I find it fascinating, and deeply disturbing, that youth all over
> the world love techno 'music' - probably the biggest artistic crime the
> world has ever known.
Although i am not a big fan of techno i have head some incredibly creative music that fits into that genre. Unfortunately like all pop music that is forced into peoples ears, we usually hear the worst dreck in the public forums and have to seek out the most creative aspects of the genre. Same goes with rap that was once a very vital movement of a minority in the US that became co opted and lost all its meaning and is now used to sell jeans and cars.
Why,
> why why would people listen to techno in a world that has produced Bach?
I love the music of Bach but i have to say i have heard some very lifeless performances of his music in concert and on recordings over the years.
But i think you are missing an important point, Stav, different music and art appeals to different people for various reasons.
>
> And so in Japan the people grow disdainful for their nation's most precious
> cultural fruits, and instead wait in line to buy CDs of N'Sync and The Back
> Street Boys. Very sad. This is the ugly side of globalism - the
> destruction of non-mass producable culture.
Although i mainly agree with you about the problems of imperialism and mass produced dreck one cannot expect a japanese teenager to be able to relate to honkyoku or sankyoku. It does not even seem to appeal to too many old Japanese people anymore! When one sees an old person on stage looking angry and/or sad playing music from ages ago, it is hard to appeal to people. Unfortunately many traditional concerts i have seen have had people on stage who simply never smile and do not look to be enjoying the music. This is both in the states and in Japan, both Japanese, and non Japanese. Perhaps being an American who has spent limited time in Japan, i am greatly missing some cultural meaning in this kind of performance practice.
One of the problems i have with many performances i see and recordings i hear of sankyoku and honkyoku is the lack of feeling or emotion coming out of the players. The first shakuhachi player i heard was the grandmaster Yokoyama Katsuya. So i falsely assumed that all shakuhachi players play every note as if their lives depended on it! When i started to hear many other players, including some of the grandmasters i was disappointed as to my ears, some players are trying to play the music correctly, not trying to discover something new and fresh and vital each time. The appeal to my ears of Yokoyama was that even though he was playing music that was hundreds of years old, he played something that sounded brand new, even improvised and gave me the same impression i had the first time i heard sax players like Evan Parker and Joe McPhee or a pianist like Cecil Taylor.
The same problem occurs in Western classical music or Jazz, some people are going through the motions of the same piece for the zillionth time and sound bored and some others are rediscovering it each time and making it sound alive and fresh.
Of course, someone can easily disagree with my ears and thoughts on this subject.
phil
www.philipgelb.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 03 2003 - 09:09:50 PST