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Does the Great American Songbook need updating?


Chris Loeffler

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http://www.harmonycentral.com/articles/the-great-american-songbook--what-it-says-and-doesnt-about-american-music

 

Is it a set piece of history, like the greatest generation, or is it something that's meant to evolve?

 

 

The internet has brought bewildering diversity to music, both in terms of style and quality. It's overwhelming - and the gatekeepers are for the most part out of a job. The public, faced with this infinite supply, has just retreated to the thumb-sucking mode of narrow personal taste. There are no overarching style-setters, no direction-pointers, no curators or respectable impresarios, except in the direction of yet more diversity.

 

Anyway, how can anyone curate such a Babel of wildly varying productions? It's possible to curate if you stick to a particular, more coherent era - but to update the catalog means to select, which means to reject, which the public tends to view with hostility as snobbery and elitism and at least one, if not more, evil-isms.

 

Maybe the public will let the gatekeepers back in at some point after we all tire of the chaos. The gatekeepers could do with a bit more humility and broad-mindedness, no question. We'll see what we will see. This current trend will surely divert from it's course as the most predictable thing about any trend is that it won't go in the same direction forever.

 

nat

 

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I don't understand why it was collated in the first place. I suppose someone saw an opportunity to make a few buckaroos on the musical romancers. But, like all tallies, their purpose becomes superseded and meaningless before the last thing is tallied. Still, coffee tables need centerpieces and printed material.

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