2008 Woodie Awards
Music is the art of today
Kevin Scahill
Issue date: 4/16/08 Section: Perspectives
On Sat., April 12, I had the privilege of attending the first show at The Coup, a new music venue located at 819 Crossland Ave. As I sat there listening to the bands, I thought about a topic that has been floating around in my mind for the past few weeks.
It seems to me that music, and not literature, is the artform of my generation. The whole world may be a stage as Shakespeare put it, but it seems to me that various artforms have had their periods of "center stage" in different historical periods and cultures.
At first, I thought that because 99 percent of my friends are musicians, my perception was probably skewed. Still, it strikes me as pretty telling that there's an MTV for music and not an LTV for literature. You can get hundreds of people to pay to hear local bands, but I wouldn't try charging people to hear a local poet read his or her poems or to hear a local author read an excerpt from his or her new novel.
Fun fact: In Jonathan Swift's time, there was a real problem with book piracy and "Gulliver's Travels" was often pirated, but, as annoying commercials remind us, it's music piracy that is the problem now.
So what happened? When you consider the difference between pirating the work of Swift and the work of Soulja Boy, I think that any honest person has to wonder if our culture in general is degenerating and just getting dumber. Are the makers of "Idiocracy" right?
As early as 50 years ago, C.S. Lewis talked about "a lowering of metaphysical energy" in young people. Fifty years ago, he also talked about the modern world's mounting war on silence via radio and other means.
In Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," the intelligent characters are constantly subjected to loud and jarring noises in order to keep them from thinking too much. You can't help but wonder if "Yahhh, Trick, Yahhh!" isn't serving a similar purpose and preventing its listeners from any real thinking.
These days, it's hard to go anywhere without hearing music. Is our culture cognitively crippling us by this constant bombardment of music? Are we getting dumber because more people would rather hear Britney Spears than Shakespeare?
It seems to me that music, and not literature, is the artform of my generation. The whole world may be a stage as Shakespeare put it, but it seems to me that various artforms have had their periods of "center stage" in different historical periods and cultures.
At first, I thought that because 99 percent of my friends are musicians, my perception was probably skewed. Still, it strikes me as pretty telling that there's an MTV for music and not an LTV for literature. You can get hundreds of people to pay to hear local bands, but I wouldn't try charging people to hear a local poet read his or her poems or to hear a local author read an excerpt from his or her new novel.
Fun fact: In Jonathan Swift's time, there was a real problem with book piracy and "Gulliver's Travels" was often pirated, but, as annoying commercials remind us, it's music piracy that is the problem now.
So what happened? When you consider the difference between pirating the work of Swift and the work of Soulja Boy, I think that any honest person has to wonder if our culture in general is degenerating and just getting dumber. Are the makers of "Idiocracy" right?
As early as 50 years ago, C.S. Lewis talked about "a lowering of metaphysical energy" in young people. Fifty years ago, he also talked about the modern world's mounting war on silence via radio and other means.
In Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," the intelligent characters are constantly subjected to loud and jarring noises in order to keep them from thinking too much. You can't help but wonder if "Yahhh, Trick, Yahhh!" isn't serving a similar purpose and preventing its listeners from any real thinking.
These days, it's hard to go anywhere without hearing music. Is our culture cognitively crippling us by this constant bombardment of music? Are we getting dumber because more people would rather hear Britney Spears than Shakespeare?
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