NZ Conservative

Over the pat few years local authorities in the US, UK and New Zealand have started using the tactic of playing classical music near shopping areas and other public places to deter teenagers from gathering in large groups and making a nuisance of themselves. And apparently this technique is proving pretty effective – a lot of teenagers are really getting turned-off by listening to traditional classical music that sounds totally alien to the simplistic Afro-American hip hop that they usually listen to.

While this is probably a good tactic, if it proves effective, It’s a little sad to see classical music, being portrayed as the music of the establishment, when in today’s liberal order, it’s nothing of the sort. In today’s world, where market populism reigns supreme, the classical scene music is more like an endangered species, which gets a modest government subsidy to broadcast on community radio and provide the odd concert. If the modern liberal establishment has a signature sound, it’s more like the easy-listening pop, rock and electronica heard reverberating around shopping mall food courts and automated help lines.

I have a pet theory that one of the reasons why classical music is stuck in such a marginalised cul-de-sac, is the persistent campaign by Marxist music critics to drive a wedge between popular music and traditional musical genres like classical music and folk. From the 1930s to the 1970s there was a sizeable popular demand for crossover-music like jazz and progressive rock with musicians from George Gershwin and Miles Davies to Robert Fripp held in high regard by the popular music press and the Stuff White People Like crowd. However, with the arrival of punk in the late 1970s, there was an aggressive campaign to strip popular music of any links to traditional western music and culture.

Progressive rock in particular, came in for savage attack, with music critics accusing it of being bourgeois and pretentious (as in the case of ELP) disturbingly politically apathetic (as in the case of Yes which championed spiritual enlightenment over leftist politics) or even "crypto-fascist" (as Canadian rock band Rush were labeled for using Ayn Rand-influenced lyrics). Indeed, some leftist music critics savaged just about any band which deviated from the prescribed 3 minute, 3 cord, sex,drugs and rock n roll formula set down in the late 50s. Not surprising, in such an anti-bourgeois climate popular musicians from middle-class backgrounds ( like Joe Strummer of The Clash)  went to elaborate lengths to prove their proletariat credentials by adopting fake accents, working-class personas, and denying having any formal musical training.

This sustained and largely successful attack on cross-over music means that today’s young people have little or no exposure to music with traditional sounds and instruments or complex structures, and popular music that’s been stripped of folk, choral and classical influences is proving to be bland and unmelodic.  Hip hop music is particularly alien to the western musical traditional since it offers almost no instrumental virtuosity, which was one of the main factors that made heavy mental music so popular with working-class white males from the 1970s to 1990s.

As well as being gloomy days for political realists and traditionalists, the 1990s were depressing years for popular music, with CD changers filled with the unimaginative drone of groups like Travis and Coldplay.

Thankfully it appears that generation Y are beginning to rebel against the tastes of their predecessors, with interesting, dynamic music now starting to become popular again.

Danish pop/rock outfit Mew are now turning out some tight, melodic pop songs with a standard of musicianship that would impress a lot of early 70s progressive rock bands.

UK band Pure Reason Revolution pretty much are a 70s progressive rock band, but modernised for the new millennium, and with the added bonus of actually sounding accessible and catchy. They sound like a blend of Yes and Muse, with a dash of the Beachboys in the vocal harmonies. And what could be more refreshingly pretentious that having a band name which sounds like some sort of libertarian think tank!

Others worthy of mention include New York group The Secret Machines, and (provided you don’t mind lyrics in Swedish) Dungen.

Up yours Lester Bangs!

The noticeable decline in popular music and television comedy over the last twenty years is often talked about but rarely explained.

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s there was a remarkably diversity of novel output in popular music and comedy but in the mid 1980s this outpouring of creativity abruptly dried up. Twenty years on, there isn’t much sign of a renaissance.

The essential characteristic of the comedy of Monty Python and Peter Sellers was irreverence. These young guns were free to lampoon every canon of western culture from the Catholic Church to Nietzsche. Such expansive comedy was unknown in the first 60 years of the 20th century.

In the early 1980s a second wave of comedians arrived. ‘Smith and Jones’ produced elaborate satire with highly crafted sketches that the 18th Century satirists would have been proud of. Meanwhile Rowan Atkinson and Bell Elton fused A-level history with dry British sarcasm in the hilarious Black Adder series.

By the late 1980s intellectual humour became increasingly unfashionable, in part, because viewers were insufficiently educated about western culture to understand jokes about ‘soccer playing philosophers’ and ‘rococo gasworks’. Similarly, comedians aren’t interested in things they don’t have much knowledge about.

The work of today’s comedians, such as Ricky Gervais, is mainly about cultural cringe and social embarrassment. This seems appropriate for an age characterised by self-consciousness and political correctness. However, by Monty Python standards, modern comedy like the The Office is pretty mediocre.

In the early 1970s popular musicians like Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd audaciously plundered the canons of classical music and Jazz – much to the annoyance of traditionalists. A lot of ‘prog-rock’ output was overblown, but its practitioners did produce some decent material.

At the same time notable Jazz musicians, such as Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis, experimented with funk, rock and psychedelia.

During the late 1970s punk rock emerged, partly as a reaction to the excesses of the progressive rock era. However, it proved to be even more short-lived than its predecessor and has left few memorable pieces of music.

Since the late 1970s music that includes references to western hi-culture or displays of instrumental prowess seems to be automatically derided by popular music critics. This has pretty killed off interesting and melodic popular music. When Kate Bush moved over for post-modern squawker Bjork, the end was nigh.

It seems that you can only have a vibrant and creative popular culture when you have a respected hi-culture that the popular culture can draw upon for ideas and inspiration. In today’s culture of political correctness and post-modern relativism it is difficult to produce anything intelligent, audacious or dynamic.