[Dixielandjazz] general discussion, have we hit an all time musical low?

[Bert Brandsma]

Hello Rob,
Interesting discussion you just started.
It is my opinion that every period has its own art. Most of it, say 99% will be forgotten in say 20/30 years.The music that really has longer value will survive, but it is always very hard to predict in your own time what music that will be.
A nice example is J.S. Bach. He was considered old fashioned in his own time. Only later people discovered how much value his art really had.Same with painters. We only bought 1 painting of Vincent van Gogh during his lifetime. Now his works are in museums worldwide and they are worth millions.
The picture in our time is extremely complicated. Part of the reason is that the musical picture is much more complex then ever before. More styles and more possibilities then ever. Nobody is really influential since everybody can and wishes to do his own thing.There is currently no general stream to discover. In the 1920s there were only a handfull artists good enough to make records. So the big ones set the styles other people would follow.Now there are so many studios fighting to get their business filled that everyone can make records. One advantage is that there is more room for self-expression for individuals worldwide then there has ever been. Youtube is only 5 years young.
The big music companies are not interested in art, they are interested in making money, so that's why they promote Lady GiggleGiggle.Their overhead/investment costs for such music are really low. They invest more in the video clips since the big general audience watches music, and doesn't really listen.Lady GG in my opinion is closer to a porn actress then to a singer, but that's only my oldfashioned opinion of course.
Besides we live in a computer time, computers are exiting. People are still only discovering what all can be done with it, and with internet that is the same.Internet is very dangerous for the big powerfull traditional music business, since thay can't control it. Not yet, at least.
So, I think that only after some decades we will be able to see what music of our current time will still be played. We will give it a name or style label then.Most music will be forgotten, but that's normal.Don't forget that even Louis Armstrong recorded stuff like : I Miss My Swiss Miss, or a dreadfull waltz with Clarence Williams.But the music business just tried to see if they could make business with that.Or take all records by Ellington. We only remember a very small percentage of it. The rest was apparently not interesting enough to survive the times.
Kind regards,
Bert Brandsma
www.dixielandcrackerjacks.com





I was discussing this with a friend of mine that is a year younger than meand just thought bits of this argument were valid to ocum...Our generation, that of the teens and 20 somethings, has no music of it'sown, really, it can't relate to lady gargle and all that nonsense, becausethere's nothing to relate to, some people can relate to hip hop, evenmyself to some of it, as there is genuinly good music and lyric writing tobe ound there, but all we have to dance to is techno music, which franklybores 90 percent of people. and ritely so. Even in the current popularmusic genres there's nothing eye catching out there for the musicallyminded. I myself dj and get promos from various record companies and thegeneral tone of them has gone down hill a long way, even since 3 or soyears ago. However, in hip hop and techno circles there's a lot of talk ofthe music going back to it's routes, I just wondered, does anyone thinkthis could happen with jazz? a kind of turnaround? I think a lot of peopleneed something to dance to that isn't techno or rap, and if I'm playingjazz at a volume people can hear it at, students will knock and ask whatit is, some even if they can have a coppy of the cd or record. Whereas the50s had rock and roll and doo wop, which I love almost as much as jazz,the 60s had the beatles, psychedelia and so forth, the 70s had disco etc,this generation has nothing to really relate or dance to. One of my bandsdid a gig at the university i attend and played sweet georger brown andthe place went crazy, the dj afterwards played acon and nobody moved.I'm not sure if this is the rite list to post on, and feel free to sendnasty comments my way about incorrect posting, just thought this couldhave been a point...ttfn,rob 		 	   		  
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