Present Music

Lester Bangs once wrote, about fans of (I can't remember exactly which) free jazz, <I>Metal Machine Music</I>, or Captain Beefheart, that their ears and musical brains surely are more refined or practiced than those of the general public, since they were able to discern the musicality emergent from the mass of noise these musics seem to consist of... Read More. (Of course, he himself was a fan...) But this makes a degree of sense: we're all "schooled" in hearing Western tonal music, but fewer of us are used to hearing the harmonic or other structures of other musics, including much 20c (and 21c) "classical" (as well as free jazz, etc). Even Philip Glass, whose music is tonal in the sense that its chords are rarely those found outside common western tonal practice, frustrates new listeners...because, of course, its sense of time & momentum is wholly different from the expectations such listeners have built up. (Thus I would drive folks bats in college playing <I>Einstein on the Beach</I>)...