[Dixielandjazz] Murdering Silence With Bad Music

[Steve barbone]

Do those who listen really hear?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Murdering silence with bad music

By Mike Zwerin International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, December 29, 2004

PARIS In his novel "Victory," Joseph Conrad's hero hears a sad female
orchestra in a dour hotel on a remote South Sea island. "The Zangiacomo
band was not making music," Conrad wrote: "It was simply murdering
silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy. One felt as if witnessing a
deed of violence ..."

The murder of silence has become a massacre on the mainland since then.
The vulgarity and the ferocity of the music have been increased many
times over through expanding greed and cutting-edge technology. More
music than ever is being produced today, most of it owned and
distributed by large corporations that control the media, the concert
venues and the major distribution channels. Violence sells. Music that
violates our sensitivity has become big business.

Walk into just about any public urban space - supermarkets,
restaurants, sports stadiums, airports - and you will hear the
aggressive sonic wallpaper known as background music - the increasingly
inescapable soundtrack of our lives. It is branding more than music: an
assault, an insult, a lack of respect for human dignity. Since bad
music is so omnipresent, people must work harder and harder to make
believe it's not there. And so music becomes something to escape.

Boarding an Air France flight not long ago, I heard, in addition to the
usual aural soup pumped in to calm pre-takeoff anxiety, that one track
of the pop playlist intended for the earphones (Enrique Iglesias, as it
happened) had somehow escaped and was running wild in the cabin. Two
different tunes in two keys, one major and one minor, at the same time.
You don't want to make trouble on airplanes these days, so I waited for
somebody else to say something. But nobody was listening. So I finally
told the stewardess that I was sorry to bother her but I was a musician
and it was driving me batty. She listened, heard it, and said; "Oh, you
poor dear," and went to shut off Iglesias. One small victory. Later,
she asked me if I thought it would be better for her daughter to study
the flute or the violin. How quaint. I almost said to her that it did
not make much difference because just about nobody listens to music
anymore anyway.

Mostly, people do not listen to music because they are too busy
multitasking. Distraction is the order of the day. We are monitoring
too many screens. There is no time for concentrating on music all by
itself. Listening to music has become something to do while we are
doing something else - reading the paper, driving, vacuuming,
text-messaging. An adult doing nothing but listening to music is
considered to be not doing anything. With music becoming more childish,
it is mostly children who concentrate on music now.

Since fewer people are really listening, more and more anti-music is
made specifically to not be listened to in the first place. It's a kind
of Catch-22. Why bother to try and make subtle music if nobody is going
to listen to it? (Listenable popular music is still being made in
Africa and Brazil, but it is not popular in the first world.)

People of all ages still listen during concerts. Looking at the
musicians, you're more or less forced to listen to them. So it is just
possible that all the new concert DVDs being marketed will get people
listening again - though there will certainly be somebody with a ball
game muted on television while keeping track of a roast in the oven at
the same time. It is, by the way, possible to eat and listen to music
at the same time. For a guaranteed undivided-attention listening
experience, read Bob Dylan's "Lyrics, 1962-2001" while he sings the
songs.

  According to The Guardian newspaper, Prime Minister Tony Blair of
Britain, an amateur rock guitarist, voted for Lynyrd Skynyrd's anthem
"Free Bird" as his favorite guitar solo. Not that there's anything
wrong with Lynyrd Skynyrd. Their simple-minded, redneck, three-guitar
rock 'n' roll was made for dancing, and dancing is a dandy homage to
music. But it would have been a nice surprise if Blair had chosen a
guitar player with a bit more, well, culture. Blair does not appear to
be such a serious listener. Are there any serious listeners among
today's national leaders? It would be nice to think that a politician
who takes some time out to listen to music seriously would make a good
leader.

During World War II, jazz fans in occupied Europe said that anybody who
liked jazz could not be a Nazi. People listened seriously in those
days. They could go to jail for listening to music. Adolph Hitler,
remember, loved to listen to Richard Wagner. Speaking of which, Mark
Twain, a serious listener indeed, said: "Richard Wagner's music is not
as bad as it sounds."