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What killed rock n roll is the same thing that "killed" every other music genre before: Demographics. People get older and young people want to differentiate t
by bumbada 5y ago
What killed rock n roll is the same thing that "killed" every other music genre before: Demographics.
People get older and young people want to differentiate themselves from older people, so they just do different things, including listening to different music.
This even happened with what we consider classical music, from Beethoven Eroica to Stravinski Rite of Spring and specially Operas.
Old people will consider a new style an "scandal", specially established musicians and young people will adopt it.
It is not different from Einstein being a revolutionary against the Elders and then being the Elder against Heisenberg.
- wayneftw 5y agoWhy hasn't rap died? It's been popular for multiple generations now.
- bsenftner 5y agoHip hip is the philosophy of survival in a racist culture. It dies when the racism dies.
- fourtrees 5y agoI hope it doesn't. I'd like to see a world without racism and with hip hop. Also, there have been so many changes in the popular sub-genres of hip hop, with each new generation of musicians altering the popular form (maybe not always for the better (RIP DMX)), that it's almost like rap has died and been reborn several times since the 80 -- a bit like rock between the 50s and 2000s.
- ramphastidae 5y agoOh come off it. Little to no mainstream hip hop addresses racism in any meaningful way. It’s still mostly sex, drugs, objectifying women, glorifying the rich, and violence.
- SyzygistSix 5y agoIt doesn't have to address racism in any meaningful way to fulfill the function of being centered around identity. When that identity becomes meaningless, the culture around it will lose meaning as well. The Martians and the Belters will have their own music.
- bsenftner 5y agoSince when has mainstream music been what is listened to outside of White American culture? Beyond the marketed artists is a voice you're not hearing and it speaks from a culture emerging out of lies told about itself and shunted from economic stability. The economic situations of 99% of the readers of HN is science fiction to large portions the economic underclass in the United States.
- rhcom2 5y agoThat's just silly and I have to question your exposure to the genre. Some of mainsteam hip hop's biggest hits have dealt with racism: This Is America, DAMN, The Black Album, KOD, and hip hop artists have been outspoken about Black Lives Matter and racism.
- tomgp 5y agoLet's say hiphop started in 1980 so it's abouyt 41 years old. That's the begining of the 90's for rock music (if we consider it's origins to be the early 50's, though of course none of these dates represent hard boundaries) which feel about right. Hiphop and it's ofspring are the dominant forms of popular music but the tide of creative progress has perhaps slowed somewhat since the peak. Maybe. I don't necessarily believe this because the technological/ cultural landscape for music is so different from the late 20th century that making these broad comparisons doesn't really make sense. I guess my point is that 40ish years isn't that old for a musical genre to still be hanging around.
- redisman 5y agoJazz also had a long rein as the apex genre for something like 50 years but then fairly quickly succumbed to rock and disco in popularity. I would guess hip hop is past its peak already and it’s also splitting and merging with other genres so it gets hazy
- aidenn0 5y agoAlso note that rock had a back-and-forth influence with country, and rap is now having a back-and-forth influence on rock (and country to a lesser degree).
- splithalf 5y agoRaps not dead it just smells funny.
- nmfisher 5y agoIt kind of has, at least as a mainstream music genre. What passes for rap (or hip hop) in 2020 is far removed from the golden era of the 80s and 90s.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoThe Grammy's nixed The Best New Female Raper. (I don't know why though? I hear Rap everywhere. Well a year ago.)
- Digit-Al 5y ago> The Grammy's nixed The Best New Female Raper. That seem unsurprising lol. This is why proof reading is so important.
- sjg007 5y agoClassical music is 300+ years old. I also love Opera as do my parents and grandparents. I think it is more about what gets played on the radio. The music is good and new. That tricks our brain into pursuing it. Eventually each genre finds its own classics that basically capture most of the attention.
- criddell 5y agoDo you think radio still matters?
- TheAdamAndChe 5y agoFor people who drive, yes. It does to me at least.
- criddell 5y agoMost of the time when I'm driving, I'm streaming music. I'd be okay if my next car had no radio as long as it has Android Auto or CarPlay.
- analog31 5y agoI find it super convenient to turn on one of the streaming radio stations such as WFMT in Chicago. It eliminates all of the organizational overhead of curating the music that I listen to, and it's good enough. I certainly hear a lot of stuff that I've never heard before. Also, re streaming, I have a throttled cell phone service, so my data usage isn't unlimited.
- criddell 5y agoI don't have unlimited data either, but have found that streaming doesn't seem to use up all that much data. I think it's something like 100MB / hour.
- drewcoo 5y agoIs the classical you all listen to all "top 40" "oldies" from folks like Bach and Beethoven or do you listen to anything reasonably new? I'm talking 20th or 21st century classical. Say John Adams or Kaija Saariaho, maybe? That's the classical music that I enjoy that my mom can't stand. And that is the difference this is talking about.