Posts Tagged ‘United States’

The term 'new' has been applied to music for so long now, it's really lost its meaning. Of course music has been called 'new' since day one. It can, of course mean a new work of music from an existing source, more like a 'new music release.'

In this day and age we seem to have become particularly obsessed with labels and 'isms.' Pedagogs look back at the centuries of western music and break it into Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern. Modern is given as all the music that starts in around 1900.

So all this music that starts around 1900 is supposed to be the 'new' music. Embarrassingly, the 'new' music is now a hundred years old.  So now we have had to resort to new, even more confusing labels such as 'post modern' (love that one!) 'new age,' 'new wave,' 'minimalism,' the list of dangerous isms just keeps growing.

So we wish to postulate a definition of a 'new music artist,' as one who is 'self actualized,' or 'freedom actualized.' This new music artist does not bend to authority easily but uses as their guide their own musical tastes cultivated from an intimate self knowledge.

By authority is meant all the 'experts' that are born of 'isms,' and things like 'popular opinion.' Whereas a 'new music artist' may have tastes that are in line with 'popular opinion,' these will be derived naturally and organically and not because they are being held there by societal memes. 'Popular opinion' has become increasingly antithetic to creativity in that, in this day and age, it has become more manufactured than ever.

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On Magical Mystery Tour, new music artist George Harrison has a song about a place called Blue Jay Way and he entreats his friends (who have lost their way) not to be long. The words are framed so it definitely sounds like a plea not to be long (in getting to Blue Jay Way, presumably ) but the real meaning of the song is don't belong.

The Beatles were always confounded by the movements such as 'hippies' and 'free love,' that sprang up, supposedly at the suggestion of something they had said in a song, very much like the movie 'The Life of Brian,' when he tells his followers to 'think for themselves,' and they all start chanting 'think for our selves,' 'think for our selves.' Finally, in desperation he runs away and throws his shoe at his followers telling them to leave him alone but they, of course, don't get the message and someone picks up the shoe, saying it's a sign and a movement begins of those who follow 'the shoe.'

Ultimately movements are just another way that we by-pass the issue which is, by the way, think for yourself, be self determined and free. However well intentioned a movement is, we are just giving away our power by saying we endorse a particular group to make our decisions and think for us. Even though we might be led to believe that there is more power in numbers, we are really subscribing to and defining our own limitations.

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