Happy early birthday, Dav. You are crowding true old timer status. Senior geezer! We should all be so fortunate!
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Naaaah, like most technology born since rhe advent of the IC, You Tube will be a long forgotten thing in 300 years to all but a handful of techies like our current crop who still buy trash 80's as nostalgic office decorations.
Also, i never said kids would be looking for the stones on whatever the current form of consumer media is the current rage 300 years from now, but in academic circles and among classical music aficionados, they will be held in the same high regard as the JS Bach's and Beethoven's are by classical music fans today.
Just another way of stating the old saw "History is written by the victors."
Truth is an elusive beastie.
Never too old to rock and roll. Always too young to die.
I perhaps could have been more clear; but, was more referring to Elvis as a performer and Beatles as composers. I admit to not being much of a historian. LOLThe only two things I'd really disagree with there is I don't think Elvis wrote his material, AFAIK.
In the UK (I don't know about the USA) there was a pretty vibrant culture of songs in pubs and in the streets that did get recorded to some extent from the 17th century onwards, so I think there was some form of popular music, although whether you would call it popular or folk music I don't know. A lot of it doesn't conform to the finger-in-ear litany of sea shanties and bucolic if bawdy tales but is often more satirical and urban. Maybe that makes it a form of early punk
Jimi Hendrix, Jagger/Richards, Lennon/ McCartney, Hetfield/Hammett. And if you're including all music, it's definitely Michael Jackson hands down!!
Westerners' are SOOOOO gauche. Will someone from China or Africa post something regarding these "Silly Love Songs"?
I suppose in term of song writing, the period might be remembered as much for Bacarah or Rogers and Hammerstein. I wonder what the Billboard Top 100 based on song writing credits would be (although a lot of R&H will predate that).
There are all sorts of song writers too from deeply unfashionable bands who wrote hits for Madonna, Jackson, et al., and there is what is now a gay anthem that was originally written by the singer of Mungo Jerry for Elvis (Elvis died before he could record it).
There are all sorts of song writers too from deeply unfashionable bands who wrote hits for Madonna, Jackson, et al., and there is what is now a gay anthem that was originally written by the singer of Mungo Jerry for Elvis (Elvis died before he could record it).
This is an excellent point. Our discussion assumes perpetual western hegemony.
The future tellers of history may treat this subject as westerners have treated the subjects of non-European history. Almost like it didn't happen in a lot of cases.
I'm not either. I've read a few books, seen a few documentaries and have an ability to sometimes pull some of that material out of some crevice in my head that should probably be used to store something more useful... But there was a lot of stuff back then poking fun at politicians and judges, if slightly indirectly as being too direct could land you in prison if you weren't careful.
I've heard it said the most popular film star is actually an Indian man who, from my European hegemonic position I can't even remember the name of
A point related to that is that whilst we are remembering the horrific slaughter of WW1 100 years ago, it wasn't the most bloody war up to that point, which was one in Asia, but again, I can't remember the name.
If I had been your instructor, that paper would have received some very pointed questions about what an "American Character" (capitalized) is supposed to be and on the basis of what selection of evidence one divines it.
The question as set in the NYT article has some tricky slight-of-hand to it, because on the one hand it seems to be asking what the culture in general will remember about Rock and Roll but on the other hand it recognizes that such memory will depend on scholars who will study it, write about it and teach it to students. Lots of people today aren't classical music buffs but they have a vague idea who Beethoven is and what the 5th sounds like (or at least, eight notes of it). The thing is, of course, that scholars who specialize in, say, cultural history will study the ins and outs of 20th century popular music in excruciating detail, so (assuming the planet doesn't implode) all of the acts we're naming will be "remembered" by somebody - in a dissertation somewhere that no one beyond the PhD committee actually reads. But in a college survey course or an interview with the press you can only mention one paradigmatic figure, the way that there were many different Carolingian monarchs but the only one we ever talk about (other than amongst our specialist selves) is Charlemagne.
I would dispute Woodstock with you. It was a big event, to be sure, and a high point of the hippie movement and a major experience for people who were there. But is it an event that, from 30,000 feet up or 300 years in the future, you would HAVE to understand to understand 50 years worth of popular culture? I don't think so. A teacher COULD use it to exemplify some 20th century trends, and I've seen one work treat it as a moment when "rock" and "pop" music finally parted ways; but from a 300-year-later viewpoint that's a pretty subtle nuance. If you were getting your 20 minutes in on hippieism and needed an exemplary illustration you could just as easily use the Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury rather than Woodstock. Musically, all the big acts were there, sure, but that very fact militates against it playing a role in an essentials-only overview that's only going to talk about one key figure as the exemplar of the era's culture.
Roll over, Beethoven. This post makes a huge and outdated assumption about how historical awareness works, that it's all about preserving Worthy Classics of Western Civilization that Garner the Admiration of Serious Old Men. That kind of thinking was largely jettisoned in historical scholarship starting in the 60s and 70s. People started taking an interest in ordinary people and marginal people, women and peasants and outsiders and such, who weren't part of the Canon of dead white males. Again, to use the example of medieval studies, it used to be the Middle Ages were about studying Charlemagne and Richard the Lion Hearted and Thomas Aquinas and Dante. We still study them, but we also study St. Guinefort and Margery Kempe and religious women who lived on the eucharist alone while their bodies exuded miraculous healing unguents from their pores. Umberto Eco, among others, led the charge here, recognizing that if you wanted to understand real human experience, you had to study the things that were meaningful to real human beings, not just rarified classics produced for elites.
The class used works by people like de Tocqueville as reference; and was focused on how and why the American Character was distinct, including examination of melting pot theories etc. It was an excellent class. You seem to have your own strongly held feelings on the topic. Great. If you don't believe that Jazz was a central American cultural art form or that our cultural art forms reflect our character; then we can simply agree to disagree. From the sound of things, had you been my instructor, I may not have enjoyed the class.
OK, we also disagree completely about Woodstock. If all you got from that event was a bunch of stoned hippies rolling in the mud, then I am not surprised.
