The Machine that Kills Fascists is Rusting

a belated 70th

Where the contemporary classical genre is concerned, music has become completely steeped in pretension, virtuosity and alienation. These days the average music lover can rarely attend any given concert to find himself being moved by the event, more likely he will leave uninspired and blank faced. One can't identify with the majority of this nonsensical, conceptual 'intellectualism' and perhaps this is why there is such a divide between the worlds of contemporary classical and popular: if an art form has solely an intellectual appeal, then, as explained in my previous article, it will represent only the class of people to which this bares relevance: academics. 
                    In this case a crossroads is met whereby music evolves to fit a 'higher' class and its opposing 'lower' class: intellectualism versus hedonism. The intellectuals have their bourgeois contemporary classicism which allows them to pretend to be scholarly and impressive whilst those who oppose such pretensions have popular music which has developed into nothing more than hedonism: aesthetically pleasing, say-nothing enjoyment for a class that would rather have music as a backdrop or an escape from boredom than an art form. The result is two selfish and failing crusades, one of which is warring for the intellectualization of Music; for it to become symbolic of cleverness and superiority whilst under this veil it remains ugly, dishonest and pretentious while the antagonist, hedonism, fights to sacrifice Music to capitalism and stands to prove that material beauty is what Western culture has come to value above all else.
                    Both sides then are without honesty because rather than trying to create music, one is trying to generate capital while the other is simply pandering to a hierarchical system. Working on the philosophy that "truth is inherent in Art; Art is inherent in culture; culture in nature; nature in Art and nature is truth" we can deduce that these flawed crusaders are incapable of producing Art. They are deceitful because their art has ulterior, unnatural motives. Besides those of generating capital or creating hierarchy, whether intentional or otherwise they threaten to boycott Music as an Art and an expression of a free-thinking society. I'll come back to this in a moment.


Of course the situation is not black and white. There are Artists who bridge the gap and achieve in talking in a musical language that may be, to an extent, steeped in intellectualism or in hedonism but whose voice is not drowned out by either. Their work is a collaboration of Arts and genres and the exploration of ideology. Without ideology, music and Art equally are baseless. Similarly, without the ability to talk in a reasonably accessible language, art fails to meet its primary aim: to communicate. If art cannot communicate it is baseless. 

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Interlude
The ability to create this language, which may be cryptic enough so to inspire debate, yet accessible enough so to communicate ideology and instill in a listener that out of body, liberating, transcending effect that true Art can, is what defines an Artist. Without a musical language, without ideology, without aim, an individual cannot create Art because at base, he is scarcely an individual at all, simply another expendable inflicting meaningless noise upon the world; a pollutant, stifling the endangered pure air of true Art.

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So the problem then is not only in the, for want of a better word, 'art' of the intellectuals and hedonists, but equally in us, the audience. that fail to understand communication in music: we cannot appreciate the presence or absence of musical language, or else these rival camps would not exist, and neither would music itself in this superficial sense.
                   If we accept this as a problem inherent in todays society then we can see how severe and imminent a threat contemporary music culture places upon Art Music. If more and more people are incapable of realizing Music as an Art then the future of Art Music is hugely threatened: if nobody can understand it, there is no place for it and modernity; capitalism, intellectualism, the machine and the fascist has won and replaced free-thinking Art;  Music, nature, culture and truth.

               

Spent the Afternoon Wretching

Frankly, I find it very difficult having no choice but to lie back on a daily basis and get repeatedly and mercilessly shafted by the immeasurably massive and ugly figurative cock of today's music scene. The Tsunami that swelled at the beginning of the 1900's, that exploded through Western culture in the 60's and 70's, upturning, upending and reshaping society, has broken on the barren and lifeless shore of the 21st Century. Here, nothing is natural, nothing is honest and nothing is free. A pristine, crystalline Utopian veneer of convenience, entertainment and beauty in the form of a stream-lined and ergonomic city scape that reaches up through clouds and sprawls lubriciously the length of the horizon, tireless in its pursuit of profit, masks the polluted furnace, the immorality, the disease and the decadence of modernity; devoid of the coexisting phenomena of truth, nature, culture and emotion which create true, liberating Art, because in a society whose lifeblood is capital, such things cannot exist. 

                    Emotion is the spark of life, without emotion we needn't exist: emotion gives way to thought which invites truth. Art is an expression of that truth, whilst money only talks in lies and obscenity. Folk culture is the most natural form of existence and incurs the true expression of a people: truth is inherent in Art; Art is inherent in culture; culture in nature; nature in Art and nature is truth. 

Richard Wagner, undoubtedly one of the greatest ever artistic minds, firmly believed that popular music and art reflects the society which it serves. For example the classical period in music reflects enlightenment issues; the music of Mozart and Haydn is the music is of the bourgeoisie just as the Blues mirrors the hardship and oppression and folk culture of African-Americans. If we were to apply this theory today what would we learn? That we, as a society, have become absent-minded and decadent. Wagner, in his time, reached a similar conclusion and felt that Music, as the most significant Art form (a belief inspired by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and shared by Nietzsche) in its true nature rather than as a fools entertainment, could reform society.

Very few of us concern ourselves with the music that is hurled at us by corporate marketing schemes at every available opportunity on anything other than an aesthetic level. We simply buy into it because where music is concerned, we are malleable; it sounds nice, it looks nice, it feels nice so sure, we'll take it. And so fashions grow up around genres: the mentally lethargic music "scene kids". Emo. Electro. Goth. Indie etc. Well that's just utter nonsense isn't it. These people don't stand for anything; they don't believe in anything in particular. What it really boils down to is groups of morons that can't think for themselves so need to assure one another that they are real people by wearing identical dumbass clothes and listening to identical music and funding the bastards that produce this brainless, nonsensical anal leakage that somehow, criminally, is described by the majority as music.

                   Yes, these people are there to be ridiculed and where possible publicly humiliated, but different genres of such imbecility are on the rise and it does not bode well for Music as an Art form. More and more people do not understand that it is not simply a pass-time or activity and more and more people see music as simply a backdrop to their futile and monotonous lives and the likelihood is that you, dear reader, are exactly one of these non-people. Whether it walks you to school/college/uni/work everyday, whether it helps you study, whether it helps you relax or shop or fuck or shower or shit or shave or make-up your stupid fucking hair in the morning or before you go to some jizz-filled whorehouse nightclub to listen to more of your nauseating ass-music essentially you are just another disease-ridden client of an international brothel.

                    People forget that Music is an Art and that Art requires work, knowledge, understanding and responsibility. True Art is a conscious entity. Whether this consciousness is in the conception of the piece, or in the material Art work itself or in the psychological reaction it instills in its audience, true art has a consciousness and it is this that can change the way we philosophize; that can overturn society and politics. Art is the natural voice of free-thinking, and if that seems like hyperbole I ask you then why, in every fascist movement has it been censored? To those who seek to bury and diminish the spark of life, Art can stand up and gather force. Proof of this: Hippies in the 60's breaking social constraints and fighting for a new way of life outside of the mundane. "Hurricane" by Bob Dylan (album: Desire) made an effort to protest against racial discrimination as well as to spread awareness and to gain support for the wrongfully imprisoned African American boxer, Ruben 'Hurricane' Carter, which it did. There are, undoubtedly, a multitude of examples which I will not dwell on, suffice to say, that Music is far more than for your entertainment.  

The fact is, this is what the consumerist 21st Century thus far has had in store for what was seen by Nietzsche, Wagner and Schopenhauer as the highest Art form. It has crippled Music, it has torn out its tongue. Music is the runt and the slave and the leper and the gimp of modernity.