soundtrack generation

I don't think that most people appreciate music anymore.

Everyone likes music, that's for sure. They all seem to have their ears plugged into something. But I think that there are fewer and fewer people that appreciate the full range of artistry, skill, sacrifice, and genius that go into producing the downloadable soundtrack to their lives.

Stanley Crouch wrote it very well in the June 2009 issue of Harper's magazine:

"Through our remarkable technology we witness the fundamental dilemma of our age, which is the use of machines that bespeak the genius of the species for the trivialization of the profound. We have thus become accustomed to a blizzard of fluff delivered by ingenious high-tech means. An aspect of this fluff is music polluted by its attachment to the cheap, demeaning imagery of videos or losing gravity while largely used as a background score for the activities of a distracted public. People are uncomfortable in silence because it can breed needless contemplation and may engender a floating into the deeper world of the self. In our moment of deracinated intimacy, too many of us have settled for a blob of backbeats and recording-studio tricks that do not swallow but melt away the great force of music in a perpetual submission to contrived novelty."

This is the opening paragraph for a review of a book on Duke Ellington; Backstory in Blue: Ellington at Newport '56, by John Fass Morton.

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