What Is Music Today?
(Starting today we will be exploring the music in a way experts roasters blend coffee. All they care about is the great cup of coffee. So, they source great coffees from around the world and understand their profiles and then mix and match them while roasting.
Similarly we will look at music, not just indie, not just rock, not just Hindi or English, not just pop, but blend of every genre and kind. )
Jim Morrison on future of music in 1969: “I can kind of envision maybe one person with a lot of machines, tapes, and electronics set up, singing or speaking and using machines.”
Behold! He was true: 43 years later on 15th Jan 2012, renowned electronic music producer and DJ Skrillex released the song ‘Breakn’ a Sweat’ featuring Jim’s vocals from the Doors song “Light my fire”.
What is Music Today?
Today, when there are more than a 1000 song releases everyday on websites like Beatport and a mindboggling number of artists emerging every day in the form of Facebook/Soundcloud pages, there are a hundred questions to be answered but not many to give them.
The biggest of them being- “What is Music today?”
Is it Sneha Khanwalkar roaming the bylanes and alleys of the country recording sounds of a generator and sampling them to find her sound?
Can electronics create music?
Can you rock a Raga to a Disco Beat?
Is it Amit Trivedi who brought the brass sounds of trumpet, horns and organ keyboards to the Indian ears and made it stay?
Can a rock song be as grand as a symphony?
Does music have to be complex to be great?
Is it Yo Yo Honey Singh whose music may be glorified or vilified but definitely not ignored?
What is Rap Music?
From Soul to Funk to Hip Hop?
Or Loops on top of Loops on top of Loops?
Or is it 10 year old Aiden Jude who’s been making waves with his songs and conspiracy about the validity of his skills?
What makes musicians make the music they do?
And while the question of what is music today may be waist deep in the quicksand of personal beliefs and choices, there are more pressing issues at hand.
For instance, what makes musicians make the music they do? Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree’s latest Solo album ‘The raven that refused to sing (and other stories)’ has every song based on a story of the supernatural. What happens when a song is written? What about the last song on the B-side of the album, what’s the story there?
A lot of us are hungry for answers which disappointingly, are simply invisible in interviews of artists being asked all the wrong questions, in blogs which fail to say anything beyond where a certain band will be gigging this weekend.
Why must you be an engrained member of a genre (read Sufi, Indian classical, pop, acid rock, dubstep, EDM, House, Trance, Bollywood- 10 second silence) or be completely against it but NOT be yourself?
Can one man be a band?
We like to talk, because conversations are good and they bring out answers. So that’s what we’ll do. Talk a lot and get some answers. The ones blown away by the wind.
Adventure is out there, so are the Answers.