i love you too, twitbuoy! :)
>There is nothing wrong with this. Not a thing. I'm glad people enjoy
>themselves.
well, i'm not trying to substitute one for the other, only wondering why it is that one seems to preclude the other. it was a music created in the context of certain modes of enjoyment for both the musicians and the audience and it seems to me that there shouldn't be anything wrong with that -- speaking as a hick from the sticks growing up on rockabilly and old c&w, not to mention good ole fashion hoe downs. and i ain't no cracker needah. southen folk be crackahs and daze nasty folk. (hi chris! i'm joking in case you don't unnerstand :)
but, what's more interesting is that i simply see this as a version of the divisions that usually divide here. and you're landing in, in some sense, a side you don't typically land in: whereas you once used to hail the accessible, non jargon laden writing produced for the general audience to reach people, you are now championing music that must be listened to and appreciated (criticized) because it is music that is produced via conventions of musicianship that have been formalized in some way. it requires an education/socialization into the world of the producer of the music for it to be criticized, in other words.
and i think you know me well enough to know that i don't want to take one side or the other, but negotiate some path between the two while highlighting the shortcomings of each side. i've seen the damage that the divide does to musicians and i've seen the damage that the divide does to the audience for the genre. if it doesn't have a wide listenership it is, in part, because of the snobbishness of those who want to mark themselves off from the pop culture lamers. again, *in part*,
so i will again take the position that what is interesting in terms of social criticism re music is not the froggin lyrics but, rather, the revolutions that ripple through society in the consumption of that music. in the case of rap, i once argued that it was about the wide culture through which rap because associated with the taking over of public space, of inverting some of the conventions of dominant music, yadda.
with regard to blues and jazz, it was to enable audience participation as indicated by their bodily and vocal response to the music. and if you've ever seen people dancing to good blues and/or jazz, then you'll notice that musicians who are attuned to that improvise in order to elicit *more* of that.
that's what i liked about jazz when i first experienced it.
i think room needs to be made for that somehow. BUT, i also see that the split ismanifested in musicians and those who appreciate the genre because it leads to those who valorize it all as some sort of mysterious process that has nothing to do with formal training. so, they eschew formal training and talk about "feeling" the music, and so forth. and that's pretty lame, too.
>I've spent literally countless hours in the last few months
>dancing around the house, with my kid, to Duke. But I think music--maybe
>not the same music you'd give a 95 to--can also be an object of criticism,
>and you have to take it seriously to criticize it. I like what's-his-name's
>dictum, the one about criticizing all that exists. Music exists.
>
> >it's a fucking white boy thang!
> >
> >coz white boys cain't dance!! :)
>
>And I can't. At all. That's why I do it with a four-month-old.
danny still remembers the songs we danced to! even when i put them aside for faves that replaced those that we enjoyed. iow, he can remember-- I SWEAR--music from when he was under three that i subsequently rarely listened to because i'm one of those people who gets on a jag and listens over and over and over again, then another jag, etc.
>He won't laugh because my cracker-ass gyrations are herky and jerky and
>arhythmic.
>He just likes the motion.
>
>Eric
ahhh, but wouldn't it be nice if we weren't so afraid of our bodies?
kelley