paradeatw Posted May 3 Report Share Posted May 3 I found this great written piece online and just wanted to share some comments as well as the link to the full document: ENJOY!“Most of this popularity comes from the fact that dance music is useful. In a word, it’s danceable.â€:: The electronic avant garde is perceived either as a curiosity for a small, liberal elite or a naïve (or even dangerous) pastime of the musically unsophisticated. It does not fit into today’s depiction of good music as something that is commercially successful and/or somehow classy. :: On the social side, the surrounding urban Western culture cannot tolerate the anarchistic, utopian escatology of the related subcultures and so study, acknowledgement and respect, all much needed in the establishment of new artistic genres, are greatly retarded. :: Almost all of today’s highly appraised, widely known music relies heavily on what are basically communicative elements in music: lyrics, representations of emotive content, political symbolism and referentialism carefully crafted to evoke meaningful associations.:: I, like anyone who has taken to the simple sensitibilities of electronic music, find the concentration of popular music on language and meaning quite troubling and in the end unobvious. :: The sparseness of vocals in electronica, for instance, is one of the more stable characteristics of the family of musical genres going under the name. And even when vocals are heard, they are often heavily mutated from their original communicative purpose and made instead to serve as an instrument very much on par with the synthesizers and effects the styles mainly build on.:: Indeed, the preconception that music cannot be good if it doesn’t have evocative lyrics is downright insulting, particularly to the non‐singing musicianship. After all, most musicians have little to do with with the lyrics themselves, which would under the above assertion mean that only the vocalist could have the proper status of an auteur. I think we can agree that this does not hold. :: To skim the resources needed to maintain on artist from the surrounding society, one must first persuade others to appreciate the art. :: The trouble is, popular music actually seems to put a whole lot of value on the format. Sometimes it is even difficult for someone who does not follow the particular brand of pop a song belongs to to tell the song from others in the genre. :: A huge number of people worldwide no longer seem to be able to appreciate music without a familiar structure, and fashionable, easily recognized influences. :: There is good reason to believe that the MTV generation has adopted a highly uniform, and rather narrow preference for the kind of music which played during their adolescence. Consequently little room is left for diversity, local musical tradition, and innovation. In what ought to be a multicultural world, this is a real tragedy :: The makers of electronica are faced with a severe devaluation of their musical contribution, under representation on major record labels, discrimination in leasing concert venues, and a media wholly unreceptive to their art. Their sound is often classified as cold, unemotional, or downright devoid of any artistic value, solely because of the lack of evocative lyrics and gorgeous band frontmen.:: As for the dancers, they’re much too easily dismissed as just kids having fun, or even just kids getting high with few references to the music itself. The role of dance music as something around which whole cultures are built, or as something that in fact challenges the listener to do something besides sitting in a chair, listening, is largely dismissed as nonsense. Full Thesis:Electronica va Aestheticshttp://www.helsinki.fi/~ssyreeni/texts/m-aesth/m-aesth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vladexodus Posted May 3 Report Share Posted May 3 good find...you comming out for EM on thursday? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paradeatw Posted May 3 Author Report Share Posted May 3 yep yep... see you there WARRIOR! lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vladexodus Posted May 3 Report Share Posted May 3 haha wha u doin on friday? you down for the scumfrog? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paradeatw Posted May 3 Author Report Share Posted May 3 lol... nah... got my new G5 system getting all the beats set-up thus, friday night will be work night Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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