> >I have already described the devolution of folk art into commodified mass
market art: gospel/jazz/blues into rock for example.
> Hmm, well, that can work backwards too, with the jaded looking to
> gospel/jazz/blues for the dreaded "authenticity." Me, I spent the
> afternoon alternating between Glenn Gould playing Bach and Lungfish.
^^^^^ CB: The singing of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the high culturals of Blues, were pretty much commodified from the git-go. Ma Rainey recorded the first "race record", a critical commodification.
Jazz was sold as records very early too. Certainly the classics of jazz are on records, commodified.
Mass production is a form of democratization , too.
Just for an LBO-Talk de ja vu, Beethoven was an entrepreneur.