Is it actually kind of good rich kids waste their life with music instead of doing anything material that adversely affects people? Yes, these people ruin any music scene they infiltrate but it feels like damage control compared to what they could have done otherwise.
I was poor and starting my freshman year at music conservatory at 22 years old, wasnt even a leftist, but even then I knew that music was kind of worthless. Music as a metaphysical healing force is neoliberal thought, music is the thread that knits communities but is essentially useless in a place without community.
But this kind of thought only serves to make libs feel good about themselves for choosing something entirely selfish rather than something useful like say be a doctor or teacher.
I do too but i have feelings about it having been so close to it for so long.
The proletariat has been listening to too much music in the weak-willed Lydian mode and must be strengthened with brave sounds of the Dorian mode.
Music as a metaphysical healing force is neoliberal thought
Disagree. Music is wonderful and alleviates us, be it momentatirly, from the constant suffering that we are cursed to wallow in. Music can be both a "healing force" (though I'd reword that term) and a thread that knits communities.
I think music is an abstract language and the fact that most people cant speak or read it is depressing. I think the fact that sometimes it can give you a dopamine hit is nice but just dressing. We werent supposed to listen to music in a room quietly, in a concert hall weirdly not saying anything, or worse with a group of people that is mostly ignoring it and on their cellphones.
i think that most people DO speak and read music, maybe not sheet music but most people can hum a tune or understand a groove even if they only feel it and don't understand why. we weren't 'supposed' to go to space or invent computers or whatever but here we are. i don't get the argument tbh. music is useful for those who consider it useful to them, why do we need to moralize about it beyond that? if you have feelings towards rich kids making music, i get it, but this feels extrapolated from that if i'm totally honest. yeah, it's better some rich kid makes music than builds a bank but i don't see how that means that music is liberal nonsense. might as well say the same about painting or dancing or whatever form of expression, doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.
Music in this context where its mostly rich people doing it is worthless to me is my point. Also id argue that being able to hum a tune or feel something to music isnt good enough and not being able to articulate beyond that is actually a bad thing as you should be able to do more, that is if it is such a integral human experience. Please see white people not being able to dance.
He kinda has a point. We don't actually have anything like a living folk-music tradition anymore because the entire edifice has been completely industrialized by recording companies & finance capital; and consequently the only voices that get heard are minimally petite-bourgeois or bourgeois-aspirants.
You couldn't possibly make a song like "John Brown's Body", or "Solidarity Forever" these days & expect it to get any kind of traction. And yeah, some of that is just a matter of "technology marches on", but you'd have to be willfully ignorant to believe that the economic structure of the music industry doesn't have any impact on what gets produced & why.
why is that a music/art problem and not a capitalism problem? if the point is 'capitalism rewards shit art and makes real art inaccessible' then why all the tirade about how art can't be healing and is only useful to communities and moralizing about how you're not supposed to listen to music in a stadium, must be have this IQ to hear music, white people can't dance etc.? the argument that makes the most sense is buried under a bunch of weird criticisms that don't land and then the crux of the argument is misdirected at music as a thing instead of capitalism as a system. capitalist commodification is the problem we're talking about, not making jabs at how people engage or interact with music and deeming it as useful or unuseful or liberal or 'good.' it's weird.
Theres bad in everything, if youre involved with anything youll find out about it sooner or later
Are you the poster from back when the site started that said music was pointless?
Lmao.
But I kind of agree with the damage control point, rather these people make bad music than become some banking or landlord ghoul.
Im right about everything I think, also this is edge posting here for people who saw the kiwifarms thread
Good post.
It's the same for acting and all kinds of other arts. Rich kids have a humongous head start on these kinds of pursuits.
Another example.of how the ideology of the ruling class becomes the ruling ideology. They're the only ones who end up making most of our cultural products and their lived experience and ideology are propagated through it
music's a seesaw for me. it's therapeutic when I'm making it and I feel amazing. I'm conjuring all bad the bad feelings and using arcane trickery to convert them into sounds I like. It's genuine magic.
Then after I finish the song and publish it I hate it. I've not made a single song I'm proud of. I get sick listening to anything I've made. Everything's wrong with it. Then people tell me it's actually great but then it's like they're just humoring me and I feel even worse.
Guess I gotta make creative stuff mainly for myself in the end. Maybe that'll help you. It's not selfish to be a musician by the way. It's a craft like anything else and you can't know what will be useful for everyone.
I've never made anything I didn't like but I never felt like I made something that was good enough to serve a purpose beyond my own.
I think it is selfish, you're at a jazz gig with some of the baddest jazz musicians and more than 3/4 of the room is on their phone the entire time or talking loudly to compete with the instruments. I've seen it so many times, something has to be wrong here.
In my mind, the pursuit of music to a fanatical obsession is analogous to people buying luxury second homes when some people are on the streets.
you’re at a jazz gig with some of the baddest jazz musicians and more than 3/4 of the room is on their phone the entire time or talking loudly to compete with the instruments.
I go to jazz performances all the time (and also worked / played at a jazz club for several years) and I've never seen phone use at that level at all. A lot of clubs even specifically prohibit the use of phones entirely. So yeah, maybe you've caught some off nights, or just have a particularly disrespectful crowds in your area, but I definitely wouldn't consider this to be the norm. I have also been dragged out to some indie pop style shows though and yeah the phone use is off the charts. In my experience at least death metal and jazz tend to have the best crowds.
The only stuff I've ever been proud of making is generally functional woodwork. I've been told my baubles are beautiful, but nothing is more satisfying than like, a book shelf.
Music as a metaphysical healing force is neoliberal thought
Damn, shots fired at Albert Ayler
Albert ayler existed in an actual community where that stuff had legs, i dont agree that the context is the same
In the context of the US where arts and music are slashed and most people who do music professionally atleast were already rich...
Why r u even talkin about ussr...
I think you just gotta accept the absurdity of it all. Music is pointless in the way that most of our weird emergent behaviors are pointless. I think you're wrong to suggest that music's "purpose" is that of some kind of social glue only. It can do that, but it can be deeply personal or just mechanically inventive without bringing people together around a bonfire.
And yeah, seeing your other posts itt, I see you have some grievances about "proper" "artistic" music being exclusionary. Writing has the same annoying divide between genre fiction and capital L "Literature," but I don't think all artistic complexity is for the purpose of gatekeeping. Layers always get added to our fun for the purpose of novelty, or refinement, and good art exploits that new complexity to more effectively draw emotions out of people.
Also good on you for being concerned with material effect, but poor as fuck people make and listen to new "fancy" music all the time. Inti Ilimani was instrumental (no pun intended) in getting Allende elected, and part of their success came from their incorporating the musical techniques they encountered in academia into Chilean folk songs to make something new out of them.
Music seems pretty important to you and I think you shouldn't let your (admittedly rightful) annoyance with snobbery and disrespect for it trick you into disregarding it.
This post is long and gross but I have seen a lot of art that would have made my own life better disappear because the artist got jaded thanks to our alienated society that turns all our behavior into cost-benefit equations of "worth" and "contribution." I hate it and this post sounds like the words of another muse starving to death.
music is fun to listen to though and that's good on its own. It's not magic or anything but it is nice
Thats cool but theres a whole universe i think all humans should be a part of beyond the fringes of what youd call the sidelines
IDK what to tell you. In my experience, “scenes” aren’t where you will make money or find real community. But you have to meet people somewhere.
I feel like playing music with people you actually like is infinitely more important than what you are playing, if the" scene" is rich kids than ur prolly not gonna like anything about the experience if you cant turn off the fuck rich people part of your brain
Musicking by Christopher Small really made me rethink my relationship to music
Book from the 90’s by a musicologist who seems like he was hiding his power level in post Cold War academia. Basically he just lays out what you’ve been saying in this thread hah. The crux of the book is that we have reified “music” and that we should be thinking about music as a process involving all participants and that it is basically a bedtime story for adults, reinforcing the values of those in power.
Boom vindicated
It just seems stupid to have some people who are master x 10 of music and then a large populace who are tone deaf, cant read music or cant listen to anything with four on the floor at 120bpm,
But if u say this too u hurt alot of peoples feelings, how do you get across to otherwise intelligent people that they may have been failed in ways they fail to consider
Im impervious to capitalist societies conditioning despite growing up in it without any outside reference
