October 14, 2009
about music - thoughts by professor javitrøn
Welcome to our newest monkey, professor javitron! The professor will be focusing his efforts primarily on bands, albums, and music in general. Welcome him with open arms.
first of all, allow me to introduce myself: i'm an android whose title of professor might very well be symbolic, but i'll prefer to leave that up to you to decide. i've been a renegade insider in the world of indy music for a while, and i've been asked by the supreme cybermonkeys to join this temple of wisdom.they don't know what they've done.
however, if you get through the voluntary suppression of capital letters in my texts and my somewhat random style to put words together, you might find some of the ideas expressed in them quite interesting and worth reading.
having said this, i shall start wondering where independent music is at this moment in time within the boundaries of my limited knowledge. democracy and a series of tubes supposedly would make life easier for indy bands around the planet, but there are still some factors that escape us and the great soup of nothing is absorbing our work into the ignominious void of ostracism. why? that we'll try to figure out briefly in these lines.
it might be the nature of the scene, or the culture we're submerged in, but everything lately looks like the copy of a copy of a copy, like in the insomniac life of a weary and dusted tyler durden sitting behind his office desk. you see a band, you've seen them all, yet the lookalikes and wannabes vary in quality, never in intention. so, you make sixties rock and roll, seventies punk, eighties new wave, nineties hip hop, take a little bit of this, a little bit of that... even jazz, when supposedly being a music which carries the search in its own nature, is looking at its own belly button, wondering what's lost in the way of a displaced 12/8 measure! is there a breaking point for all of this? are we even interested in that? and anyway, since when some good old tradition was any bad or good? and anyway, are "styles" real and measurable or just a marketing method to sell music in various forms? at this point it's a very difficult point to assess, and a very big bite, even for a positronic brain.
in historical hindsight, we could find a little clue to support these reasonings. from the first beats of prehistory, to the baroque chamber music or the bigger romantic orchestra displays, music has followed an evolution, hand in hand with society around it. the music makers of all sorts have served roles from mystic to street storytellers, from protégées to social entertainers. this evolution continues as society grows more and more complex, getting human musicians through the traumatic cultural changes of the twentieth century, where recorded music and industrial revolution generated a dream, a leap in music production and a promise of cultural democracy that was blasted in a beautiful firework by the consuming thirst of capitalism. so, in less than fifty years, the recorded master found an evolution to work of art and was degraded back to a consumer product. so much for democracy, isn't it? in that very time lapse, we all realized that the act of making music came down from the highness of a few chosen talented and hard working genius to more humble levels where everyone could have a piece of creation. that second half of the twentieth century showed us that everyone could make a simple rock combo and make some simple music that satisfied our cultural and expressive needs. so, that bit of democracy we had in the end.
twenty first century arrived, and internet brought the awareness and the means to share and duplicate, as computerized studio solutions and electronic music, with its own concept change and all, got us closer to a more "down to earth" musical approach. all amidst an infinite soup of white noise, an endless menu that covers the whole planet and escapes through the horizon, where the elitist, talented, wannabe musicians, music bookworms, theorists, innovatives, amateur, professional, traditionalists, revivalists and everyone in between coexist and try to make contact to their audiences, if these ever reach them from the crowd. but even authors have been turned to consumers nowadays, and that might be one of the key tricks to learn about our environment, dear musicians and music fans...
that's where independent music exists, out of the industrialized music enslaved by corporations, in the margins of the socially acceptable, fluid creativity that, even when not on purpose, is committed to a very political statement: we don't work like the mainstream, it's not in our nature, our schedule or our objectives. our intellectual territory may vary from mere abstract spiritual expression to the most refined irony, political statements, protest or philosophical developments of all sorts. some of us might still be bound by the convention of "styles" in an effort to find referents and coordinates to whatever our musical discourse would be about, some of us simply won't apply for that consideration. no matter what, this difference from mainstream, whether in our work or our statements is indeed our territory, the one that we'll explore in this series of articles. all from personal analysis and more trying to raise a question than to postulate axioms.
this insider will offer treasurable findings or try to warn you of objective flaws in this our common ground and beloved patrimony: indy music. i hope, dear monklets, that our journey will prove enjoyable and constructive.
best regards
professor javitrøn, android nexus 7