WHO DONE IT?
Who took melody out of modern music?
You certainly must have missed it by this time! People no longer go about their work humming a happy tune or mouthing romantic lyrics or silly, child-like metric puzzles to help cover cares and concerns of their work day. We used to do so - all of us. Who put a stop to it? Who can be blamed for changing the tuneful songs we loved and used so routinely?
That which poses for popular music today is a pulsing mass, a cacophony of warped noises cuffed with electronic curdles and drizzled in drum-like doodles which suggest the basic reason for tympani but distort and exaggerate it out of proportion.
We don't have to look too far for the main culprits, either!
No, we cannot - we must not – blame the “new” generation! They are the victims rather than the spoilers.
We fall into both catagories ourselves. We should have seen much of this coming on, back before it became endemic and permeated every fiber of the music body politic.
In the later “ Big-band “ years we began to fragment into factions in music which should have signaled danger and urged common sense applications. Elite little groups started setting themselves apart as being “progressive” or “modern” - both terms which we had discovered and re-discovered so often in political life and found wanting. Economics played a seeding role in it all, no doubt, when it became impossible to pay larger groups.
We should have recognized flawed formations right from the start. Such twosomes. trios, or quintets, at best - strung-out string bases, ever- increasing drum sets, fast-finger and flay-handed keyboards, and, on occasion, electronic versions of instruments with melodic capabilites which were sublimated or ignored. Far too many such “progressive” acts went too far, too fast. They became ingrown and snooty verging on, and, actually becoming snotty in some cases.We fell in to other divisive sub-titles, as well We fragmented. The music we played was trivialized.
Many such groups and curious sounds sold well. They became “authority”. The norm. What should be. And, larger groups followed. In addition to all of this ferment taking place within music, technological advances and electronically powered istrumental equipment, hit the markets at this very time in abundance and took over in ways , not at first, even thought to be possible.
When the Moog Synthasizer became available I felt I needed one. That, to me, theMoog was the promise of an new world of music for our future. I never got one, of course, and I have seen the concept eroded by mis-use and mis-judgment and, even more so, by the acceptance of immitations in the place of the real thing. The Moog mode is still there, to be developed, I feel, but set aside for the time being, until we regain our musical equilibrum.
We dropped the melody ball and did not provide adequate safeguards of musical instruction and encouragment for youngsters coming on. We became a nation of music spectators rather than serious performers...showmen rather than sidemen...barkers instead of Ring Masters!
We have a trememdous amount of re-grouping to do if music is to be regenerated; taken out of the twitching hands of specialists who continue to set forth sameness fronted by photogenic freaks, and fueled by self-feed flames of mediocrity.
Hum a tune for me. Sing some words.
They can be re-newed - together like that, but it is going to take time to regain a foothold on the main trail of musical travel and adventure.
A.L.M. December 16, 2002 [c605wds]
