In short: married , reclusive, 37 year old, untrained and uneducated, janitor who toils away in obscurity on sonic art (aka: musical expressions i.e.: weird shit to help alleviate my troubled mind) into the wee hours of the night.
Classical music for the working class, yes. Driving to and fro work, no. At the pub, no. Before a worker's rights rally, no. Think more...after you've thrown in the towel on your life and you're in the car with a bomb strapped to your chest heading toward your bosses house or an ex-lover's, THIS is YOUR soundtrack! Or...What is needed, when you're stuck at just 9 prostitutes murdered, to take your streak to the NEXT! level? MY music, that's what! How about when it's 3 in the A.M. and your sitting on the couch drunk watching tv with the sound off as Suzanne Summers has a nervous breakdown on the home shopping network? Well, I'M YOUR MAN! Just press play and my music shall guide you.
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This is where you can find the straightest shooting, hardest hitting and most dope observations on music...MY observations. Nah, it's really a travel log (very much warts & all) of the crusade to get me and my music heard and dealt with.
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Introverts World
"Obviously Cage, Stockhausen and the rest have no currency in the working class, so criticism of their work is relatively unimportant." sayeth Cornelius Cardew
Me replieth: Can't agree with that (well, other than EVERY modern classical composer having very little currency in the working class), as an ACTUAL member of the working class (unlike Cardew himself or Karl Marx, for that matter)...I'm huge on (the concept of) Cage (as a liberator of music - very socialist, in the art-abstract) and also big on Stockhausen (pompous as he might be).
Can art music make it beyond academia?
First off I should state where I’m coming from: I’m an uneducated (what does that mean? That mean’s I dropped out of school only to barely graduate a bit late with a high school diploma, last time I paid actual attention in school was about the first day. High school diploma, yes. Actual level of formal education, probably about 7th grade) and untrained (as in, technically my musical chops couldn’t even keep me in the truest of punk bands – beyond music, I’m not trained for jack shit) janitor (the highest paying and longest lasting job I’ve ever had) who grew up in an equally uneducated blue-collar household (family line) where there was virtually no music or culture to speak of. Another way of saying, my “cred†(or formally lack thereof) is for real in those regards (speaking of that, I even lived in “da hood†for a little while to boot – no thanks, empty 40 O’s, strangers playing dominos on my porch at midnight and cockroaches are not my style). So, my shit isn’t “ironic†(as the kids today like to be) or fake in any way.
Despite this…I do realize that the quote below was written in order to make a (very valid) point to those visiting your more academic (classically oriented) site.
“yeah i've sampled from these pieces a hundred times without anyone's permission, but without the dope beats would your music ever make it beyond academia?â€
Sure it would, it’s all a matter of natural intelligence (and the curiosity that tends to go with that) and a well stocked public library (worked for me) and/or a solid local radio station that plays things by names other than Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Schubert, etc.
Some points:
1) Too many within the art/classical music world need to WAKE-UP to the dawning of a new day (which began, ohhh, some 50 or so YEARS ago, more depending on how one wishes to see things) in art/classical music (ie: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Schubert, etc, are DEAD and LONG GONE – fine, appreciate their music, but…come on, it’s time…it really is…to move on with your life in music).
2) Spreading the word to those BEYOND academia. Best way is still a good independent radio station (preferably of the old school kind, though the internet can reach some as well still not quite as many I don’t think). My wife took art music to a “regular Joe†pub in England (that was a sharp idea) and had a DJ night where she spun all sorts of classical music (some Beethoven or whatever to draw them in easy then BAM with some modern shit). Concert halls, however, tend to be too damned “stuffy†for the likes of the blue-collar (I know it is for me and I’m, generally speaking, more “worldly†than most blue-collars) unless it’s not in a typical hall but rather more like a pub/coffee house/warehouse space/things of that sort.
3) Along with that, is to loosen the suffocating choke-hold that academia has on the music. By that I mean to talk about it in less technical terms to allow an “IN†to the world of classical music. For folks to experience it and explore it the way they would (say) pop music. As opposed to being intimidated of getting the boot for not pronouncing a name correctly (hey, I literally caught that one once by some pedantic twat when I said “DebU-hard u-ssy†to which he promptly laughed at me and said “it’s Debuuu-soft u-ssy†if I remember correctly I think this asshole even added an "a" at the end "Debuuussaaay" – come to find that most classical DJ’s, at least, say it how I do) or calling out someone for not knowing music theory or the difference between a “concerto†and a “sonata†(and whatnot).
Personally, I went through a period (in my teens-through-early 20’s – we’re talking around 1986-93) where I listened to hip-hop (or rap) that reached a point that I virtually only listened to rap and Tom Waits (toward the end of the period in my early 20’s). Though after that I lost sight of hip-hop entirely. So, I’m not gonna touch upon the virtues of implementing art music/classical with hip-hop (a combination I likely would’ve done myself as an artist in the early 90’s had I lived in NYC or LA rather than Indiana at the time, where no rappers were even REMOTELY into the weird shit I was sampling and mixing with beats back then).
Nonetheless, as an uneducated, extremely non-academic (shit, college campuses almost literally make me sick to step into – the few I have), uncultured, blue-collar guy…I was able to see my way through to modern classical/art music (the largest part of my listening diet for many years now – it really all started about 16 years ago for me, thanks to the well stocked public library in Indy).
So again to answer your rhetorical question (can art music make it beyond academia without beats)…yes. And in the process as well, consider your own music to officially have.
