POPMS
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Pop-M-S @ 2033
I just heard my 20-year-old room mate talk about how "there's no good music these days". My 22-year-old housemate then said, "Yeah! There are no bands to like. Even if you like a song from a band, it's like they never come up with good songs consistently."
After my amusement that these ahem, kids, were talking like me, the truth of their words hit me again. These are not new sentiments but still, every time they are expressed, it's saddening. The only band in my top three favourite bands which is not defunct is U2. And within the span of a decade, it will actually be true that every band I love will be dead (either a member died and the band spilt, or the band spilt and some members are dead, or the band will be defunct). How long will or can U2 actively continue? Three more albums? I don't know.
You know you are old when the songs that you grew up to as a teenager appear on MTV Classics.
These days, legends are no longer created, nor are virtuosos popular. We live in an instant-noodle age, where pop idols life span are as short as the time it takes for instant noodles to cook.
Where will popular music continue to?
In 10 years time (when I'm properly old), those of the old school artistes I listen to who are not dead probably would be, and Britney Spears and Christina Agurila, would they still be around?
Where is popular music going to? How would it evolve? Would it be consumed by our consumer society?
That's the last thought for this course, and I don't have answers.
- posted by sg girl @ 8:34 pm
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Pop-M-S @ 1926.
Music makes up our identity, says us music afficionados (no, the word "fan" won't do). Music is our lives, say many of us musicians.
I play the keyboards, guitar and drums. Picked them up on my own, and played in a church band for some years. I never proclaimed to be good, in fact, I was always deeply aware of how much more practice I should be putting into my instruments. But my love for music seemed to stop at long hours of practices, I just never worked at it.
Then, I came here. To Melbourne. And met a guy (no, this is not going to be a love story) who plays ahem, piano, drums, guitar, bass, violin, organ and saxophone. Can you say phwoar? 'cause I've seen the guy in action on five of the above named instruments and he's no half-past-six jack of all trade like me.
Well, like I said, I picked up the instruments I play myself so I never had people coach me or point out what I did right or wrong. I'm very fortunate that this dude gave me a drum lesson last week and finally, I have someone who can point out what I'm doing wrong and what I should be doing.
But, you know, while one side of me felt "good, now I know and can improve", the other side just went, "I'm a rotten drummer, I'm a rotten drummer, I'm a rotten drummer".
Ouch.
Ok, bringing all these back to the academic nature of this course. You see, that whole experience (and the "I'm rotten" feeling still lingers) showed me how much of my identity is affected by my role as a musician.
Take away my ability to play music and you handicap me. I. Feel. Handicapped.
Because I picked up some bad habits involving fundamental drumming skills, I now feel that I cannot drum at all unless I correct these bad habits. Which means when I drum these days, all I do is drum my basic rhythm and try to correct my errant right hand. It's like I've forgotten to do rolls, or syncopated beats, and well, every thing else.
I feel like my arm has been chopped off.
And as a person, I feel lost.
Lost.
That's how much the musician part of me makes up my psyche and involves me as a person.
For a good few days, I was depressed. Depressed because music now no longer flows from my hands.
Why should it matter so much? Well, next to God and my family, music is the biggest thing in my life. Listening to music and playing music, both.
See, music is me. My world is filled with music. I absorbed and make music, and in this consumption and production, I derive a feeling of being alive.
Some people seeped in fandom find their identity in dressing like the band they like, hanging out with like-minded fans, and speaking the lingo of the genre as well as aspiring to be like their idols. When they meet people, they size them up using the person's music preference. Their world is that band they love. The band they love defines their reality. In the same way music defines my reality and who I am to a certain measure.
So take away my ability to play and you effectively break me.
Never underestimate the power of music. Every one should probably study popular music in society, I'm sure I'm not the only affionado whose existence is affected by music.
- posted by sg girl @ 7:26 pm
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Pop-M-S @ 2013.
I don't like dance music.
I'm sorry, whatever form it is - techno, rave, trance, house or the new-fangled sub-genres I heard today in lecture like psy-trance - I don't like them. Much. At all.
Nope.
As a student of music, I really ought to be more open, tolerant of new forms of music. Mind you, I do see the beauty in dance, electronica, and this... type of music. There's an extension of the Kyber, cyberculture in electronica. Its very genesis from the cusp of technology is exciting for observers of history, music, culture and also, for us nerds who believe in the long encompassing reach of the Net.
As an observer, I find dance (I use "dance" as the encompassing term for all genres like techno, electronica, trance, house and like-sounds) and its culture exciting and new. A bubblepot of possibilities is this genre; and the behaviour of its fans at rave parties and events is to say the least intriguing.
The latter is like a postmodern tribal community. The idea of a postmodern tribal community flashed into my mind when lecturer Brian Morris talked - and perhaps waxed some lyrical - about the ritual of this community, driving out to the Victorian countryside, pausing to see if they can hear the sound of music carried over the still night air, and also when he flashed the quote from an online forum when a fan expressed why he/she prefers the bush doof to an indoor party.
I would even say that dance music itself has a postmodern edge to it, with its nature of sampling and appropriating various songs to create a new hybrid.
So yes, dance music possesses a certain amount of intrigue and perhaps even mystic for me who live in an age where Moby and Fatboy Slim can sel millions of records without being actually musicians and in my opinion, half-baked singers/ rappers/ whatever you would call their intonations over their electronically engineered music.
In part, I attribute my disdain for dance music to my musical pride. I play the keyboards, guitar and drums. Subconsciously and then consciously, I realise dance music turns me off so because most times, dance music is music that doesn't require a musician, music that doesn't need a lifetime of practice to be a virtuoso, sound that could make the musician obsolete.
What an insult.
While the computer nerd and cultural observer in me watches the evolution of dance music with interest, the musician and purist protests. The strong beat of dance music offends me, offends me in its repetitive nature, loops which I know how to generate on my computer keyboard with a music programme.
I also stand by the usual format of a song, with verses, a bridge and chorus, moments where your emotions ebb and then rise as the music manipulates. Dance music, though not devoid of highs and lows, brings its listeners into a trance with repetition. I scoff this method, which I fancy okay if used with restraint but scoff otherwise.
When I listen to a song, when I buy a record, I want to be listening to skills, musical and vocal excellence and skills, not just production and technical skills of people who used ProTools, a synthesizer and a computer to stitch a song together.
Cheers.
- posted by sg girl @ 8:00 pm
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Pop-M-S @ 2058
So the white man came and took away the brown babies and the stolen generation was thus created. Where is the line between commercialising an event and giving it due coverage? When an Aboriginal country singer records a song, hit it big, though his/her songs will be political by default because of their skin colour and heritage, will his/her songs have apolitical, apathetic lyrics because well, it is commercial?
The question of "selling out" is so arbitrary, so ambivalent. And it's relevant not just to the musician but also to the writer and every one who is an artist.
I've made my peace. I believe - this will sound Matrix-y - that to beat the system, you have to be in the system. And to retain integrity in yourself and your work, you have to master the system and play by its rules so well so that you can twist and manipulate it your way eventually.
So if an Aboriginal country singer has to release a "cleaned up" version of a political song, well, swallow it because that song - sanitised or not - will still make an impact and create awareness. Because the singer in himself/ herself is a political message in his/her body and mere existence itself.
- posted by sg girl @ 8:57 pm
