"Armchair Analysis"/Mass Age, etc.

[ep1str0phy]

An issue that I've been pondering lately:

Considering the glut of information and available to the contemporary creative (whatever you want to call it) music fan, and the ease with which this information is facilitated throughout modern forms of communication (especially in the Internet, or more specifically the blogosphere, even forums like this one), the casual music collector may be in a better position now than in the past to accumulate, if not absorb, large proportions of documented music history. Having not really been around before the last decade, I can't speak to how easy it was for the non-obsessive to get a hold of whole discographies of industry-marginalized artists, which it may or may not be fair to assume was formerly the area of musicologists, musicians, composers, and rampant followers.

I guess what's most interesting to me at this point is that armchair analysts seem better poised in this epoch to have knowledge of, though probably not really knowledge about, documented creative music than even many musicologists. Now, I'm positive that many scholars are aware of the blogosphere, share websites, torrents and the ready accessibility of old recordings and even articles, papers, etc. This doesn't speak to the whole of musicology culture, however, and I'm interested to see just how many among the anonymous and pseudonymed seem better acquainted with what, say, Anthony Braxton's discography looks like, or rather the recordings of the Blue Notes, than the out-on-the-scene MA/MFA/PhD students and Professors I run into.

I'd be interested in hearing whether or not y'all think this is merely an issue of rabid collectors coming out of the woodwork and networking, or if blog/forum culture (etc.), and even the new sorts of amateur musicology and analysis emerging therein, is really a new phenomenon. What I can detect, at least, is something like an emerging disconnect between the still-nascent institutional work on jazz and (especially) contemporary improvisation and media communities that have a strong hold on bodies of secondary sources. And for those credentialed writers and scholars here--I know I've heard among the most thoughtful ideas on very present modern musicology topics I've been privy to here on these forums. There's something to be said for that...

[JSngry]

I think it's easier to get a grip on something when it's "over" (or at least winding down) than it is while it's still growing and mobile. It's true of people, ain't it?

I mean, what does it say that so much formerly obscure material from 20-40 years ago and such is not making its way into "common currency" (a relativistic term used fully aware) if not, "hey, we didn't have time for you then, now we do." And most of this stuff is more "interesting" than it is "essential" (and that is in no way a dis), so arguments of economic etc limitations preventing dissemination are only gonna go so far.

No big deal, really, it is/was a social/creative/spiritual evolutionary phase, and the fact that now people can evaluate it for what it was is a true credit to the fact that it was what it was, and not some esoteric fringe goofiness. It's a given, and if not for everybody, then for enough people to form a community, and afaic, the mere ongoing existence of a community is at least important as its size. The gift has been given and received.

So, now what?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I think it's easier to get a grip on something when it's "over" (or at least winding down) than it is while it's still growing and mobile. It's true of people, ain't it?

But it's much more exciting to get a grip while it's growing and mobile. 'course, you get shit on your fingers, too.

MG

[Big Beat Steve]

I am not sure if I've got Epistrophy's intents right, but it definitely is far, far easier today to accumulate a massive archive of recordings and/or complementary information of oyur favorite music.

Two things have helped this immensely:

1) The arrival of the CD when many labels started to reissue items from the past in a much more coherent form, giving due regard to the "completists" in many respects (Chronological Classics, Mosaic, Bear Family, Proper, etc. etc.). If you are prepared to dump your vinyl (I'm NOT! and older CD's you can get everything with far less duplications and overlaps than you used to be able to back in the vinyl days. I'd say the reissue market has really been pretty good since the late 60s/early 70s but it took more searching, you got more overlaps and were left with more gaps of items never reissued, but at the same time it all was much more interesting and you tended to value your prized finds much, much more than you would today when it is just a matter of asking "When is the next Volume of the collected works of artists XYZ going to hit the market?" In a way, collecting has changed from searching, tracking down and finally finding (and jumping with joy about your finds) to a bookkeeper's attitude of buying streamlined products as they fall of the assembly line.

2) The Internet, of course. Over the past 10 years I've multiplied my own jazz mag and book archives as a lot of items (especially from abroad and overseas) became accessible that would have taken much longer and needed much more correspondence to track down in pre-internet days at all. This is a fine way to extend your knowledge, and yet sometimes it makes you smile .... Just take note when reading those old 50s jazz mags - sometimes you just can't help wondering how the experts and diehard collectors of those days managed to cope with their comparatively limited knowledge and resources; in some respects (e.g. in the discographical and biographical field) anybody who'd venture out today with the level of knowledge even the more erudite ones had back then would certainly be advised to get his act together and do his homework.

If only the problem of limited funds weren't a permanent one ...

[ep1str0phy]

I think the "now what" question speaks well to what my concerns are about the influx of new mechanisms of media dispersal. The basic issue is that if more people, for whatever reasons, have their hands on the music, that must mean something for how that music is both interpreted and digested by society at large. Part of this is a matter of scholarship--I think a lot of useful historical analysis and work is getting done by the armchair folk these days, on an equally insightful, if not as polished, level as critics and musicologists--but it's also about future things.

So--like mentioned in another thread--when there are more people allowed to digest music in easier ways, do we get good "newness"? Or does it mean we get stuck in what now must seem like the massiveness of information that already exists?

[JSngry]

It's been my experience that true "newness" is never digested easily. It just happens, BAM. You react one way or the other while the chain reactions go on and on. The "digestion" part doen't even have a change to begin in earnest until things "slow down" a little bit.

Keep in mind that for most folks, "digesting" events isn't about "what is happening" as it is "what happened". Digestion is a reflective process, and reflection is difficult if not impossible when there's ongoing bombardment.

Part of the "problem" is that so many people have gotten so "smart" that they think it's not cool/wise/whatever to allow themselves surrender to the "new". The puposely keep a detatched perspective under the guise of "objectivity" or something. Well, ok, but that kind of rules out the possibility of a full scale "upheaval" of anything, because the only way that happens is when content and non-objective emotion join hands, and most importantly, hearts.

Or maybe the new upheaval is the ouster of the willingness to give it all up to the passion of the immediate for fear (although it would never be called that...) that there's nothing sustainable/substantive there. Maybe it's all going to be about "now" being defined in terms of how we can recast "then". Because "then" is a known quantity by now, and can be "digested" for as long as needed. Could be. That's certainly a "digital" emotional paradigm, I'd thing, and this new world a' comin' ain't nothing if not digital.

Only thing is, eventually, you digest everything, and then you gotta shit out what's left (and there's always something left) and eat something new. The longer you postpone that inevitability, the uglier/weirder it gets when it finally happens. But if that's the way it's gonna go, thats the way it's gonna go.

[ep1str0phy]

If it's a matter of fear, then you could argue that folks are simply recasting the paranoia of print media in a more readily diffusible manner--which scares the shit out of me. With due respect to those who came before and those now gone, I think self-challenge, which is itself wrapped up in patient and temperate independence, is a crucial listener tool. Easy hagiography is the other upshot of information dissemination and that's seldom a good thing.

Though--a lot of new material is just as easily processed through the internet as old. This newer material is certainly not as readily championed, if it's as easy or relevant to interpret; the "justice" of the prevailing atmosphere will have it that we hear old things, maybe more than new things, which is a mixed blessing.