of a small group of friends, is disappearing. This branch is withering, but it still thrives in Brazil, among Texas songwriters, flamenco musicians, gypsies and even in the mutated form of karaoke bars. Most people expect pre-recorded music or a DJ at a house party. On special occasions someone might hire a band, but few think of actually doing it themselves, except in the abovementioned cases. It wouldn’t be “good enough.”
Well, that depends on your point of view.
Record collectors and consumers often view music as something that is inseparable from the object on which it resides. But if the digital world has taught us anything, it is that the musical information on CDs is anything but inseparable. The two things come apart quite easily, making the value of the delivery object fairly questionable.
So when music as a product, as a consumable object, is subverted and undermined by technology and by its own success, then maybe we have come full circle. Maybe if music is no longer seen as an object, but as pure information, data, sound waves, then the object becomes at best a mere delivery device, and we’re back to viewing music as an experience, albeit still one that other people produce.
What then becomes valuable in many cases is what music means to people — beyond the actual recording. Part of this meaning is in the song (or whatever) — and not necessarily in the specific recording of it. What it expresses, how it moves people, the worldview and ethos it embodies. Many of these qualities can be in the composition and exist apart from the recording and interpretation of that composition. People like "The Rite Of Spring" but are not everyone is super fussy about which recording they are hearing. Well, some are, but you get my point.
The other part of what music means is embodied in the singer, the band or the composer. It’s not even in the music and can’t be recorded, at some of it can’t. For some of this music the actual musical and lyrical content is almost irrelevant. For some pieces of music what it’s about is the relationship, the connection to, the singer, with their style, attitude, behavior, beliefs and looks more so than with the music, which is more or less relegated in this case to being the soundtrack to the lifestyle and philosophy. At best the music and everything else surrounding it — the videos, the gossip, the reputation, present a common front, a gesamtkunstwerk type piece that embodies what matters to a person.
Both of these meanings and identities are pretty had to brand and to market, though companies try. Marketing a band or a singer as a brand is common, but it’s time consuming, labor intensive, expensive and risky. If the talent betrays their fans the deal is off and the music becomes worthless. People get older, they change, they die. The talent and the audience. So the star system can simplifies things, making branding and marketing easy, but the available resources are limited — until cloning, that is.
With classical music we identify with the composition more than with a specific recording, at least most of the time. And with pop standards this has more or less become true too. There are so many versions of some standard pop songs that everyone has their own favorite interpretation, and no one recording is THE version. But that was before recording and music making abandoned the abovementioned idea of faking ambience and performance. Hard to imagine a different version of a Missy Elliot song, other than a remix.
So Sousa was right, in some respects — people making music for themselves and their friends is now rare, at least for most people. People are now timid and afraid to make it, or at least to play it themselves. They can’t compare to the recorded sounds and mixes that everyone has become used to. But I suspect that will change. The social aspect will lead to new forms — to troubadours and poets who aren’t afraid of sounding occasionally unprofessional, to more ergonomic interfaces with laptops, and to the unheard and untrained meeting with high-tech virtuosity.
James and Arun are off to Stockholm today — to prepare for the “Playing The Building” art installation at Färgfabriken, the alt art space there. I’m here at the office seeing them off, with their cases of drills, motors and transformers.
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