Friday, December 26, 2003
Culture Shift Dept.
"We can't stop the commercial hurricane, but we can try to preserve some of our cultural heritage too," he says.
"In our commercial country, most would not notice if the songs were lost. They would notice that they felt little or no connections to older generations.
"They wouldn't notice that there once were dances that they did in a circle holding hands with their grandparents.
"They wouldn't notice that once there was a subtlety of human existence embodied in folk songs and dances that helped us understand the emotional subtleties of others and ourselves."
(Survey results outlining the quick demise of American folk music:
Traditional Songs out of Tune with Today's Kids)
RIP for the LP
"So perhaps the album's tenure as the avenue of expression has neared its end.
"It's hard not to see this shift as a 'dumbing down' of popular culture, an erosion of the 'art' side of the art/commerce dialectic by a greedy industry and a public accustomed to getting what it wants quickly and painlessly, and throwing it away when finished with it
"As the sands shift and albums begin to appear as artifacts from a previous age, the fear among hardcore music lovers is that something will be irretrievably lost - perhaps the soul of the music itself."
¶ 12/26/2003 01:50:00 PM
"We can't stop the commercial hurricane, but we can try to preserve some of our cultural heritage too," he says.
"In our commercial country, most would not notice if the songs were lost. They would notice that they felt little or no connections to older generations.
"They wouldn't notice that there once were dances that they did in a circle holding hands with their grandparents.
"They wouldn't notice that once there was a subtlety of human existence embodied in folk songs and dances that helped us understand the emotional subtleties of others and ourselves."
(Survey results outlining the quick demise of American folk music:
Traditional Songs out of Tune with Today's Kids)
RIP for the LP
"So perhaps the album's tenure as the avenue of expression has neared its end.
"It's hard not to see this shift as a 'dumbing down' of popular culture, an erosion of the 'art' side of the art/commerce dialectic by a greedy industry and a public accustomed to getting what it wants quickly and painlessly, and throwing it away when finished with it
"As the sands shift and albums begin to appear as artifacts from a previous age, the fear among hardcore music lovers is that something will be irretrievably lost - perhaps the soul of the music itself."
¶ 12/26/2003 01:50:00 PM
