Soundcheck Blog

As longtime listeners will know, I am a huge fan of new music. My nightly “New Sounds” program here at WNYC has celebrated many types of new music since (gulp) 1982. So when I read Joe Queenan’s article, “Admit It, You’re As Bored As I Am,” my first inclination was to smack him. Instead, we’ve invited him to a Soundcheck Smackdown… where, it occurs to me, he will in fact be within smacking distance. Alas, as the moderator of this little event, I’m supposed to maintain some decorum.

Anyway, Joe is a humorist so part of me wonders whether he’s just having a laugh at contemporary music’s expense, tweaking classical music’s collective nose in a way… But reading it again, he really does seem to genuinely dislike all the many different flavors of new music out there. And you know what? His article, and that provocative title especially, WILL resonate with a lot of listeners. Just because I like this music doesn’t mean I’m naïve about it – I see exactly what Joe writes about: people restlessly waiting for the new crap to finish so they can hear their beloved Mozart serenade, or just sleeping through it. (But I’ve seen people sleep through Mozart too.)

I guess we need to define our terms: contemporary music for many people means the ascetic, cerebral music of Elliott Carter. For others it’s the relentless tonality of Philip Glass. Some would point to a straightforward composer of symphonies and concertos like Ellen Taaffe Zwillich. But what about the long-dead Arnold Schoenberg? Is that still contemporary music? And if so, then what do we call Puccini, Debussy, Ravel, and Rachmaninoff – all from the same time?

So, what do you think about contemporary music – however you define it? Do you like some of it, all of it, or none of it?

So hip-hop is in trouble? Sales are down? The music’s lost its edge? Sorry, but weren’t we just saying those exact same things about rock a few years ago? And it turned out that rock wasn’t dead at all - you just had to know where to look for it. Which turned out to be any place other than commercial rock radio and the Billboard charts.

Like rock, and its surprisingly close cousin, punk rock, hip-hop started outside the mainstream and has come perilously close to being co-opted by that mainstream. All those pretty little pieces of paper with dead presidents on them, you know… But I actually think there’s a lot of really interesting hip-hop being made now. Again, you just have to know where to look - and as indie-rock is where the interesting rock music is made these days, indie-hop is booming too. I’m partial to Mr. Lif and P.O.S. myself, but you can make a pretty long list of creative rappers whose music you won’t hear on Z-100. So take that fork out of hip-hop… it’s not done yet.

Tell us: What do you think? Has hip-hop’s Golden Age come and gone? Where is the best hip-hop being made today? (Photo: Flickr/raygunb)

I love music. I love live music. I love lots of live music. I just don’t love it all at once. To me, that’s one of the problems with the big summer music festivals - when the music is coming at you all day and into the evening, it doesn’t matter how great the bands are - you will suffer from aural fatigue. That happens even with indoor festivals, like South By Southwest. Want to hear 30 or 40 bands for a single ticket price? Sounds good, doesn’t it? But think about it for a minute - do you REALLY want to hear that many bands in such short order?

And there’s an even bigger problem with these events - me. I am a big baby. I don’t like to roast in the sun, and I don’t like to stand in the mud. (Hell, I don’t even like standing at the back of a club anymore but that’s just because I’m an old crank, while still managing to be a baby.) If you’re going to ask people to brave the elements for long stretches of time, you are going to make the experience of listening to music a lot harder than it has to be.

Tell us: Do you go to these summer music festivals? I will admit they often lead to great stories - share them if you dare…

As Alex Ross points out in his recent article in the New Yorker, we’re being increasingly told that China is the future of classical music. The numbers are staggering – 30 million piano and/or violin students (conservatively – more enthusiastic numbers-crunchers say as many as 100 million); conservatories 10 times the size of Juilliard; and an increasingly large presence on the international competition scene. But numbers don’t tell the whole story.

When I went to Beijing earlier this year, before and after the NY Phil’s historic trip to North Korea, I was impressed with the orchestra’s concert at the National Center for the Performing Arts (or The Egg, as it’s universally called in Beijing) – not by the program, particularly, or by the hall, which is IMHO an acoustic disaster, but by the people outside trying to scalp tickets to get inside.

But the closer you look, the more you see problems – classical music in China is being “used” as an aspirational device (look how cosmopolitan and modern we are), and as an expression of a new nationalism (we can do this as well as the West). For this reason, concert series and individual shows have a planned-by-committee feel to them.

And yet, there is no denying the enthusiasm – whatever’s at the root of it. Check out Alex’s article and let us know – do you think the future of classical music lies in China? Leave a comment.