Why Would Jesus Smile on Country/Pop Singers?

Television has been rendered a eunuch by its use of pop music. Pop music produced on the computer has rendered impotent the once vital human expression of music. Pop music is the quintessence of living in the little black box. It merrily gives up its masculinity for a cowardly and foolish good time. Why is this? It is obvious no one in the music industry has ever sat down an analyzed the rhythmic concept of pop music. Conversely “folks” just picked up the acoustic guitar and without ever thinking about what they were going to play, started to strum. If you were to take that strumming pattern, use it as MIDI data, and look at it graphically on a sequencer you would see it could not fit evenly over the quarter note pulse. The eighth notes are too close together. To get them to fit the time has to be both compressed and expanded each bar rather than falling into perfect time. You can make them fit over the quarter notes, but in doing so they hit both ahead of and behind the quarter note disguising it. If you don’t understand and innately know this “feel,” it can be incredibly difficult to articulate. That is because you must know the feel in your head and then make a cognitive decision how you are going to distort real time. (Like the gravity drive!) If you are a capable musician that has worked years to be able to play good time (the real definition of a good musician), then it is unlikely you are going to want to play a style that disguises it. Usually you want to show off your ability to play good time. Now pop musicians want to show off their bling, their threads, and their genitalia. Musicians that have become adept at playing pop music have to choose which place they are going to play. They can either play ahead with the first eighth note which creates excitement, or they can play behind which creates a laid back feel. It, like schizophrenia, doesn’t make sense. Most human beings want a singular emotional experience from their music, because if it is singular then that emotion can and should change. That is the job of the music and the musicians. Knowing how to do this effectively is the art of music. For anything to qualify AS MUSIC, this has to be recognized. As such pop music does not even qualify to be called music. It is masturbation in public. More successful pop music chooses as a majority to play on the front part of the beat. That could be considered “Dirty Pop.” The down side is once all the hoop la is over, it is inevitable the lazy part of the beat is still there. The current form of Jazz music that is being portrayed today is pop music. Musicians simply superimpose quarter notes triplets over this beat to match up rhythmically with this concept. Appropriately this pop concept offers these two choices of “superimposed” feeling, and jazz makes better use of them. It can take the laid back side and mislabel it Swing, or it can take the aggressive side and mislabel is Hot Jazz. It is all smoke and mirrors, because no matter how well they articulate the music, it is fake. It inherently does not posses the musical tools to be able to move the listeners emotions through the music. They must be moved by musicians creating a subversive emotion having nothing to do with the music itself. Musicians playing this game should be recognized as pop artists. They certainly do it well and it looks good. It is unfortunate it does not mean anything. Therefore it is jive. The traditional pulse of time that is used in every other style of legitimate music has been abandoned simply because someone decided strumming the guitar up and down with no training could translate into a bona fide musical style. Instinctually when the rest of the rhythm section began to play, they simply matched the rhythmic inflection of the strumming guitarist. In this case, and it is the case of pop music, no instrument in the rhythm section actually plays the time in a way a human being can feel it. The entire concept naively is like playing in a little black box. No one takes on the responsibility of playing the time. They just want to have a good time playing. Their time is defined by this black box, and the pop band plays comfortably inside it. Real music assumes the responsibility of playing the time. Although Igor Stravinsky said emotions could not be inherent in musical content, I disagree. Differing emotions are what define styles of music. Why is Hip/Hop Hip/Hop? Why is Rock Rock? Why is Smooth Jazz Smooth Jazz? It is because they are playing in different rhythmic concepts or beats that translate into feelings. Beats help create moods which really are diluted human emotions. Music at its best creates the feeling of itself by the music itself. That is why it is so powerful. Right now in America we are being short changed by our music. Television has chosen to use the MIDI programmer instead of live musicians. Even when they do use live musicians, like the cruise lines the music still is generated by a computer sequencer. Because the vocation of music performance has become less important to America because of Karioke and the Dee Jay, human ability to play live music has declined. Most of the small venues available for playing live music have evaporated. In the professional world there are only three remaining areas one can make a living in music. They are Broadway, the military, and the cruise ship industry. Why would have Disney have decided to cut something so vital as live music from its theme parks? Some unskilled and musically ignorant accountant decided there was no need to pay live musicians. In one fell swoop in America live music died, just like skateboarding did in the early l980’s. With the death of live music has come the obscuring of the mainstream, the emotional immaturity and dysfunction of our youth, and the loss of human evolution. Music’s ability to stir the emotions has always been its advantage. Why else would the American military use music to rally feelings of patriotism? It is because music is the most powerful method of changing the emotions, and that is necessary in human life. Without it we are nothing. We are sitting unmoving, unthinking, and unfeeling. Because television has adopted as its mascot pop music out of convenience, our traditional soapbox in America has been rendered sterile. Like a partial birth abortion the head of music is extracted, cracked open, and sucked dry before it even attempts to live. There will be no new children. There will be no new ideas. There will be no roused spirits. Life will remain in the little black box. It is appropriate David Lynch was wise enough to be able to describe this in 2001 by his film Mulholland Drive. He portrays the dream of Hollywood and the reality of Hollywood happening at the same time like pop music. An aspiring young actress goes to Hollywood to make it. Instead she ends up a lesbian prostitute living on the street. That is your life in the black box, because someone else is always in control. Whether it is the mob or the rich Jews, someone else is always in control. The only way to destroy this concept is with live music, and traditionally in America that is what has been done. Why are we different now? It is amazing to me how many Hollywood celebrities, “have been so blessed.” Why would Jesus smile on country pop singers?