[Dixielandjazz] Popular Music is Changing

[Nancy Giffin]

From: Stephen Barbone <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
[excerpt]
"...Perhaps, just perhaps, the pendulum is swinging back towards melody?"

Thanks, Steve,
I do hope popular music will swing back towards melody. To me, rap music and
its emphasis on rhythm is not so much art as it is a math lesson in
fractions. If it is art, then I see it as art with too many straight lines,
not enough curves and swirls (melody and creative imrov) to feed the right
brain and the soul.
My limited experiences in night clubs of the younger crowd have been very
"dark" -- not as in lighting but as in "absence of soul." There is something
Malthusian about cruising past the dance floor, feeling as if you've just
entered a hell hole of lost souls with little hope or faith in the future,
living for today -- for the moment. The emphasis on rhythm seems to reflect
their emphasis on sex for its own sake, for the physical pleasure only, as
an escape from a world in which change happens faster than our evolutionary
ability to keep up with it.
Melody is food for the soul, for the romantics, while rap is to get the body
rocking, for keeping time -- primal music to hump by.
Perhaps the soul has been denied long enough. It would make me very happy to
see popular music take a sudden turn away from rap, to see younger people
rediscover romance and melody in order to feed their hungry souls.
Forgive me for having thought too deeply about this, but I have young teens
in my house. (And fortunately, they do not like rap music.)
Love and hugs,
Nancy