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Live music has literally been around for thousands of years. Excluding a pause this year because of the pandemic, can it even be "killed off"? The venues may ch

Live music has literally been around for thousands of years. Excluding a pause this year because of the pandemic, can it even be "killed off"? The venues may change over the years, but musicians seem to be a fundamental part of humanity at this point.

jariel 6y ago
The meaning of music has fundamentally changed over the last 100 years, and especially in the last 20. The number of working pro musicians has dropped by something like 95%, so has the amount of live music. Partly due to recorded music of course (weddings would have had a band, now they have a DJ), and in the last 20 years because music is 'something else'. Visit the Billboard 200 right now, and you'll see that almost none of it cay be 'played live'. What's to play (?), an mp3? Chief Keef went on tour and his performance was, walking out on stage cranked up with his buddies, while they played his track over the loudspeakers. They didn't even bother to remove the lyrics or change the track. Just played the track. Then he drunkenly stumbled around the stage, incoherently mumbling some of his own rap words against the already mostly incoherent rap lyrics on his own track. Crowd goes wild. I went to a 'Brazil/France/USA' rap-fusion thing in Montreal, I was very excited, the track started, the 'hype man' with 'big hair came out' and said 'heyo' , then 'yo yo yo', then 'ayeee' about ever 10-15 seconds, getting the crowd going. But he wasn't the hype man - that was the act. That was his 'performance'. Just saying 'yo yo yo' a few times now and again over some track. And people paid for that. Modern pop acts are no longer musicians, they are 'creative famous people'. Music is just one 'angle' on being famous, it blends in with TikTok/YouTube/Instagram as one big smear of 'trying to be popular'. So there's a lot of good serious music, but it's a side-show like it never was before, so there probably needs to be some conscientious efforts to support it. We spend some money supporting 'Orchestral' music partly out of a benevolent view, we're likely going to have to do the same for 'live music'.

jariel 6y ago

The meaning of music has fundamentally changed over the last 100 years, and especially in the last 20. The number of working pro musicians has dropped by something like 95%, so has the amount of live music. Partly due to recorded music of course (weddings would have had a band, now they have a DJ), and in the last 20 years because music is 'something else'. Visit the Billboard 200 right now, and you'll see that almost none of it cay be 'played live'. What's to play (?), an mp3? Chief Keef went on tour and his performance was, walking out on stage cranked up with his buddies, while they played his track over the loudspeakers. They didn't even bother to remove the lyrics or change the track. Just played the track. Then he drunkenly stumbled around the stage, incoherently mumbling some of his own rap words against the already mostly incoherent rap lyrics on his own track. Crowd goes wild. I went to a 'Brazil/France/USA' rap-fusion thing in Montreal, I was very excited, the track started, the 'hype man' with 'big hair came out' and said 'heyo' , then 'yo yo yo', then 'ayeee' about ever 10-15 seconds, getting the crowd going. But he wasn't the hype man - that was the act. That was his 'performance'. Just saying 'yo yo yo' a few times now and again over some track. And people paid for that. Modern pop acts are no longer musicians, they are 'creative famous people'. Music is just one 'angle' on being famous, it blends in with TikTok/YouTube/Instagram as one big smear of 'trying to be popular'. So there's a lot of good serious music, but it's a side-show like it never was before, so there probably needs to be some conscientious efforts to support it. We spend some money supporting 'Orchestral' music partly out of a benevolent view, we're likely going to have to do the same for 'live music'.