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Stylistic Fundamentalism: was:Why does mainstream seem more like, downstream these days?



On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Matt Davignon wrote:
> There's a tenet of experimental music that I don't agree with so much
> these days, and it's the idea that everything must be new.
> ..............  My concern is that the push for "newness"
> often leads away from uniqueness.
>
>
I am so with you in this thoughtful post,  Matt!

And that may seem odd, as I actually have always been what I call an 
'exoticist'   or a 'xenophiliac'
in my musical life.  I've always desired to seek out the 'new' or the 
'exotic'.
   In more prosaic stylistic terms,  I got bored with rock, funk, jazz 
and soul
at one point so it led me into studying different kinds of global 
cultural musics........to me,  the more exotic,
the more interesting...........I tried to explore every single 
percussion tradition........and later, scalar traditions
in my own journey.    Along the way,  I became fascinated with the fact 
that found objects and objects
that were specifically defined as non-musical could be recontextualized 
to create new instruments.....
.......this led me to electronic music (far later than almost anyone I 
know who has explored those modes
of expression) and digital sound design.

Of course,  the danger of 'exoticism' is that one becomes a 'jack of all 
trades and a master of none'
as my father used to disapprovingly and sceptically say to me when I was 
a young musician.*
At the same time,  being interested in large amounts of musical styles 
and modes of making musics can
also make one very unique.

But part of all of this journey was just what all artists do:    they 
try to find out who they are and how to best express
themselves...........with some it is exploring spanish classical guitar 
in a tradition that is hundreds of years old
without a lot of innovation......or someone like me who flits about 
stylistically like some kind of ADD butterfly.

Because, like you,  I have performed at so many new, experimental, avant 
garde, impovisatory, jazz and live looping
festivals,  I have come to see that there are  'flavors of the month'  
and that those 'flavors' frequently are very, very
conservative in their implementation and very stifling of 
creativity..............dubstep is one of those genres,
at least to me.     I've also been turned down for music festivals 
because my own brand of experimentalism didn't
match what the people who run the festivals have deemed is the 'right' 
kind of experimentalism.  It stung like hell
but in the same breath,  I have turned down dozens of looping artists 
from the Y2K festivals because they
were only processing loops live and not creating them live.   They felt 
as stung as I did, I imagine.

To the exoticist, the enemy can frequently, and knee jerkedly, be 
tradition, but as I see it, this is misplaced.
The true enemy, imho,  is fundamentalist orthodoxy, especially when 
orthodoxy is used in the name of creating an 'Us' and 'Them' environment 
in musical 'schools'.

Loving playing the Blues in traditional ways, conservatively still has 
tons of room for creativity, expression, passion and
aesthetic beauty just as the Electronic musician who craves the new has 
the same chance in their music.
I'm down with all of it, as long as people aren't snobs because of their 
own 'orthodoxy'.

Another thing that occurs to me is that the lion share of musicians on 
the planet who are really obnoxious about
their own stylistic fundamentalism are young musicians (and by young, I 
mean, experientially young which may or
may not be chronologically young).

Most people have their healthy share of insecurities but experientially 
young people seem to be more insecure.
It is why I hear my younger friends bemoaning how stuck up the 
'hipsters' are in the musical scene.

If you aren't rocking fender guitars drenched in spring (NOT digital) 
reverb with a kind of bright, surf rock vibe
and vocals drenched in the same verb as is the orthodoxy of a lot of the 
trendy Brooklyn bands in indie rock,
it's harder to find gigs for young bands..................but it's 
always been like this (or at least in my 40 years of experience
in the music biz).

There will always be snobbish hipsters who eschew anything outside of 
the latest fad.   And anyone who
isn't inside of this stylistic 'mainstream' will feel stung.

Anyway,  sorry for the length of the musings, but this post just really 
got me thinking about it all.

****
oh, and by the way,   much as I like your post, I have a very small 
nitpick with one thing you said:

you wrote:    (Such as dubstep, which while nice, is pretty much 
industrial/IDM with echoes.)


Errrr, I'm not a fan of dubstep to be honest, but I have studied it and 
I think your definition is
just too pat. Dubstep, has a lot of influence from Dub Reggae which 
industrial/IDM doesnt; it has a preoccupation with
very deep and long subsonic distorted bass lines that have NOT 
traditionally been in industrial/IDM
and it also has had a preoccupation with remixing psychelia which also 
has not been a major portion
of industrial/IDM in the same way.

For my tastes, there is just not very much creativity going on in the 
movement but I also don't know
it well enough to say so (I can just hear my dubstep aficianado buddies 
groan as they read this post,
except they never will because they wouldn't be caught dead on this 
forum.......<smile>)

And yet, in the same breath, I have a lot of metal students lately and 
I'm frankly confused at all the
micro definitions that metalheads take so seriously............I don't 
see all that many differences between
thrash, death, speed, black, melodic black, gothic, drone, sludge and 
other kinds of metal.
Sometimes, according to my students, the fact that a singer growls as 
opposed to singing or screaming
will change the genre name of metal. I'm lost, but they love it and I 
love them, so I'm gonna
sort it all out.............lol..........I just got my first 
professional double bass drum pedal towards that end.