Re: [Marxism] When Facebook Isn't Fun, or..

["Ian Pace" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greg McD> And then there's the whole anthropogical take on the subject and 
the people like Alan Lomax who recorded legendary yet forgotten blues 
musicians. They helped to preserve a whole world of music which would 
otherwise have faded into nothingness.
>
This is something of a devil's advocate's point: whilst in this particular 
case I can absolutely see the point in preserving in such music, more widely 
might some music be better left to die a natural death? The instinct to 
preserve historical music, at least in the West, only dates from the 
mid-19th century (with that era's strong historicising tendencies). In the 
classical world, I see the tendency towards preservation (and continuous 
digging up of obscure works and composers from past eras) as tied in with 
idealisation of hideously unjust former times. Presentation and appreciation 
of the operas of the French baroque, and styles of performance which 
emphasise the rigid hierarchical structures contained within the music, has 
undoubtedly something to do with a nostalgia for the supposed splendour of 
the absolutist feudal system of the time; similarly the mixture of 
exoticism, mysticism, canned sensuousness and de-subjectivisation in 
Tchaikovsky mirrors (and quite consciously so) the whole aura created around 
the Tsarist monarchy (and for this very reason it was despised by early 
musical revolutionaries in the Leninist era, though in the Stalin/Zhdanov 
times that music which had become part of a nationalistic construction of 
'tradition', including most of the romantics, became presented as some type 
of 'workers' music'). I wouldn't be unhappy to see much of this archaic 
music die away.

 > But I don't think it's snobbish or mystifying to try to recreate live 
sound on a stereo. Its simply more enjoyable than listening to music on a 
crappy system.

Sure, that wasn't really what I was saying. Though I do have doubts about 
the idea that a recording is at best a reproduction of a live performance, 
rather than something in its own right. In a time when bands and many other 
musicians make recordings first, then go on tour on the back of those 
(rather than the other way round, as in former times), I do think this model 
needs rethinking. Not least also because of the musical possibilities 
(especially involving electronics) available uniquely in the studio.

Solidarity,
Ian 


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