• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Which Rock Star Will Historians Remember?

#103
two fingers said:
None. Even the great composers get a passing mention in history classes these days. 300 years from now the icons of rock history will be lumped in with centuries of musicians who were crude enough to band away on strings to make music. We will be seen as not much more than unsophisticated monkeys. Hendrix played for a teenager 300 years from now will be "awful noise" and they will think it is a joke that people spent money and gathered by the thousands to hear him play. Elvis will be a goof in a funny suit making similar noises even though to our ears they are world's apart. That is, even if they are mentioned at all. The entirety of 80s music will be scoffed at and they will wonder why all the men dressed is drag....and not pretty drag.

History matters less and less each generation as evidenced by the fact that we repeat it so much.

Virtually none of my childrens' generation (they are 4 and 6) will have ever heard the name Rolling Stones. They won't know Aerosmith, the Beatles, The Who, Crosby Stills and Nash, Springsteen, Bon Jovi, or even Michael Jackson. They have too many other media figures to fill their brains with. Seriously, other than the occasional nostalgic commercial or movie hit, many of the artists even of the 90s will not get another mention in history.

Sure, there are some current young weirdos who somehow think Cobain was a "visionary", and maybe Madonna will (sadly) make one more album. But unless they watch an "old" Zoolander movie they may never even see an image of David Bowie. Why would they?

Rock Stars will be but a blip on the radar screen of history.... if that. In fact, by 300 years from now, American slavery, flight, and cars will be just about the only aspects of history up until the year 2000 even discussed much. What do you think children of their generation will even learn, if anything, about WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Korea or even the Civil War (other than slavery of course). They will watch a video on Desert Storm and mention Hitler and that will be about it. Other than that, American "atrocities" is what they will focus on.

Nah, "history" is an agenda these days. If it isn't in the agenda it won't survive 300 more years, other than in museums, which they mostly won't go to unless forced.
Click to expand...

But a lot of this misses the point. The question is not what rock and roll acts will still be popular 300 years later. That would be impossible to expect. The article makes the quite valid point that far-distant-future perceptions of our era's music will NOT be based on what was popular, but on what historians fixate on as "significant." It rightly points out that this is already happening, as bands like the Clash or the Ramones, who were never very popular, are already remembered as more important than artists who far outsold them. To some extent, it's impossible to predict what future intellectuals will think was significant, because they will choose based on a combination of the information available to them and the questions and preoccupations of their own times, which are impossible for us to predict.

When teaching survey courses, I DO at certain points talk about musicians of the past, particularly in the 19th century. I talk about Beethoven in the context of Romanticism and Chopin to talk about the emergence of popular culture (he was one of the first "celebrity" musicians to make his career before a ticket-buying public rather than wealthy patrons). I don't talk about either in much depth - there simply isn't time. Because I also need to talk about industrialization, urbanization, shifting gender roles, secularism, nationalism, etc etc. So I understand exactly what the article is getting at, the way that our awareness of past creativity tends to get boiled down to just a single exemplary creator or work.

Incidentally, you're way off in your characterization of how US (or any) history gets taught. That caricature of teachers is itself driven by modern political agendas. Slavery and westward expansion (at the expense of natives) do indeed play a prominent role in teaching US history, because they were indeed very important. But one also talks about federalism, populism, industrialization, religious revivalism, voluntarism, conspicuous consumption, labor organization, the growth of university culture, all kinds of things. History is not about labeling who the good guys and bad guys are, it's about understanding the dynamics that shape societies.

Matt O said:
Great post. Totally agree.

It probably would have served the author well to consider this from the academic standpoint of how subjects are taught as you have. The idea that all of rock and roll will be boiled down to one icon actually doesn't sit well with me, nor do I think it will happen due to human nature. We humans are detail freaks, especially in academia. Rock and roll is too complex and culturally important to distill into one face. I think as the era is studied by historians, it would be as any subject is studied, ranging from gen ed survey to dissertation. My guess is that historians will break rock and roll into much finer bits than they are even now, genres, eras, regions, etc, as opposed to trying to limit the entire subject to a single figure. One single representative for an entire subject is totally counter to the way historians earn their bread and butter, wouldn't you say?
Click to expand...

Agreed. That gets to the division between musicologists researching 20th century music and culture and those teaching it for students or talking about it before the general public. I think you're absolutely right that there's an interaction between them - the figure a teacher settles on to talk about will likely be the one that the most incisive and revealing piece of scholarship has been done on.

For instance, in teaching medieval Christianity, one might choose to talk about "spiritual" (i.e. celibate) marriages. There are only a few hundred such unions attested over the course of centuries in the medieval sources - they were by no means common or typical. But they embody such a distinctively medieval way of thinking and such interesting research has been done on the phenomenon, that they loom far larger in our teaching of medieval culture than their popularity would suggest.

Fishheadjoe said:
Frank Zappa, based on the sheer volume of his work and the completely left field approach to his music.
Fishheadjoe
Click to expand...

I actually think that's a good nominee. Zappa would be the Van Gogh of Rock and Roll, the genius who was little-known in his own lifetime but that later scholars will have a ball writing about.
 
  • Like
Reactions: GregC, Gully Foyle and Matt O
#106
Musicologists of the future will know of all the major artists: Elvis, Hendrix, Beatles, Stones, Michael Jackson, Metallica, etc. However, the man-in-the street would impress if he could even name the Beatles..... But that's shortsighted, since by then all of our ancestors will have the Wiki 2316 chip implanted in their brains at birth, they will be able to tell you who played bass on cut #3 of the Thriller album.
 
  • Like
Reactions: lancimouspitt, GregC and Fat Freddy
#107
stringthrough said:
Musicologists of the future will know of all the major artists: Elvis, Hendrix, Beatles, Stones, Michael Jackson, Metallica, etc. However, the man-in-the street would impress if he could even name the Beatles..... But that's shortsighted, since by then all of our ancestors will have the Wiki 2316 chip implanted in their brains at birth, they will be able to tell you who played bass on cut #3 of the Thriller album.
Click to expand...
The Girl Is Mine, Louis Johnson.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Matt O and Mantis Tobaggan
#109
I think this article errs by suggesting that, since most people only recognize John Philip Sousa for marching music today, it follows that only one person or band will represent rock n roll music in the future. But the fact is, there's a lot more of a historical record being generated today (and over the last 50 years) than there was in Sousa's time. One reason most people don't know any contemporaries of Sousa (or Shakespeare for that matter) is that there simply isn't that much of a record, relatively speaking, and most of the contemporaries' material does not stand the test of time.

I can accept the conclusion that Chuck Berry best represents, as an individual, rock n roll. But the amount of great rock music generated--by the Beatles, Stones, Who, Clapton, etc., etc.--is mind-boggling and I can't help but think many of those artists will still have fans and be culturally relevant in the decades ahead.

But, hey, in the long run our sun is going to expand and die, taking the Earth with it. So at some point it really won't matter.

PS--in one of the comments to the article, someone suggested Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks. I was like, dude, seriously?
 
#112
Gravedigger Dav said:
You seem awfully focused on slavery and American atrocities.
Click to expand...

It would seem that way from my comments. I was
JimmyM said:
Only speak if it agrees with your agenda, you mean.

Seriously, bro, I like you and Two Fingers, but enough with the politicizing.
Click to expand...

Yeah fair enough. I agree. Wrong place and time.
Carry on party people.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JimmyM and Fat Freddy

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back