the disappearance of the black band

[dubble-u-c]

There are plenty of black bands in Washington DC that make GO GO Music.


Beyonce and Amerie made some decent tunes that charted in the US that incorporated go go music.

 

[gek-opel]

Black music is all about the "brand new sound/brand new shit" which s often to the detriment to the music. This is why 50 Cent was a world beater in 2002 and he's struggling to go Platinum in 2007. Jay-Z could do NO wrong...that dude retired and came back 3 years later and all of those kids that worshipped Hov back when the "Black Album" dropped call him an old man now. I hate that about the popular Black music culture.

Hang on - 50 struggling to go platinum now is a good thing! His rhymes have remained static (law of diminishing returns) and his beats are nowhere near as good as they were on his debut. Black music's neophilia here has dealt him just the kind of blow he deserves. If we were talking about a white Indie equivalent he would still be scoring platinum even with worse music and lyrical cliche.

 

[gek-opel]

I grew up listening to all types of music and all types of Hip Hop in the 80's. It was all just MUSIC to us kids. Once the record labels and marketing departments took every and put it into neat little niches and genres that freedom was gone forever...I fuckin' WISH that kids could experience what it was like for me to listen to urban radio play Run DMC's "Sucker MC's" and Duran Duran's "Reflex" back to back like it was nothing? Never happen today. Damn shame some Black kid would get ridiculed for liking Cold War Kids or Bloc Party and the only way for them to be accepted would be to become part of a clique/subculture with a name some magazine (or marketing company) gave them.

This however is more OTM. The economic determinant factors of a multi band media era of the niche on the virility of trans-generic fluidity in a culture cannot be underestimated.

 

[mms]

Hang on - 50 struggling to go platinum now is a good thing! His rhymes have remained static (law of diminishing returns) and his beats are nowhere near as good as they were on his debut. Black music's neophilia here has dealt him just the kind of blow he deserves. If we were talking about a white Indie equivalent he would still be scoring platinum even with worse music and lyrical cliche.

you might disagree with pd's selection of artists to illustrate his track but he's totally right here, esp with mcees, the turnover of mcs is quick and harsh, even if they don't deserve it, hip hop is a harsh mistress, it's almst as if any means to make good records is pulled away, i can't really think of any rappers that have lasted very long at any level of success apart from maybe krs one, de la soul, wu and jayz for a while.

 

[gek-opel]

Fair dos but cost/benefit analysis suggests that rampant neophilia will inevitably have some downsides. Also on the production side this isn't true to the same extent (ie: names establish themselves and can remain hyper popular/lucrative for 10 years plus). And interestingly Indie (in the UK at least) heads pretty much in the same direction more recently also- band makes first album, big success, law of diminishing returns, dropped after 2nd or third record. But this is all part of this era of Capitalism- furiously churning novelty, a kind of ever changing present where nothing really changes.

 

[mms]

Fair dos but cost/benefit analysis suggests that rampant neophilia will inevitably have some downsides. Also on the production side this isn't true to the same extent (ie: names establish themselves and can remain hyper popular/lucrative for 10 years plus). And interestingly Indie (in the UK at least) heads pretty much in the same direction more recently also- band makes first album, big success, law of diminishing returns, dropped after 2nd or third record. But this is all part of this era of Capitalism- furiously churning novelty, a kind of ever changing present where nothing really changes.

agreed on that last statement, alot of music has boiled down to marketing and delivery of formats nowdays.

 

[tht]

nowadays is since ____? (>2000?)

 

[noel emits]

Bottom line: Rock N' Roll is, was, and always will be (say it with me now) BLACK MUSIC.

Continue.

One.

Well I'm glad the thread has moved on but substituting rock n' roll for rock was sneaky, They're not the same things really are they? Not by today's definition. You can have 'rock' music that has nothing much to do with rock n' roll.

That is all.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

a kind of ever changing present where nothing really changes.

I think you may have given a good summary of what life is like in general, there.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Well I'm glad the thread has moved on but substituting rock n' roll for rock was sneaky, They're not the same things really are they? Not by today's definition. You can have 'rock' music that has nothing much to do with rock n' roll.

That is all.

Yeah, I'd have to say Howlin' Wolf's influence on Mogwai is slight at best.

 

[gek-opel]

Well I'm glad the thread has moved on but substituting rock n' roll for rock was sneaky, They're not the same things really are they? Not by today's definition. You can have 'rock' music that has nothing much to do with rock n' roll.

That is all.

Well, they share a certain distant lineage... but most guitar music directly descended from post punk is pretty un-rock n roll. That was the purifying point where "the blues" was extracted. Although new crossbreeds with contemporary funk and dance musics were quickly made possible with the new form...

 

[gumdrops]

this thread and the one on ilx made me think of this article i read ages ago -

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,1933463,00.html

also, apart from indie fans (and artists) having a snooty attitude towards black music over the years, i think one of the main reasons for indie artists not really engaging with much outside rock history is that they just dont want to be associated with indie-dance or rock-rap or *anything* (most of which prob didnt work for reasons to do with yes - the fact those other genres arent band-made) thats now seen as an aberration of purified/core rock values. much better to stick with the tried and tested (even if the tried and tested was once new ground).

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

i'm very much afraid that it all won't happen again, and the music of the future is musicals, commercials, soundtracks to games and ringtones. there still will be new rock/house/techno/hiphop, like there still is new jazz/bluegrass/country.

It's not music itself that's dying out, it's the critical culture around it - which to those of a critical bent often looks like one and the same thing, hence the baleful nature of a lot of contemporary commentary. But there's more music being made than ever before, and the barriers to access have never been lower. There's lots I love about old records, but anyone who's even vaguely anti-elitist has to keep the access thing to the fore front when weighing up all the doom-and-gloom announcements.

I think we are devolving away from the mass market model back to the way music was used in the 19th century, with people using it much more actively to communicate within a much smaller circle of people. Instead of piano in every living room, we now have PCs. The level of skill that people now have on software music programs is directly comparable to virtuoso instrumentalists of the past, in as much as those virtuosos didn't develop those skills as an end in themselves, but rather as a means to move people and communicate thier vision. So as forms evolve, the skills set will evolve with it. If I'd put as much time into learning the guitar as I have into using my software, I'd be a regular Jimmy Page by now.

The de-elitism of music means that people naturally withdraw from the meta-critical arena, which is what critics are seeing. Think of how much innovation in 60s music was explicitly an interaction with the concept of the mass-market, and how much of our music/critical culture has decended from that.

 

[nomadologist]

It's not music itself that's dying out, it's the critical culture around it - which to those of a critical bent often looks like one and the same thing, hence the baleful nature of a lot of contemporary commentary. But there's more music being made than ever before, and the barriers to access have never been lower. There's lots I love about old records, but anyone who's even vaguely anti-elitist has to keep the access thing to the fore front when weighing up all the doom-and-gloom announcements.

I think we are devolving away from the mass market model back to the way music was used in the 19th century, with people using it much more actively to communicate within a much smaller circle of people. Instead of piano in every living room, we now have PCs. The level of skill that people now have on software music programs is directly comparable to virtuoso instrumentalists of the past, in as much as those virtuosos didn't develop those skills as an end in themselves, but rather as a means to move people and communicate thier vision. So as forms evolve, the skills set will evolve with it. If I'd put as much time into learning the guitar as I have into using my software, I'd be a regular Jimmy Page by now.

The de-elitism of music means that people naturally withdraw from the meta-critical arena, which is what critics are seeing. Think of how much innovation in 60s music was explicitly an interaction with the concept of the mass-market, and how much of our music/critical culture has decended from that.

this is an absolutely brilliant post

 

[nomadologist]

i dont think anybody around here thinks music as such is dying out. I thought we were talking about new developments in music, new sounds, new scenes. There i think some doom & gloom is in place.


when you say that a higher percentage of people in the us or the uk is himself making music now than in the 70's/80's i just dont think you're right


you make it sound like people in the 70's/80's were only passive music consumers and that making music yourself has just now been reinvented. i think you couldnt be more wrong. Back then it seemed like everybody with an interest in music was at one time or another in a band.



i really doubt it. i know youre joking, but i think your only half joking. it reminds me of all those grime artists who were all the time saying that they had been grafting for years and earned some pay by now for all their grafting. It seems like people are a little bit too self-congratulatory these days,




music as such was never elitist, including the 60s-70s-80s. people have allways made and will allways make music. Added to that you have popular music, which saw a spectacular development from say 56 till maybe 97. After that the development seemed to fade. That fading is mourned, not the disappearance of music as such, which will never happen as long as somebody's heart is beating.

you are completely overlooking the way technology has democratized music. if you can't see that, you're, well, blind.

P.S. If you want to hear people moan about music being over, just read a few music blogs.

 

[continuum]

It's not music itself that's dying out, it's the critical culture around it - which to those of a critical bent often looks like one and the same thing, hence the baleful nature of a lot of contemporary commentary. But there's more music being made than ever before, and the barriers to access have never been lower. There's lots I love about old records, but anyone who's even vaguely anti-elitist has to keep the access thing to the fore front when weighing up all the doom-and-gloom announcements.

I think we are devolving away from the mass market model back to the way music was used in the 19th century, with people using it much more actively to communicate within a much smaller circle of people. Instead of piano in every living room, we now have PCs. The level of skill that people now have on software music programs is directly comparable to virtuoso instrumentalists of the past, in as much as those virtuosos didn't develop those skills as an end in themselves, but rather as a means to move people and communicate thier vision. So as forms evolve, the skills set will evolve with it. If I'd put as much time into learning the guitar as I have into using my software, I'd be a regular Jimmy Page by now.

The de-elitism of music means that people naturally withdraw from the meta-critical arena, which is what critics are seeing. Think of how much innovation in 60s music was explicitly an interaction with the concept of the mass-market, and how much of our music/critical culture has decended from that.

agree with nomadologist on this

 

[nomadologist]

? what might that difference be?

 

[nomadologist]

i must be blind to think rapping and beatboxing had democratized music more than technology, for everybody has a laptop, but who has a voice but the rich. As i said music has allways been democratic



there's a dfference between moaning about the end of popular music as we were used to, with a lot of change and new developments. and the end of music per se, which gfc says people are talking about

you would never have seen hip-hop emerge with the force that it did were the 606 (or other relatively cheap and easy-to-use drum machines) not so affordable and available

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

i dont think anybody around here thinks music as such is dying out. I thought we were talking about new developments in music, new sounds, new scenes. There i think some doom & gloom is in place.... Added to that you have popular music, which saw a spectacular development from say 56 till maybe 97. After that the development seemed to fade. That fading is mourned, not the disappearance of music as such, which will never happen as long as somebody's heart is beating.

I think it's valid to say that a lot of critics confuse 'developments' in music culture with music itself. To be gloomy over the lack of development is a meta-critical position that doesn't reflect the reality of how most normal people use music. Critics tend to think that people engage in music because of developments, so if the rate of developments slows, then so does the importance of music per se. I'm saying that's not true, and that to focus on a percieved lack of development is missing the point.

when you say that a higher percentage of people in the us or the uk is himself making music now than in the 70's/80's i just dont think you're right... you make it sound like people in the 70's/80's were only passive music consumers and that making music yourself has just now been reinvented. i think you couldn't be more wrong. Back then it seemed like everybody with an interest in music was at one time or another in a band.

I think that the barriers to making and distributing your own music are much lower now that they were in the past, and that in general terms the way people use music is becoming more active and less passive - not just in terms of making music, but also in distributing and promoting it.

music as such was never elitist, including the 60s-70s-80s. people have allways made and will allways make music.

OK, but music as a means of mass communication was elitist in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Artists had to prove themselves against someone else's standards of musicianship and taste if they wanted access to the channels of distribution and promotion. That in turn has coloured the discourse critics use when talking about developments in music, eg. scenes breaking through from the underground and so on.

i could be wrong, i dont know your stuff, but i really doubt it. i know you're joking, but i think you're only half joking. it reminds me of all those grime artists who were all the time saying that they had been grafting for years and earned some pay by now for all their grafting. It seems like people are a little bit too self-congratulatory these days.

Yeah it's a half joke, but the point is that I am technically very proficient on some of the software I use. Whether I'm putting those skills to use in an artistically satisfying way (or whether Jimmy Page was, for that matter) is not my place to call. And I gave up expecting music to pay me a long time ago. No 707 is ever gonna have my logo sprayed on it I'm afraid

 

[Mr. Tea]

when you say that a higher percentage of people in the us or the uk is himself making music now than in the 70's/80's i just dont think you're right

you make it sound like people in the 70's/80's were only passive music consumers and that making music yourself has just now been reinvented. i think you couldnt be more wrong. Back then it seemed like everybody with an interest in music was at one time or another in a band.

'Making music' is not the same thing as 'making music that other people get to hear'. In the past, if you and your highschool buddies formed a band, then maybe a few dozen people at a time would get to hear you play live, in a local pub or youth club or something, and without going to the expense and bother of using a recording studio there was no way you could record any music that wouldn't sound awful, and even then it would have to distributed by hand-copied cassettes. None of these problems present themselves to today's aspiring bedroom DJ/producer/rapper, who can record and mix music at home and distribute it electronically.