Anyhow, I digress. Mike and Kathleen didn't care for the music at all and made the interesting remark "But it's musically all exactly the same". Hmm. I listen specifically for pattern repetition, something I don't usually do, and lo, they're correct. Here's what's interesting. I still love the stuff -- and now I'm objectively wondering why. What makes the repetition useful, even meaningful? Gertrude Stein's now hackneyed quote that "a rose, is a rose, is a rose" which is used in lit classes to demonstrate the fact that repetition can have meaning comes to mind, but I don't think that's the crux of the matter.
It's just an idle fancy, but I like to think that what Mike and Kathleen hear as ruined voices and repetitious musical phrases are really the rhythms of life which are often rough and repetitious and on some level that's what pleases us. The sounds Mike and Kathleen identify as musically mediocre, may indeed be what they accuse them of -- and that's not the point at all. The strangled vocal chords that produce sounds like screams sound like us on levels most people can comprehend.
Classical music builds cathedrals, but how many people really want to live in a cathedral? Our music reflects the landscape of our personal interiors. I care for Chopin and Bach, but I like Segovia more and Janis Joplin's Mercedes Bendz just as much though for totally different reasons. I suppose the fussiness they've developed is a part of what makes them good at what they do (if they are, I have no idea) but it saddens me because it cuts them off from their culture. I love all sorts of odd things that are not part of mainstream musical culture (Die Warzau for god's sake) but they don't deprive me of other types of music.
Erg. I haven't exhausted this topic in my head, but I have to get back to work.
Posted by karen at January 12, 2002 12:00 AM