IS MUSIC A DEAD ART?

 

Let's begin by defining what I mean by the term "dead art". In essence I'm referring to an art form which is no longer capable of significant technical or conceptual progress and no longer has the capacity to instigate change on a cultural level. An example of what I would consider a "dead" art would be painting, at least in the sense of something hanging in a traditional gallery somewhere. Perhaps it can be said that certain forms of graffiti still manage to trigger controversy and commentary. A practitioner such as Banksy is an example of someone able to inspire discussion and make political statements through their art. Street art aside, I don't see anything happening in that particular branch of the visual arts world which is likely to cause much of a stir or inspire anything to happen beyond its canvases. At most, paintings now simply decorate a room.  Perhaps the work of Warhol may have been the last time paintings had any particular impact on the larger cultural landscape other than, for example, soliciting outrage at the expense of a "stripe" on a canvas.  

I"m old enough to have experienced at least three major cultural shifts within my lifetime which I can say were, more or less, directly linked to a particular musical movement. In my childhood, the late 1960s, there was the psychedelic explosion. Though the primary impetus for that change was a narcotic, specifically LSD, its route through western culture was entirely paved by music. It was rock & roll bands who were sounding the clarion call and it was songs about altered perception which seduced the youth of the era into "tuning in, turning on & dropping out". Without bands like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead and others, the word would never have been able to reach as many people as it did.

In my adolescence during the late 1970s, it was the three headed Cerberus of "punk", "new wave" & "industrial" music which broke kids out of their doldrums and got them thinking, dressing and behaving in new ways.  It was a rebellion against the status quo and conformity which had set in after the comedown of the hippies left their parents dropping the love beads and packing up the station-wagons that drove them out into the bland mediocrity of the suburban landscape.  

In the spring of my adulthood, the final revolution came about through the entwined twins of hip-hop/rap music and electronic rave culture spearheaded by acid house and techno music in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Starting in the early 1980s, before the cancerous spread of gentrification and rising property costs, the warehouse was the scene where exploration and experimentation could happen.  You could get a cheap space for a couple hundred or less per month and pay for it by selling unlicensed booze at weekend parties a few times a month.  Designer drugs, mobile sound systems, isolated locations and trance inducing music sent youth back into tribal states of ecstasy and transcendence. Though a callback to the spirit of the 1960s in the case of the rave scene, the hip-hop crowd veered into the raw street rage of gangster culture.  It shone a glaring light on issues such as police brutality, racism, class discrimination, poverty and injustice.  In either case, it was again a time when adults were afraid of what their kids were getting into.     

Outside of my own personal experience, music as a driver of cultural influence practically only goes back to roughly the beginning of the 20th century.  Before that, you only had folk and traditional music available to the general public and those forms tended to reinforce and sustain existing norms rather than drive changes to them.  On the other extreme, with "classical" music, you might have some influence within the upper crust of society, but very little beyond it.  Religious music, like folk music, tended to sustain tradition rather than spur innovation.  It's not until the advent of recording technology that the idea of true "popular" music comes into play as the populace gain access to mass produced music mediums and playback systems accompanied by radio broadcasts.  Also, the push to innovate, driven by the industrial revolution and its technological advances, begins to trigger changes in music technology and techniques, and consequently, culture.  

The first popular music form to trigger controversy in the general public comes with the birth of jazz.  Elitist art movements like the Futurists and Dadaists may have inspired extreme experimentation with sound, but it was not something that noticeably effected the masses and remained a novelty of the galleries and wealthy art circles.  Jazz, on the other hand, came up from the black communities and was entirely driven by the "grass" roots (pun intended).  This was music that was accessible by the average person and was one of the first times music was seen as being a degenerate influence on youth.  It impacting dress styles, dance, sexuality and social issues.  The ideas of losing one's inhibitions and free expression were built into the very DNA of jazz and these have been a recurring theme throughout every musical epiphany and paradigm shift which has occurred since. 

In the 1950s, there was the birth of that great BEAST, rock and roll.  Here was a hybrid between white western swing music and black boogie-woogie blues with a backbone borrowed directly from native American aboriginal music, thanks to the Creole merger of Louisiana post-slavery blacks and "Indian" blood.  This combination proved combustible beyond anyone's imagination and sent the entire north American continent into a spin, one which would ultimately bust out onto the world stage and influence youth around the globe, from Europe to Africa to Asia.  Rock & roll was the proverbial "Pandora's Box" and, once that lid was open, all manner of wicked spirits flew out.

When you line all of these movements up, you have a 20th century popular culture which was continuously and repeatedly impacted and influenced by musical movements.  In each case, these changes were derided  and dismissed by conservative, "adult" overseers as subversive, perverted and destructive to the moral fiber of the youth and the nation.  There was a sense of threat and menace perceived by the "powers that be" which drove them to do whatever they could to stifle and inhibit the spread of these movements and, without exception, those efforts not only failed, but likely resulted in even more popularity for whatever it was they were trying to stop.  

Throughout the 20th century, there was also a marked and obvious change in the styles, techniques and technologies used to create music.  Something that was popular in the 1950s sounds completely different from something popular in the 1960s.  Take any decade or even the span of a few years and a major evolution could take place.  Anyone with even a basic familiarity with 20th century popular music can listen to virtually any tune and peg, fairly accurately, when it was made.  The style of playing, the recording techniques, the way it was mixed - all these clues tell the tale of when that recording was made and often where and by whom.  

Flash forward to the 21st century and things seem to have reached a kind of impasse in terms of forward momentum and cultural significance.  Since the 1990s, I can't think of any significant cultural shift which has been driven by music.  Technological changes such as computers, internet, smart phones and wireless networks have had far greater impact on our lives than any art form.  The machinery of the popular media has become so efficient at assimilating creative product, that nothing seems to be able to upset the cultural "apple cart" these days. 

Stylistically and technically, music has essentially plateaued.  We're two decades into the new millennium and I can put on a recording from 1995 and put it next to something form 2015 and only the most sophisticated, knowledgeable listener would be able to distinguish their origins.  For several decades, beginning with the unfortunately termed "Krautrock" of the early 1970s, electronic music was at the forefront of innovation and experimentation.  From the "motorik" rhythms of Kraftwerk and Neu to the ambience of Cluster & Eno to the pulsing sequencers of Tangerine Dream, the German music scene blasted the lid off and broke away from the rigidity of American blues archetypes.  After this, experimentation flew off in all directions through post punk, industrial, techno and a plethora of sub-genres, constantly evolving throughout the 1980s and 1990s.  But it all kind of stalled out after that.  Beyond the shifting of tempos between drum & bass and dubstep, the genres seemed to stabilize and consolidate and, with only minor variations since, they've remained relatively constant and consistent.

Culturally, no one gets upset about what a music personality does these days except for the most trivial and sensational issues of bizarre conduct or eccentric individual behavior.  Today, when Kanye West stirs up the media, it's because he's boasting about himself or proposing some laughable indulgence.  The days when politicians would discuss a Johnny Rotten in parliament or a president would put a John Lennon on a subversives list are long gone.  Rap music is more concerned with money and status these days than social justice, for the most part.  At least that's the kind of content that ends up in greatest rotation and gains the highest profile.  And those who do seek to make critical statements are commodified to the point where they are no threat to anyone in the establishment.  They are all neatly and safely packaged and peddled to the appropriate pauper for consumption.  

It seems that most art forms go through a similar arc in terms of their evolution.  They begin in primitivism, as an expression of the masses, evolve into more refined, classical complexity in the hands of the elite and then expand into more experimental realms such as abstractionism, surrealism, modernism and impressionism before ultimately culminating in various forms of post-modernism, which creates hybrids between all of these various branches.  Once you get to the stage of post-modernism, works tend to become self-referential and the commentary becomes an internal dialogue.  That point where the art is able to interact with and influence people and culture on a large scale begins to diminish and disappear.  The medium then tends to fade into the background as mere decoration or embellishment. 

This is where we seem to have arrived at in terms of the art of music.  It now seems to be no more than a structural component rather than something that stands on its own.  People spend less and less time sitting down and listening to music anymore or taking any kind of message or influence from it.  It's mostly just something that's happening in the background. It's no more than a form of "wallpaper" or distraction and not a primary focus of attention.  It's not that that there's anything intrinsically wrong with that, but for someone who grew up with music that made revolutions, I can't help but express a sort of lamentation for the loss of that capability.  Parents don't get scared by their kids records anymore.  Sure, they may not like them or find them objectionable for aesthetic reasons, but they rarely worry that their kids might join some subversive movement because of whatever is hiding in those grooves.  Even that terminology is irrelevant now as most people don't use physical media anymore except as a fetishized object for some hipster sense of nostalgia.

It's not that no one is doing "good" music.  As subjective as that may sound, there are very real standards which can provide a sense of value and quality for any piece of music.  Talented artists are creating quality recordings and performances.  It's just that the sense of a sharp, cutting edge has gone.  I can't look out there anywhere and find anything that gives me that quiver in my gut feeling that something "dangerous" is going on. 

If there is any art form remaining which can get the hackles up of the establishment, I'm not sure I know what it is or where to find it.  I suppose the most dangerous, subversive medium on the planet these days is the dark web, but this is more a place of criminals and perverts than revolutionaries.  If they do exist there, they're doing a pretty shitty job of pulling the pins on this nightmare we're all trapped in.  At a time when we are staring down the barrel of extinction level global catastrophes, we need that revolutionary voice now more than ever.  We need something that can wake us out of this zombie like trance that keeps us lumbering ever closer to the precipice awaiting our final stumble.  If it's out there, I have yet to see it.