Can a music matter if its fans don't especially want to read about it?

The article "Classical Music: Why Bother" Yanc3y links to, on the other hand, really is a disgraceful piece of writing/(not)thinking that Salon should be ashamed to publish.

I'd have been pretty interested in hearing the case for elitism in music/the arts generally if it was properly argued. Instead it's a lazy, complacent, question-begging listing of unproven assertions, arts establishment prejudices presented as fact, and circular argument.

If this is the best rationale a Harvard professor of music can give for listening to modern classical music the answer to his question seems to be "no reason whatever".

No, it comes from the word FANcier. (Cat fancier, boxing fancier, etc.)

I know a lot of you folks write professionally about music; do you do so expecting that your readership consists of fans? (I mean as opposed to an audience who might potentially be exposed to the music through your writing; or an audience happy to engage in intellectual reflection/discussion of the subject, without being committed fans.)

revive!

so the last decade implies an answer: "yes! as long as music critics wanna WRITE about it!"

"poptimism"=writing about kinds of music whose fans don't care for reading about music.

(and, often, writing from the standpoint of "giving a voice" to those fans and their values, which are implicitly or explicitly evoked as a rebuke to the evils of rockism)

Moratorium on anyone who started posting on ILM after 2004 using the word "poptimism". Ever.

hey, I used quotation marks! would you prefer "anti-rockism"?

Dancing about music is a bit like sitting down about architecture, singing for people that can't dance.

what about people who just like pop music without making a big movement out of it

if the audience for writing about music was the same size as the audience for music, there'd be many more music publications and jobs for writers. QED

q: can a music matter

Anybody who doesn't read about the music that matters to them is a poseur

Music only matters if it's worth reading about, screw listening, let alone thinking for yourself.

What if everyone that chips in their twopenneth on the music you like depresses the fuck out of you, so you choose to avoid their discussions?

#ILX