Music

[rivkat]

I was going to call this entry "not political," then "not (directly) political," then ... I just gave up. So, (a), GIP, and (b), very interesting article in the NYT about the phenomenon of "rockism," the celebration of the singer-songwriter who's worked his way up through the bars of the nation -- "his" being very definitely part of it -- as opposed to the latest pop princess. Neat bit about the rock section of the record store as the "unmarked" section, the default, and people like cesperanza and cathexys might be interested in the relationship between performance and authenticity found in rockism. Valorizing the singer/songwriter because of the songwriter part and denigrating the boys and girls who just sing what they're given (and, okay, sometimes not even that) might be thought to be as odd as valorizing the actress who sews her own costumes and denigrating the model who wears clothes designed for her by someone else, but it's not. Why is that? (At the same time, the article suggests, "rockism" fetishizes the live performance and disparages the music video, so the relationship between performance and fixed text is not simple.)