For a person who was not yet born when music was initially released, is it possible to enjoy it with the same level of enthusiasm as contemporary music?

I think it was "This is Your Brain on Music" -- the book, that talked about this in terms of neuroscience. Pretty sure we discussed it at length when it came out, but I don't remember the thread, and I'm not saying this in a prescriptive way ... more like the opposite, "I don't even remember what thread it was, so it sounds like enough time has elapsed to revisit it."

1. Language acquisition seems to have an age of porousness. Most people learn their native language and one or two others during this period of porousness. It's possible to acquire a language in adulthood but it's rare.
― your marshmallows may vary (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, July 16, 2022 8:48 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'd say that people don't learn languages in adulthood mainly because they don't need to, not because they have lost the ability.

I'd say that people don't learn languages in adulthood mainly because they don't need to, not because they have lost the ability.

Speaking as someone who has studied multiple languages as an adult, it's really fucking hard to get anything to sink in, and the minute you stop practicing/using a language you're trying to acquire, your brain shits it right back out. I took a couple of years' worth of Japanese courses in college and remember none of it. I have spent nearly 30 years living in a town where Spanish is spoken basically everywhere, and I can...kinda order food? The last few years I've been learning Swedish and Norwegian, and I keep those in my head by following a bunch of Scandinavian people on Twitter and watching lots of Scandinavian TV shows on Netflix.

Of course, but learning Japanese or Norwegian for fun is different from changing countries, needing to learn a language for work, etc.

I don't think feeling enthusiastic about a new piece of music is analogous to learning a new language tbf.

It's not a perfect analogy, no, I only mean that lots of people seem to have that "period of porousness."

If you don't - that is, if you keep acquiring new musical fascinations well past adolescence - it means that you may be an ilx0r and/or an outlier. Doesn't mean that the generalization doesn't contain a grain of truth for the 6-CD crowd.

I definitely think there is truth behind language acquisition porousness being harder as one ages -- I definitely see the difference in two of my good friends, both moved from Eastern Europe to America before adulthood. One moved when they were about 8 years old, and occasionally the accent of their home country comes out, but in general, their English sounds like someone born in America speaking English. The other moved to America as a teenager, and they have a much stronger native accent. Both came over with a parent or parents, frequently communicate with said parent or parents, and mostly in the language of the home country.

There's also the issue of "language ego" which I think is more individual and maybe genetic? ... and that also is a factor.

Music porousness is more about what psychologists call "openness", and that also decreases with age (but interestingly, psilocybin boosts your openness). This is why most people's taste and opinions cement as they get older.

Also, are we really debating whether language acquisition gets harder with age? Isn't that just commonly accepted? It does seem like a weird analogy for music enthusiasm though.

FWIW, I'm a firm "no" on the original question. If you can't go see the band live, anticipate new releases, react to latest news, etc, you're only getting a facimile of the full 360-degree experience. (and it sure helps to be 21 when it's all happening)

relevant meme interruption!

https://i.redd.it/cej4wltksxb91.jpg

have read the entire thread twice so far. this went way better than i anticipated. thanks for thoughts, everyone!

That meme would be funny with Kate Bush references (which I imagine exists)

I'm happy to see the research but rn not sure I agree that most people are especially open or porous regarding music as teenagers, at least in the sense of being open to and non-judgmental about diverse and challenging musical experiences. Lots of teenagers have very narrow palates. It DOES seem to be true that a lot of people feel the strongest attachment to music they liked as kids or adolescents but I put that down to nostalgia for the soundtrack of a formative and emotionally intense stage of life more than to a higher level of openness at that age.

Like, loving "Glycerine" more than you'll ever love any other music doesn't really say anything to me about openness.

I agree w/Sund4r

I agree with Sund4r re it being more about attachment than "openness" but also, I think it is kinda related to the social aspect of music, especially for teenagers.

like when people are all over that big thief album -- and yeah i like some of that big thief album -- i'm thinking geez does their drummer sound amateurish to me *just* because i saw john bonham and keith moon?

When I got home the other day, my 67 y/o theater producer neighbor was blasting 'Spud Infinity'. This really surprised me. Mostly because I mistook it for 'Cantor de Mambo' at first.

i mean he's cool but he's not that cool

How does he dance?

Under the supervision of a therapist, as far as i know.

He defo has a dance/movement therapist who makes house calls.

Actually it might be a "fun" physical therapist, that would make more sense

Music can be "new to you" at any age. Discovering Arthur Russell and classic disco during my 20s changed the way I hear music as much as discovering indie rock or Albert Ayler or Jacques Brel did in my teens. Discovering ILM during my 30s changed the way I listen too, and it's not even music. The "you" is never the same but that's ok. Teenage music obsession can pale in comparison with a 2-year-old's music obsession.

Baby Shark to thread

please, let's not

Arthur Russell kind of a exception that proves the rule

favorite song presently. unbelievably resonating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzz1RKrYIWs

annette poindexter + pieces of peace — "wayward dream" (1970)

first listen 7 Jul 2022 11:30am

Puzzled by how many ppl itt see following an artist's contemporary trajectory as this pure moment of unfiltered enthusiasm. For me it's always been just as much worrying about the possibility of them falling off, arguing with ppl who tell me they're shit and wondering deep down whether they have a point, feeling FOMO at something potentially more exciting happening elsewhere that I'm either unaware of or not smart enough to "get". These are all neurotic impulses I agree, not saying they're laudable, but they def get in the way for me when enjoying music as it gets released.

Music from the past, meanwhile, has none of these problems - the story's been told so I don't need to worry about future trajectories, whether they're overrated or underrated doesn't matter, all the cultural and sub-cultural wars have been fought so I don't need to worry about any of that crap.

Also of course a romanticized view of the past has many advantages over the real thing! All the messy stuff can be more easily tuned out, big Heroic Narratives can be built. This is problematic in and of itself and yeah nostalgia for an age that never existed can be poisonous, also profoundly irritating for pedants like myself and most ppl who post to this board, but if the question is "level of enthusiasm" it is absolutely potent as fuck.

Like going back to the red herring of the listener's age a 13 year old's love of The Clash circa 2001 ABSOLUTELY could go as deep and fanatical as for any contemporary artist, possibly more so, possibly in a very annoying fashion.

Great post ^

still yet to hear from anyone who was born before music was released

Buddy Bolden to thread!

a pedant writes: there was commercially released music a decade before Bolden's heyday, and always rumours that he even recorded some himself.

or me it's always been just as much worrying about the possibility of them falling off

Indeed. Check out let's discuss New Order's 'Republic'

I am on record as a person who enjoys Mozart, even though I was too young to appreciate his dope-ass trax when they were first released.

all the cultural and sub-cultural wars have been fought so I don't need to worry about any of that crap.

Good point that I don't think anyone else has brought up. Like the way the squareness of the Monkees (as compared to, say, the Rolling Stones) flattens out after so many years. I think about that often. Ultimately I feel like old music just keeps attracting new cultural baggage all the time, and it evolves and changes but you can never really escape this.

I don't honestly know how anyone could seriously answer "no" to the literal question, as phrased in the OP. If one person exists who enjoys music made before their borth as much as contemporary music, the answer is "yes". Fun springboard for conversation, though.

Right but there's some fuzziness about the wording of the question vs. the intent of the question:

i've seen some sentiments (not here) that a 13 year old in 2022 isn't able to appreciate kate bush on the same level that someone who bought hounds of love in 1985 did.

Like, it honestly didn't occur to me that the thread premise might have anything to do with this initially (i know, duh). And it seems like what's at issue here might be ownership rather than enthusiasm, in which case the correct answer is def still "yes". It's like telling someone who just moved to Corona that Flushing Meadows Park doesn't truly belong to you because you missed the '64 Worlds' Fair, or something. Like, you still get to say "This is where I live" or even "This is part of what defines who I am", you inhabit that space. Those structures weren't designed to become monuments, you know, they were meant to be used briefly and then demolished or forgotten, but they're still there & part of your immediate landscape, of course they belong to you.

that's a good point ... also, it brings up the issue of the contextual changes that history could produce. Like, ok, fuck it, it's Leo season, I will refer y'all back to my very clever post about Schubert's use in The Hunger, where someone hearing that Schubert piece when it was "initially released" was not going to associate it with sexy goth vampire movie, The Hunger. Like, the nature of the "thing" that one has ownership of (in terms of identity formation) is different, just as Flushing Meadow Park has become a different "thing" over time.

To me the answer is a resounding yes: one can enjoy *music* as deeply--and probably more broadly--post-facto, as anyone did at the time of its release. What one probably can't enjoy to the same degree as those who "were there," is the cultural, temporal, and geographical context of said music. Whether those things are crucial to an enjoymebt (or "understanding") of music, or auxiliary, is up for debate.

But I feel, as someone born in 1980 who owns several thousand albums released before I was born, that part of what is so wonderful about music is that it can speak to you even if it's creation is wholly removed from your time and place. The emotions, the feeling, the sounds themselves can hit you, transcending time and place. This fact can get misunderstood and misshapen into appropriation, denial of origination and innovation, etc. But it can also lead to continuity and evolution within w living culture; and meaningful communication between cultures and across time.

Plenty of music from the past (and/or from places I haven't lived) has inspired me to learn more about its creators, and their context. But I view that as a meaningful but secondary facet of enjoyment of music to body/heart/mind engagement with the sounds of the music itself.

That said, "enjoyment of" and true "knowledge of" may be separate things. The fact that I can engage (even in great quantity and depth) music from times/cultures other than my own in personally meaningful ways, and even recommend/advocate others to do the same, doesn't mean I then necessarily have anything real to *say about* said music, particularly in terms of its cultural significance, the motivations or intentions of its creators, etc. It's a big reason my listening lead me to making many mixes, and increasingly to wanting to just let the music therein speak for itself; and away from any semblance of being a critic or a music author. Even in saying nothing, there is a risk of making sonic connections between music from my removed vantage point that might not appeal to its creators. The act of making a mix, I sometimes fear, implies "authority," rather than just the "deep enjoyment" that I feel motivates me.

The perspective of time (especially in the internet era and reissue/post-blog era) probably affords us a breadth of knowledge few to none would have at the time and place of a musical movement. For example, it's hugely unlikely I would've known the hundreds of artists and records I was able to hunt down for the '1981' poat-punk box set (not before I was born, bit I was in diapers in that year) if I'd been the right age to be culturally engaged in some local variant of the post-punk scene in 1981. My enthusiasm in the early 2000s for this music of the late 70s/early 80s was off-the-charts obsessive, and must've been evident and disarming to those I encountered who had "been there," as I got very few "what does this baby think he's doing plumbing the depths of *my* music".

(Conversely, I was so enthusiastic about that music "before my time" because I was so acutely disappointed by and disconnected from the music of my "time and place" in the early 2000s, to which I refused to be obligated to listen or pretend had any importance to me. I was very anti-time-and-place for a decade or so, feeling the opposite of the excitement older friends described about the musical (sub)culture of their youth.)

So in short--I don't see how there can be any doubt we can match the enthusiasm for music out-of-time of those who were there; and if anything, we can probably get more breadth-and-deoth obsessive. But that comes with a lot of caveats about how separable or not music-qua-music is from "the lived-and-breathed cultural, historical, and personal context of its creation". And I think there's probably something real--and potentially essential--that a time/place outsider can never experience or know about "non-first-hand" music, and therefore probably a certain humility we have to have in whwt we say about said music, a deference to rhose who were there and especially those who made the music. But music ultimately is transcendent, and there's nothing walling it off in time and space, when approached it with open ears in good faith.

(Please pardon any typos or lack of pith in this post, written in a time and place of insomnia on a phone.)

Great post Soundslike.

It's not often I get to experience music oblivious to when it came from but first time I heard Silver Apples "Oscillations", I assumed they were an 00s retro band and was pretty stunned to learn they were from the 60s.

I've been thinking about how people said so many old bands legacies are solidified despite many of them still being active. They can still destroy their image like Rolf Harris, their level of popularity is never settled, new associations can happen but it seems like their music is unlikely to evolve, innovate or have the same impact again, with few exceptions?

I was surprised recently to see someone get upset about the popularity of a current C-list rock band because I can't imagine why it seems that consequential to anyone now.

Please pardon any typos

“poat-punk” is unforgivable

Lol

I've been thinking about how people said so many old bands legacies are solidified despite many of them still being active. They can still destroy their image like Rolf Harris, their level of popularity is never settled, new associations can happen but it seems like their music is unlikely to evolve, innovate or have the same impact again, with few exceptions?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, July 30, 2022 5:35 AM

tangentially related? Instances where you can't separate the art from the artist. vs. instances where you can.

also yes re:silver apples. that stuff rules.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I voted.

Didn't have to think very long for some reason.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow, surprisingly one-sided result. I thought "Yes" would win, but not by that much.

Not that surprising.

It surprised me.

Pretty obvious when you think about classical music in this context.