Who are the most 'important' acts of today?

[soundslike1981]

I think my point about GSYBE was contingent upon the the point you're making, Blissblogger, not opposed to it. I meant: shouldn't the apparent freedom of choice now available to a listener/consumer of music (or even of "indie rock"), and the purported lack of hegemonic figures (for better or worse) like Bowie (or even Radiohead) making culturally pervasive albums, result in something better than GSYBE as a representative of "important"? In other words, if the popularity of music is no longer driven by mass-pop-cultural/marketing phenomena, but rather by the tastes of listeners alone, then it would seem to follow that there would be a premium on inventiveness and fun, rather than marketability. And yet, I'd say both culturally and qualitatively, "rock and roll" has maintained the blinders of the mythical "LP age" (or the non-LP single age) and even lowered musical standards. And yet, from what little interaction I have with people who still believe in "rock and roll," the LP-era sense of "importance" (defined as something bigger than "what I like") is still very, erm, important. I wasn't lamenting the passing of this definition of importance; to the contrary, I was lamenting the continuation of it, coupled with a diminution of musical importance (in the post-punk sense). I was lamenting the fact that freedom has apparently resulted in blandness affecting innovation (within the sphere or r'n'r, at least), if GSYBE actually represents a high water mark for contemporary rock and roll. But maybe that became a given as soon as "indie" ceased to refer to a mode or production/distribution and became a codified aesthetic--one which seems to feel unambitious even as it superficially liberalises its musical borrowing points (in contrast, at least to me, with the post-punk zeitgeist).

I've assumed that "canonical" is a bankrupt concept in pop music, given the diffusion of the genuinely popular experience on the Beatles or even Bowie scale. In theory, this would be a good thing. And yet, I think it's just any sense of standards for determining a canon that have disappeard, not the concept of the canon itself. And this seems to result in music that sounds like it's trying to become canonical, given to the most banal sort of musical safety/"seriousness". One good thing about the idea of a canon is that, at the very least, it should minimise the centrality of fashionability. And yet, GSYBE seems to combine the worst aspects of canonical hierarchicalisation and fashionability---they epitomise the empty "canon" that that has currency with an underexposed, fashion-as-content, neo-centric mind still concerned with the (false?) sense of "importance" that made sense in the pre-internet era. GSYBE, and the way in which their (younger) listeners describe them, belies the idea that kids aren't looking for cultural significance/LP-style musical reverence in their music.

I guess I'm just a curmudgeon. I feel fortunate to have essentially no limits to the music I can hear/consume/appreciate other than my own readiness to "get" any given music. And I don't see that freedom as being at odds with the continuing significance of location/scene/time: if I were a musician, I think the opportunity to listen truly broadly would only up the ante for my own musical ambition. But for whatever reason, at least for young people, the freedom of the mp3 age seems to be mostly talk--kids aren't listening very broadly, or if they are, it's not causing any musical awakening. Supposedly, kids "won't be fooled again"--no one will believe in music as important beyond its aesthetic/personal bounds. But the pervasiveness of something like Pitchforkmedia in determining what gets heard/liked seems to have all the trappings of a "movement" except any sense of meaning or purpose. I'd rather see no movement/importance, or one that takes the risk of considering itself overtly meaningful; but this nowhere hybrid seems particularly vapid.

 

[Tim F]

It's hard, from the perspective of someone who missed out on the glory days, to really understand the importance of the domination of Radio One/Melody Maker/"meaning in rock" etc. etc. as a pre-conditional adjunct to this really mindblowing experience of the importance of music.

I have to pretend that there is some quality of intensity to all yr relationships to music back in the 70s/80s that I simply don't have access to, cannot conceive of. This appears dubious to me only because I can't really imagine how my relationship to music could be <i>more</i> intense bar devoting my entire life to it - and it's not like prior generations haven't struggled with balancing life/work/relationships/hobbies etc.

If the argument rests on a more limited point - the point that we can no longer take for granted simple "truths" (like the "truth" that [x] is a universally important artist) - then I think we have to recognise that, as much as iPods, this is something that "we" have achieved. The very insistence on the freedom and the <i>duty</i> to deviate from the public opinion that enshrines Coldplay or whoever as innovators is the same insistence that tends to undercut and erode any counter-narrative of widely regarded <i>important</i> artists.

I was in Synthaesia today (a Melbourne record store chock full of noise, krautrock, hyper-esoteric IDM etc etc) and despite the absolute score find of a second hand 12 inch of 4 Hero's "Students of the Future" in a secluded crate, flipping through all those handcrafted packages of found-sound curios and the like was an unsurprisingly ennervating experience. "How", I wondered to myself, "does anyone think they're achieving anything by getting their heads around all this stuff?" But of course I had to remind myself that I reserve the very same prerogative in relation to grime, dancehall etc...

I can see the attraction of there being some level of hegemonic consensus surrounding what is "important", but then I've rarely come across a music critic who didn't appear to feel uncomfortable the moment they <i>realised</i> they were part of such a consensus (the alternative of course is to blind yourself to the fact by always maintaining that you're part of an ongoing counter-narrative against the masses, as if being a Dylan fan has some permanently rebellious quality).

 

[Loki]

It's hard, from the perspective of someone who missed out on the glory days, to really understand the importance of the domination of Radio One/Melody Maker/"meaning in rock" etc. etc. as a pre-conditional adjunct to this really mindblowing experience of the importance of music.

These are your glory days. Every age is golden - there's always more good music out there than there's ever been before...

Or maybe it's just me.

 

[labrat]

Sheep On Drugs
Stump
Tangerine
Apoll0 440
Foreheads In A Fishtank

 

[DigitalDjigit]

The original question was pretty clear to me until some of you started muddying the water by trying to figure out what it meant. Answer what you think the question is asking.

Anyway, right now I would say the whole DFA stable is important. In fact there are 2 threads about them at the top of the music category right now.

 

[blissblogger]

If the argument rests on a more limited point - the point that we can no longer take for granted simple "truths" (like the "truth" that [x] is a universally important artist) - then I think we have to recognise that, as much as iPods, this is something that "we" have achieved....
I can see the attraction of there being some level of hegemonic consensus surrounding what is "important", but then I've rarely come across a music critic who didn't appear to feel uncomfortable the moment they <i>realised</i> they were part of such a consensus

this is another factor, you're right...

i can track it personally through something like Pazz 'n' Jop, which is a machine for constructing consensus (within a critical community) (as if that mattered! or had anything to do with "the real world')... when i first started voting in it in the early nineties, i would do 'tactical voting', believe it or not... i guess at that time my favorites intersected a bit more with the consensus or something... it seemed like it counted for something (i can't imagine what!) if artist X placed a bit higher... so i would shuffle my point allotments around, leave out somebody that was so obscure nobody else would vote for it ---- sound absurd doesn't it! ... but in recent years -- maybe the last six or so... i haven't been arsed to do this, just submitted exactly the same list of faves, more or less, as i'd submit to Wire, to Uncut, and do on my website/blog... and i get the impression that whether through loss of belief in the very idea and point of critical consensus, or just desire to flaunt their idioysncracy, this is more and more the norm with pazz voters... although you still get a certain core of consensus-subscribers whose list of personal faves has that chosen-by-committee quality (often these are like the resident rockcritic at a newspaper, or editors)...
the pazz chart, in its upper reaches at least, tends to be based around some kind of idea of "importance".... although too often it designates "would be construable as important--if people other than critics liked it"


"important", it's a word i'd never be able to use these days.... partly cos it's innately kinda lame and drab sounding but also it rests on all these almost completely eroded assumptions.... if i felt the impulse to use it in a review i'd immediately switch into sceptical mode, 'important--to whom?' .... 'important" plugs into all those grand questions of what power music has, can it change anything etc... alll best avoided thinking about! ... yet i'm sure some while back that word would have tripped off the typewriter fairly easily, 'the young gods are the most important band blah blah' (well i'd have tried to phrase it using more exciting language but the underlying concept would have been there)

re "glory days"

i'm not lamenting the unviability of "importance" so much as just recognising that the structures, mechanisms, etc that enabled its use have all but gone

at the same time you have to acknowledge that certain kinds of affects, engagements, convergences etc were made possible within that formation*.... and it's not clear yet what the new structures of distribution/ etc are enabling, in terms of affects, etc

the other thing to acknowledge is that the past moments of consensus are myths... dylan/woodstock/sex pistols/Smiths/acieeed/nirvana... yes X-huge number of people were gathered in this one "spot" but what all the people who weren't.... like 'god save the queen' was #1 but punk in 77 was outsold by prog rock and by disco.... the "unanimity" is constructed around various exclusions of certain kinds of consumers, by race, sex, class etc

this is all true and yet it's also true that these illusory convergences have proved to powerful myths, in terms of motivating and mobilising... productive illusions

it's not clear that the state of dis-illusionment we currently inhabit is necessarily a better place, or productive of anything

i suppose what i'm talking about is really a kind of grand recit, a macro-narrative, that has largely crumbled

it's the absence of that, i think, that makes the bustle in that hipster store you went to seem inexplicable or inconsequential... i feel that sometimes in the equivalent record stores in nyc.... or reading the Wire...
the way hipster music culture just perpetuates itself, reshuffling the influences, draws up its lineages... to what end?

what happens, though, is that instead of the "unexamined assumptions" of the macro-narrative, you just
get the unexamined assumptions of micro-narratives -- genre-ists who happily debate within the terms of that genre where they've installed themselves, taking its crucialness for granted, rarely making the case for it as a whole

^^^^^^^^

* "that formation"
for various reasons i'm thinking that formation could be designated Analog, and the succeeding formation that emerged-- initially overlapping, then eclipsing, and now burying it--could be called Digital

 

[Buick6]

this is another factor, you're right...

i can track it personally through something like Pazz 'n' Jop, which is a machine for constructing consensus (within a critical community) (as if that mattered! or had anything to do with "the real world')... when i first started voting in it in the early nineties, i would do 'tactical voting', believe it or not... i guess at that time my favorites intersected a bit more with the consensus or something... it seemed like it counted for something (i can't imagine what!) if artist X placed a bit higher... so i would shuffle my point allotments around, leave out somebody that was so obscure nobody else would vote for it ---- sound absurd doesn't it! ... but in recent years -- maybe the last six or so... i haven't been arsed to do this, just submitted exactly the same list of faves, more or less, as i'd submit to Wire, to Uncut, and do on my website/blog... and i get the impression that whether through loss of belief in the very idea and point of critical consensus, or just desire to flaunt their idioysncracy, this is more and more the norm with pazz voters... although you still get a certain core of consensus-subscribers whose list of personal faves has that chosen-by-committee quality (often these are like the resident rockcritic at a newspaper, or editors)...
the pazz chart, in its upper reaches at least, tends to be based around some kind of idea of "importance".... although too often it designates "would be construable as important--if people other than critics liked it"


"important", it's a word i'd never be able to use these days.... partly cos it's innately kinda lame and drab sounding but also it rests on all these almost completely eroded assumptions.... if i felt the impulse to use it in a review i'd immediately switch into sceptical mode, 'important--to whom?' .... 'important" plugs into all those grand questions of what power music has, can it change anything etc... alll best avoided thinking about! ... yet i'm sure some while back that word would have tripped off the typewriter fairly easily, 'the young gods are the most important band blah blah' (well i'd have tried to phrase it using more exciting language but the underlying concept would have been there)

re "glory days"

i'm not lamenting the unviability of "importance" so much as just recognising that the structures, mechanisms, etc that enabled its use have all but gone

at the same time you have to acknowledge that certain kinds of affects, engagements, convergences etc were made possible within that formation*.... and it's not clear yet what the new structures of distribution/ etc are enabling, in terms of affects, etc

the other thing to acknowledge is that the past moments of consensus are myths... dylan/woodstock/sex pistols/Smiths/acieeed/nirvana... yes X-huge number of people were gathered in this one "spot" but what all the people who weren't.... like 'god save the queen' was #1 but punk in 77 was outsold by prog rock and by disco.... the "unanimity" is constructed around various exclusions of certain kinds of consumers, by race, sex, class etc

this is all true and yet it's also true that these illusory convergences have proved to powerful myths, in terms of motivating and mobilising... productive illusions

it's not clear that the state of dis-illusionment we currently inhabit is necessarily a better place, or productive of anything

i suppose what i'm talking about is really a kind of grand recit, a macro-narrative, that has largely crumbled

it's the absence of that, i think, that makes the bustle in that hipster store you went to seem inexplicable or inconsequential... i feel that sometimes in the equivalent record stores in nyc.... or reading the Wire...
the way hipster music culture just perpetuates itself, reshuffling the influences, draws up its lineages... to what end?

what happens, though, is that instead of the "unexamined assumptions" of the macro-narrative, you just
get the unexamined assumptions of micro-narratives -- genre-ists who happily debate within the terms of that genre where they've installed themselves, taking its crucialness for granted, rarely making the case for it as a whole

^^^^^^^^

* "that formation"
for various reasons i'm thinking that formation could be designated Analog, and the succeeding formation that emerged-- initially overlapping, then eclipsing, and now burying it--could be called Digital

Sorry to be so blunt, but with a discourse like that, does that then relegate all the books you've written to mere pulp?

 

[blissblogger]

does that then relegate all the books you've written to mere pulp?

not necessarily, A/ cos they're documents of moments when significant numbers of people thought what they were doing was important, and B/ they're celebrations of music that is fabulous regardless of the criteria of "importance"

but i think the question i've been posing is implicit in the very scare quotes you put around 'important' in your original question...

there was a time when the tentativeness of those quote marks would never have felt to be required

but over the last--i dunno, decade maybe--people have gradually ceased making those kind of claims of importance.... or at least what we could risk calling informed opinion has stopped using that kind of justificatory language

that tells us something

for instance i think the Ariel Pink record is fabulous, the Ghost Box stuff is incredible, ... as music i think they're up there pretty high on an all-time scale, and feel reasonably confident they'll endure in my esteem and continue to measure up ... but i would never think to claim importance for them....

even the description "criminally neglected" seems a wee bit over the top and presumptuous these days....
cos as well having the idea of the artist not getting their just desserts there's a sense too of
people missing out or ignoring something that would enrich their lives... there's a kind of implicit "important" lurking behind it

 

[DigitalDjigit]

What is the cause of this abandonment of the concept of importance. It coincides with the Internet age and therefore the ease of access to pretty much all of recorded music. This gives a better perspective and maybe people realise that their movement is not unique and utterly special. Or is the cause the accumulated weight of history pressing down where it is possible to be completely immersed in music recorded 20 years ago and still find new stuff. Or are the reasons due to a shift in philosophy in general?

 

[Tim F]

Simon i have a reply to your post before last that I started writing but it may end up being abandoned like most things I start writing at the moment, so I just wanted to say that I agree with basically all of it! I'm glad you clarified where you were coming from.

"what happens, though, is that instead of the "unexamined assumptions" of the macro-narrative, you just
get the unexamined assumptions of micro-narratives -- genre-ists who happily debate within the terms of that genre where they've installed themselves, taking its crucialness for granted, rarely making the case for it as a whole"

Yeah I think this is a key point. The alternative between a grand narrative and micro-narratives is a false one I reckon - just because you're not assessing everything first and foremost in terms of widespread socio-cultural importance, that doesn't mean you can't look at the overall connectedness and inter-relatedness of genres, see how certain impulses which start in one area will replicate themselves in others, recognise that if one area of music started taking cues from an other area something really exciting might happen etc. etc. And just generally maintain a skeptical attitude towards the "self-evident" quality of genre - I wish there was more recognition of how genre-identity only ever exists in relation to stuff outside it. <i>War of position</i> innit.

I'm constantly struck by how formative an influence my love affair with UK Garage at age 17/18 was, in terms of shaping how I think about music generally, especially in terms of the ambiguity of its identity: here was a genre that was so obviously a composite of different, external stylistic tricks, and yet so clearly its own thing; a genre which strode the pop/underground divide so precariously but so confidently; a genre whose most generic moments could also be its most novel or creative. Recognising and falling in love with these ambiguities in UK Garage has made me seek the same things in other forms of music, and attempt to establish relationships of equivalence and metaphor... in effect, to create a macro-narrative out of a micro-narrative.

I guess neo-rockism as I understand it is pretty much the same manoeuvre, except that the elements out of which are built the relationships of equivalence (community, geography, integrity etc.) are elements of certainty rather than elements of uncertainty...

 

[blissblogger]

I'm constantly struck by how formative an influence my love affair with UK Garage at age 17/18 was, in terms of shaping how I think about music generally, especially in terms of the ambiguity of its identity: here was a genre that was so obviously a composite of different, external stylistic tricks, and yet so clearly its own thing; a genre which strode the pop/underground divide so precariously but so confidently; a genre whose most generic moments could also be its most novel or creative. Recognising and falling in love with these ambiguities in UK Garage has made me seek the same things in other forms of music, and attempt to establish relationships of equivalence and metaphor... in effect, to create a macro-narrative out of a micro-narrative.

I guess neo-rockism as I understand it is pretty much the same manoeuvre, except that the elements out of which are built the relationships of equivalence (community, geography, integrity etc.) are elements of certainty rather than elements of uncertainty...

well talking about recits, grand or petit, that's a story you're telling yourself, Tim, and a compelling one, and a narrative that other people would probably subscribe to also -- but as well as being a story, it's based on stuff that's incontrovertibly true, or factual -- you didn't come up with it out of thin air -- also i think there's good chunks of the UK garage phenonemon that relate to community, geography... maybe integrity not so much ... UKG definitely was more Popist slanted than Grime which is Rockist (as i define it) through and through as far as i can see

but yeah, all these Narratives are part myth, part history -- a tissue of the real and the projected

jon savage has a piece in the new Observer Music Monthly
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1527583,00.html
that eerily parallels some of the things i've been talking about -- the Analog Vs Digital formation -- and he also notes how although History says the 1960s was Dylan Stones Beatles etc, or that 1977 was Punk, the sales figures show other stuff was more popular... in the Sixties, 'the sound of music' sold more than sgt pepper's... elton john and rod stewart outsold the pistols...

Punk was a story that people told themselves, and there were a lot of trial runs at getting that narrative started... from 1970 onwards, repeated attempts to make the argument that Music's Gone Wrong, Got Too Bloated and Out of Touch, We Need a Return to Basics, A Populist Rock Sound for the Kids... but it took until 77 for that narrative to become compelling to large enough numbers of people to take off... up til then most people were happy with Seventies music, superstar rock, prog, etc ... even Mark Perry ... he said in a Wire interview that he was basically fairly content even in 76

^^^^^^^

going back to "important", one thing people have suggested upthread has been Important meaning it's going to be seen as Landmark music, or Influential/Ancestral, by future musicians... important to the successors.... but that's a bit of a dodge i think, because that rests of the idea of a Canon -- whether it's a Rock Canon, or a Electronic Music canon, or a Street Beats Canon, or whatever... it's actually quite close to Harold Bloom's idea of the canon, how we won't know what writers today are canonical until the future when subsquent writers will embrace them and engage in the Oedipal dance called Anxiety of Influence...

but the question lurking behind this definition of importance is -- what's the importance of the Rock/Rave/Street Beat/whatever canon per se -- what's its point -- why is it a good thing

if you asked Harold Bloom, or Terry Eagleton, or other litcrit top boys, they'd doubtless come up with a macro-meta type argument re. the role of Literature

being a much younger discipline, popcrits don't tend to do this very often, although you can often infer from their approach and style and libidinized terms what their foundational assumptions re that are....

 

[Tim F]

"also i think there's good chunks of the UK garage phenonemon that relate to community, geography... maybe integrity not so much ... UKG definitely was more Popist slanted than Grime which is Rockist (as i define it) through and through as far as i can see"

Yeah this is true. I guess the mediation point is that while community and geography were pretty integral to garage, its other "popist" qualities undercut the self-evident importance of these - ie. 2-step is a "london thing", it could only emerge out of London, but at the same time the end product "works" outside of this referent much more successfully than grime - which requires a basic working knowledge of its social origin in order for the listener to understand the sonic, lyrical and performative decisions being made. A lot of music could be rated according to this split I think: Baltimore Breaks maps almost perfectly onto 2-step, whereas dancehall, baile funk and reggaeton are closer to grime but not quite as extremely (the sensual component of all except grime is key maybe: it allows all sorts of listeners to construct their own "relationships of equivalence" and has probably been the driving force behind the gradual entrenchment of the "international language of booty" we currently have).

But there's an interesting contrast here in that while to understand 2-step requires less contact with the scene, : the very fact that grime makes more sense according to rockist principles (necessitating an awareness of geography, community etc.) also makes it tempting to draw easy conclusions eg. the fact that grime MCs are eager to prove their sincerity makes it tempting to simply rate them on that basis - leading to bizarre conclusions like "Dogzilla is a realer MC than Donae'o, therefore better". Whereas I think there's a sense in which 2-step is harder to account for critically - there's less of a blueprint for explaining the innovations or "importance" of e.g. Dubaholics or Bump & Flex.

Re: canon - I don't tend to like discussions of canons that actually rest on the "will people listen to this in ten years time" test, not because I'm wholeheartedly devoted to the ephemeral but because it seems like an abrogation of critical acumen to some hypothetical future population, when we should be taking responsibility for our positions here and now. On the other hand, one sense in which this understanding of the canon can be useful is by focusing on how it <i>does</i> operate in the here and now: ie. how is the music and its proponents acting to secure its own legacy. I'm fascinated by the mini temporary canons that spring up in the short-term while the "official history" is being written e.g. any discussions right now as to what the "important" Timbaland and post-Timbaland singles were, or (even more extreme) any attempts to construct a grime canon.

 

[Ness Rowlah]

it's all about the "song" now -- ie. the individual unit of consumer pleasure

that's spot on Blissblogger. And with the focus on the song comes the RE-action to it.
The OPPOSITE of song. Namely prog-rock, concept albums and really _long_ songs (well -
the idea of cramming as much as possible into one piece - ie the first track of Jaga Jazzist's new CD).

 

[DigitalDjigit]

For me an "important" act is someone who is spearheading a wave, a new an exciting thing. Someone who is pioneering new ground within a genre or reviving old sounds and enjoying success for it. So someone like Ferry Corsten wouldn't be important because though he may be one of the leaders in trance, trance is going nowhere and noone cares for it. DFA is at the front of that whole punk-disco thing and therefore are important.

The importance of the canon is that if you want to understand a genre, that's the stuff you should check out. These are definitive statements of that movement. It's like a shortcut. Someone had to be really into the culture for a while to work all this out and say "these acts/albums/songs represent everything that was good about that time/place/culture" and now you can check them out and see what the hype was all about. That for me is what the canon is all about.

I do not think that canonical and important need to be the same thing. For example The Prodigy were an important act because they were the face of rave in 1992. But their sound was their own thing and noone really sounded like them or took their sound further. Thus I would not place them in the rave canon. They were a facet of it but they wouldn't be a part of a compact definition of rave whereas I could take EQ - "Total Extacy" and put it in the canon. It may not have been groundbreaking but it is textbook 1992 uk hardcore.

 

[Ness Rowlah]

For me an "important" act is someone who is spearheading a wave, a new an exciting thing. Someone who is pioneering new ground within a genre or reviving old sounds and enjoying success for it.
.

That would mean The White Stripes would have to go in there as a canonical band?
Even if Jon Spencer Blues Explosion came to market earlier, the Stripes seems to
be the shortcut to Punk Blues (and bands like The Black Keys, Gin Palace and so on).

Or maybe Punk Blues is not big enough as a genre (for the masses) and the same goes for Grime?

Does there even have to be a wave or genre? Can't there be standalone standout acts
in their own little genres (modern day Captain Beefhearts)?

 

[blissblogger]

For example The Prodigy were an important act because they were the face of rave in 1992. But their sound was their own thing and noone really sounded like them or took their sound further. Thus I would not place them in the rave canon. They were a facet of it but they wouldn't be a part of a compact definition of rave whereas I could take EQ - "Total Extacy" and put it in the canon. It may not have been groundbreaking but it is textbook 1992 uk hardcore.

i think you're confusing 'canonical' and 'generic'. Canon, as used in literature, means the pantheon of Great Work. Something could be canonical precisely because it stretched the limits of literature or took it in a whole new path or was its own sui generis thing.

i like that Total Extacy track just fine but i don't think it's Canonic Rave in the way 2 bad mice 'bombscare' or urban shakedown 'some justice' or bizarre inc 'playing with knives' is...

indeed i'd say that anything that is so textbook as that tune would almost by definition not be Canon-worthy.

so frinstance Lenny Kravitz is no way Canon-Worthy vis the Rock Canon cos he doesn't contribute anything new

BUT he, and similar reproduction antique artists like him, are precisely one of the negative side-effects of having Canons in the first place -- ie. people trying to do it the Way it Was Done Before and the Way it Should be Done

the Kravitz Syndrome is why some people argue that we shouldn't have Canons in the first place

 

[DigitalDjigit]

i think you're confusing 'canonical' and 'generic'. Canon, as used in literature, means the pantheon of Great Work. Something could be canonical precisely because it stretched the limits of literature or took it in a whole new path or was its own sui generis thing.

Is that the canonical definition of canon then? Because m-w.com says it means "orthodox". It's funny how words come to mean their opposites.

 

[juliand]

Is that the canonical definition of canon then? Because m-w.com says it means "orthodox". It's funny how words come to mean their opposites.

Strictly speaking you're right--historically the canon connotes the law of a church. Its root is greek, "kanon," for rule or rod. It has the sense of discipline--the strict standard by which all things ought to be judged, a limited set of examples to follow.

This is complicated in the modern era by the beginnings of the avant-garde, and the notion of cultural progress. Thereafter, "canon" conflated both "modern" and "classical". To be canonical, a work must be absolutely of the present, looking towards the future, yet discovering there, as if by accident, the model of the classical past (Jameson's "A Singular Modernity" is great on this, but its everywhere in the familiar modernist works, from Baudelaire and Benjamin to Joyce to nearly every artistic manifesto written in the first half of the 20th century)

Thereby White Stripes would probably not count--not avant enough, though you could argue; neither is "Total Extacy" avant enough or properly "classical"

Instead: Animal Collective accidentally stumbles upon "Strawberry Fields", only here it looks so different

This may not be a sustainable model for discussing what's important in music today, as you'd need to agree on what constituted the classical past. But such an operation is certainly in place: constructing such a thing has got to be one goal of the reissue market, Soul Jazz, "Essential Masters", "Mastercuts" et cetera.

 

[nonseq]

Dubstep & Reggaeton acts.
Note Jamaican influence.

Monolake.

 

[mms]

Monolake.

i don't get monolake frst couple of albums were great esp the first but the last one and the new single .. bone dry and really really boring.