America's Popular Music

The majority of my life has been pursuing music.  I have done the requisite study in academia reaching several pinnacles.  With each success comes a predecessorial period of confusion, insecurity, and inactivity.  When purposely you forget what you have learned and begin anew amassing further extending knowledge, always there is a period of "lame duck."  It's not that you can't create.  It's that you choose not to use the same vocabulary which has sufficed before.  Jazz aficionado Miles Davis is a metaphor for this process.  While we may have not seen his periods of inactivity, they were there.  It is not always to do with enlightenment.  Sometimes periods come along that divert you from your chosen path.  Sometimes these diversions are part of the plan.  Instead of becoming stymied by unfathomable unrest, it is better to shift gears and move on.  My creative output is at a low point, because readily I can't feel anything.  My personal expression is mute partly by my choice and partly because of the political and social climate in our country.  I decided that this administration does not deserve my artistry.  Frank Zappa may have had similar sentiments about his musical offerings.  The problem of parasites exists.  When you continue with your creativity driven by your intellect and spirit in the vacuum of crisis, parasites can appear.  Instead of accepting the responsibility to help as say a supporting member of a choir, they just latch on to the leader.  There is no shame in this process, but eventually it is required that able bodied participants must assume some of the responsibility.  "Live in the trenches," Al Pacino says in the film The Devil's Advocate.  Stay low profile.  Listen.  Learn.  Artists by nature have a desire to express their emotions through art.  When this is not possible, they become unhappy or depressed.  It would seem emotional fulfillment, understanding, and purging is a necessary part of the human genome.  Traditionally in American history popular music provided an outlet for this expression.  This avenue for human emotional expression served more than one purpose.  It cleanses the artists to some degree, and it unifies those with similar sentiments.  We could call this "mainstream," or in Obama's words, "Mainstreet."  Either term and what it represents it a unifying form of solidarity.  It helps a nation become and continue to be a nation.  I think we all can agree that for the United States to remain a unified nation, some form of similar sentiment must exist.  In recent years these unifying sentiments have become disguised.  In most likelihood they still exist, but racist, discriminatory, and inflammatory political rhetoric have poisoned us.  When I woke up today I asked myself what was today's "popular" music.  There is such a thing as American Popular Music.  Always it has been a tangible commodity.  The Brill Building, "Tin Pan Alley," on Manhattan Island in New York was a hub for American popular music at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Music at that time, before television and radio, was in high demand.  The huge irony here is that this music was written music.  It was published music.  Written and published music had to be bought and played by someone, so middle classed households were the key.  Those who could afford to do so would  purchase a piano for their homes, and home music making was mainstream.  A few things I have learned in my journey back into American music history is that much of the early music in America was printed.  It was composed.  There was the aural tradition, and perhaps that tradition manifested itself in folk music, a music by the "folks" for the "folks" by people who were not trained.  Education is a plural and common entity.  One can learn many things without going to school, as I am doing now.  Just because you are not formally trained in no way determines your musical ability.  This phenomenon is proven consistently in America's musical artists.  Louis Armstrong began his music making without being able to read music.  There were many others.  This of itself proves the aural tradition is strong, viable, and artistic.  It is a core component.  Many notable schooled academic music composers and scholars chose to study and document these folk musics, including Bela Bartok.  They proved that this historical, cultural, folk music was integral to the life of a nation.  Whether it is a Scot Irish jig, a German polka, or an Acadian ballad, folk music is the blood of the people.  Necessarily it should be infused into a nation's artistic output.  Many American composers did this.  The most notable would be George Gershwin, who although not the first to include African-American influences in his music, was the most visible.  Gershwin's language was sophisticated, and his harmonic vocabulary was influenced by both jazz and European classical music.  My point possibly is that early American music, for it to become "mainstream" needed national exposure and thus distribution.  Music publishing provided this tool, printing presses that produced tangible, sustainable,  paper music.  Since there was no national radio network, the music and traditions were carried by traveling minstrel shows.  Perhaps this was America's first television, but it was live.  Live performance and printed music were the norm in early America.  The invention of audio recording in the 1920's changed how music was consumed in America.  Now music could be recorded for posterity and appreciated by millions in their own homes.  With the onset of the Great Depression, the resulting "recording industry" floundered and radio took its place.  Possibly the strongest, most effective, and widely available unifying element of the twentieth century, radio put the sounds of American popular music in our homes.  The most notable and astounding aspect of American radio is that it was free to its consumers.  I'll say that again.  FREE.  Those responsible for the promulgation of radio were business men who understood how to make it work.  Radio stations were sponsored by businesses which sought to sell their products with the promotions of entertainment.  What a capable, fruitful, and lucrative arrangement.  This was an example of capitalism at its best.  Like most things it became polluted over time, and "Payola" figured out a way to infiltrate the system.  You just pay to have your music available to the masses.  When the process is larger, more diverse, and more complicated, more people could be involved and would benefit.  That is not what we have in America today.  What we have today is a corporate monopoly with a few players calling the shots and reaping the monetary benefits.  It can't be argued that the internet has become the new distributor of American Popular Music.  As such live performance and published music have waned.  They are not extinct yet.  When I woke up today, I asked myself, "What is America's popular music?"  I had no answer.  To be continued.