[Dixielandjazz] Age and Sects

[Dan Augustine]

DJML--
    It seems to be one of the inescapable accompaniments of aging that a person will gradually listen to less unfamiliar music.  (Same is true for reading books, and trying new things in general.)
    Younger folks, in their teens through their early adult years, like to try new things, sometimes finding some that they enjoy.  They hold on to those they like, and over the years they (well, OK, we) decrease trying new stuff.
    Pity.
    I'm of the opinion that there haven't been any good songs written since (oh, say) 1980, but the rational part of me says that's simply not true--i just haven't HEARD any good songs because i haven't made the effort to LISTEN to new songs.  And why is that, pray tell?  Because the ever-decreasing samples of new music i happen to hear i don't like, so i gratuitously consign ALL that music to the rubbish heap.
    Anything unfamiliar is immediately suspect to the human mind.  We congregate into sects of the mind that discard any noncongruent elements, but this lump in the landscape of the human logic may not be a good thing to have, for any reason.  Still, it's understandable, if not necessarily beneficial.
    And, in fact, the converse can be true.  A lot of young folks know a lot about music since 1980, but they don't know anything about some of the great songs written and performed well in the 1960's, 1940's, 1920's, etc.  This is because they don't listen to songs or performers of that era.
    What to do?
    One of my favorite writers (whom i discovered while writing my dissertation), Alfred North Whitehead, said that ""An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion."  So we need to steel our nerves and grit our teeth and wade into new stuff every so often.  We also need to PUSH our music that we play and like in front of crowds of younger folks, 'cause they will like some of it, given to chance to hear it.
    In other words, try it, you'll like (some of) it.

    Dan
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** Dan Augustine - ds.augustine at mail.utexas.edu             **
** Office of Admissions, University of Texas; Austin, Texas **
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