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?

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.

It’s basically some kind of very narrow essentialist view of art that I imagine very few people here would hold. And it seems easy to come up with counterexamples like the one you just mentioned.

How would we know? Some kind of time travel experiment? I guess we can examine our own experience. Music that was made at certain earlier part of my life might have certain particular emotional associations but I wouldn’t say I enjoy it more than music made before I was born or that people who were born after that music was made can’t understand what it really means because they weren’t there, man.

The thought of classical music crossed my mind in the context of this thread. I listen to a ton of "classical" (however you want to define that). It's a rare experience indeed where I have the kind of emotional response to a classical work that I do to, say, "Blue Monday." This is largely down to association, but also raises the question what we mean by "enjoyment." Most classical (or, let's broaden it, "serious") music engages my brain much more fully than does the pop music of my youth, which I still love beyond reason. It's a qualitatively different form of enjoyment.

The original question seems to me a variant of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw-TVrR8wZc