Popped Culture

I was going to send this in an e-mail to my professor, but I elected to blog about it and save it for later.

Hey Professor Demers–
I’ve been doing more thinking on the discussion we had in class on Thursday about popular culture. The last comment I made was somewhere along the lines of “well, it worries me because we’re flooding the market with a bunch of crap, rather than focusing on the good stuff that’s out there.”

Something really bothered me after class: who defines what is “good” and what is “crap”?

I recall (I don’t remember her name) a girl in the back of the classroom responding to my comment with “it’s what people watch, so it’s what’s popular.” And that makes sense — but then again, with the internet freely accessible, sites seem to cater to the lowest common denominator.

Ironically, I was reading an article on Digg tonight about mathematics education in the US (I went out with friends tonight, I swear, I have a life!) and in the (heated) discussion that followed, someone posted this comment (pardon the language):

Say what you want, a country full of stupid people will fail at every level – economy, government, defence, basic services, and of course education. Its a vicious circle once a country starts to become less educated, education becomes more expensive as educated people become more scarce… If you want to carry on being retarded uneducated fuck-abouts then your country will die. The mentality of society has become centered around the most fucking stupid people. People actually want to emulate gangster fucking rappers? You think its fucking hard core to have a speech impediment and such a lack of intelligence that your only vocal ability extends to rapping about your fucking bitches and the fucking Bronx? Don’t get me wrong, the world would be a dull place without the hilarity of gangster rap, but that doesn’t mean everyone needs to do it – CD mass production ensures that even a single Hummer full of rappers is more than enough for our entertainment needs.

which reminded me of our discussion on the first day of class as well — why do white kids from the suburbs want to listen to gangster rap and drive Hummers?

(Why is the Hummer popular in the first place?)

It then dawned on me: what should be tagged as “good” in terms of taste — music, movies, food, whatever — should be something that promotes the evolution of education and the diversity of society. We seem to be facing a dangerous singularity in popular culture.

Maybe I just haven’t been around long enough to see a true evolution of cultures, or maybe I just haven’t been paying attention. But everyone’s listening to either Fallout Boy or 50 Cent these days — and they think it’s the absolute most awesome stuff they’ve ever heard.

(if you’re a fallout boy fan, i apologize…)

Anyways, I’m still rattling this around in my head. I just thought you might find the quote interesting.

Sorry about the parenthesis.

–david

(original digg article at http://www.digg.com/programming/The_Shocking_State_of_Math_Education_in_America )

minimal

The holidays were fun. I’d blog about them but that’s a really boring topic.

I’ve instead been thinking about minimalism, particularly minimalist electronic/techno music, and why it seems to be so (un)popular. If nobody likes it, or finds it to be boring, why is it something that I enjoy, when I consider myself to be an aficionado of other, more lush genres of music — eg classical, jazz, and (yes, I’ll admit it) pop?

What is minimal, anyways?

Look out, here comes another Flash clip (546.3 kb):

That’s Clipper by Autechre. And I consider it minimal (even though it’s labeled more as glitchtronica), along with much of the output from Josh Wink, John Tejada, James Zabiela, Richie Hawtin, and many others on the “bleeding edge” of electronic music lately. And here, when I’m referring to minimal, I’m referring to the “minimal” of the present — stripped-down tech house, not so much the early beep and glitch minimal of previous years. Minimal music always seems to be atonal at first — it starts in utter chaos, a myriad of sounds that are just kind of strewn about, then slowly comes together to form some coherent idea or pattern. And usually, once it comes together, this idea is expressed very clearly.

And everyone complains that (a) “I could make that!”, (b) “It has no lyrics”, or (c) “It’s boring. The same thing over and over again.”

But it’s truly a musical phenomenon. Let’s tackle these three in reverse order.

(c) “The same thing over and over again.” Listen to any track of minimal. No, listen. Really. It changes, ebbs and flows, even if subtly, to build and transform itself into something different. It doesn’t always reach out and smack you in the face, like the “INTRO-VERSE-CHORUS-VERSE-CHORUS-BRIDGE-CHORUS-CODA” format of any classic rock song (“take ‘em to the bridge!” as is shouted in SexyBack). And, for that matter, music IS repetitious — compare the format given above to any popular, rock, alternative, or other radio format song today, and you’ll likely see it’s similar, if not the same. Repetitious? Yes. Just not quite like everything else.

(b) “It has no lyrics.” Neither does a lot of classical music. It’s about the expression of your idea through music and melody, and not through words — that’s cheating.

(a) “I could make that” — Well, yes, you could. But the problem is, it’s really hard to do. To succeed at minimal, the artist must have an idea that’s so good, it can stand on its own for 4, 5, 10 minutes, be twisted inside out, cut up, tied in knots, pureed, and then reassembled, and have it still be just as refreshing as when it went in. And that’s the hard part. Getting a good idea.

Look at how many rock songs have been written on the ideas of “I love you”, “I hate you”, “Love is difficult”, “I’ll miss you”, or “I’ll never forget you.” Wow, what a plethora of ideas. AND they have the benefit of words! Add this with melody over a happy chord progression including a 1, 3, 4, and 5, and you’re all set. Boom, instant pop song. Why else is having a Garage Band so easy?

I guess this (along with so many popular influences) is why we see so many garage band startups in the vein of headbanging rock (“white guys musically masturbating” according to D.Nero), and so few in the vein of electronic music. It’s hard to have musical ideas that are good enough to be pulled apart and put back together again. In this respect, it reminds me a lot of early jazz music — here’s your idea, now go play with it. It’s just the instruments are different.

In a world so cluttered with expressions of the same tired ideas, it’s refreshing to take a break from Iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouuuuu to take stock in musical technology today and play with it.

That’s why I love it, I guess — it’s the purest expression of thought and form in music — truly musical art.

Glitch on, Richie.