Musical Fundamentalism

[Mark L]

We all know about religious fundamentalists - zealots who think that what they believe is the only truth, and that anyone who believes otherwise will be subject to eternal damnation

Is there a musical equivalent of these people? Do you actually know any musical fundamentalists??

[WRGKMC]

If you mean a musician who is hard working at his craft, dedicated and wont let others deter them from their wanting to succeed in the business - Yes, I know many. They are called professional artists who earn a living at their trade. They set up goals and quality benchmarks for themselves and are often times businessmen who do succeed in the business because they "don't"  let others tell them what they can and can't do, and they don't do things the way amateurs do them because they already been down that road and know those methods are a fail.

Whether you call that being a zealot or not is simply a point of view, not a reality. The reality is you do what works and if you succeed producing good artwork and can support yourself while producing that art, that's all that really matters. As with most music, I could care less if the artist is political, gay, religious, a bum, or a millionaire male or female. In fact I'd rather not know. You best artists are often a mystery to their fans and in being so they are completely free to express any views they want through their artwork.

 All that matters to me is the quality of their work and so long as I don't work of them, or have them working for me, I could care less what his personal beliefs are. In fact, what drives me away from listening to many  musicians (and actors) is when they start getting involved in things like politics, taking sides and alienating themselves from the rest of the population.

It's not even that I disagree with their views, its that they are no longer artists when they make public statements. I feel embarrassed for them more than anything else because I know from that point on, both their sales of art will suffer and it slants what may be hearing in their artwork instead of allowing the listener to interpret and find his own meaning in that art.

John Lennon is a classic example of someone who by the slip of the tongue, had his views twisted by the press and made to be anti American. The fact is he wasn't an American, but the impact of that one statement, not only affected him personally, it affected his band, everyone who earned a living from that bands album sales, right down to the music stores selling the albums, and even the world politics between countries.

Fame is often times a burden as much as it is a pleasure. Its a big responsibility that requires careful management if you want to avoid its pitfalls. Its not even unique to artists. You can find it in any business. Look what political bias did to Henry Juszkiewicz at Gibson when his private views and actions became public. 

There's always going to be someone jealous of your success and those who are will take any opportunity to target your personal views in attempts to elevate themselves. This envy is part of mans dark nature and is as old as the first man who was envious of the leader of his tribe and used any means to steal that wealth away for themselves. Its something every artists deals with because there's always someone envious of his talent.

Personal secrets to success is often times part of the artists makeup. Those who have true intentions have no need to hide what made them a success and will tell other musicians they trust openly what they should do in life to make themselves a success. The problem is those who lack the talent gained through hard work and dedication are always looking for the easy way of gaining equal status so they can steal that talent from others instead of earning it for themselves.

They may have tried and failed and think others had special help to become a success so they attempt to steal those opportunities away from others by tearing down the ones they admire most. They have no faith, no self motivation or positive outlook on life and become their own worst enemy. You know the type, the ones who always complain and when you attempt to elevate them and put them back on track, they actually resist being put back in the loop to success. They don't want what's best for themselves and they always have an answer to why they can't succeed, and expose themselves for what they are. Lazy. 

Artists for the most part live a solitary life. Musicians play the dual role of being a solo figure in a very public role. Balancing where their true art comes from and satisfying their customers is doubly difficult and separates the men form the boys. You better well have some personal beliefs to lean on when the last fan leaves the building and the roar of the crowd dies away or you will be crushed. Trust in others is an essential motivation for musicians but it must be balanced with stronger beliefs held by the artist that are the source of his art and sustains him when there are no others to elevate him. Those who lack personal beliefs have no reason to succeed because they have nothing more than themselves to share with others so others don't see him as being an artist.

Its one reason why your great masters all believed their art came from a higher power than man and they were simply a conduit of that artistic power, not the owner or master of the power. This freed them of both the good and bad responsibilities that power required and insulated them from its effects. They were simply the lens that focused that artistic power into writing efforts and manipulating that energy physically and mentally in performing. That's the key to it all.

Some may have their own personal methods and beliefs including religious that help them tap into the source of artistic power. Most realize its the same source of power all good works of man comes from, and many are allowed to use so long as they respect where it comes from. Its funny how that source is taken away from those who feel they have a private monopoly on it.

[MikeRivers]

Back in the 1980s, we used to have what we called the "Folk Nazis" who didn't want anyone to perform at a folk festival unless they actually came out of the tradition, not college kids who learned from records.

Most of them eventually went away, and that's why the old songs and tunes, though no longer passed on through the oral tradition, are still surviving, and even thriving. Though I still feel a bit uneasy about punk rockers who've discovered the banjo.

 

[blue2blue]

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MikeRivers wrote:

Back in the 1980s, we used to have what we called the "Folk Nazis" who didn't want anyone to perform at a folk festival unless they actually came out of the tradition, not college kids who learned from records.

Most of them eventually went away, and that's why the old songs and tunes, though no longer passed on through the oral tradition, are still surviving, and even thriving. Though I still feel a bit uneasy about punk rockers who've discovered the banjo.

 

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You should feel uneasy about anyone who has just discovered the banjo.

 

Many of us have strong feelings about some music. I know I do. Some I love. Some I hate. 

But there are some people who seem to think -- and socially maintain against any and all argument -- that their perception and aesthetic preferences reflect inarguable, objective 'quality' -- and, of course, that anyone who doesn't agree with them is just plain wrong or just plain nuts.

When asked to explain their rationale, the usual resort is to something along the lines of, Well, it just is! Or, If you can't hear it -- you must be deaf!

Those whose intent is to be reasonable or to perhaps try to lead these folks to a broader understanding of aesthetics and human subjectivity may try recourse to stipulating that, while criteria for technical performance on a given instrument, in a given style, can be erected, even those criteria have arbirtrary aspects. 

And moving beyond measurable performance criteria into the area of personal prefernence and perception?

Ha!

Yet we continually run into people online and in the real world (if we're not careful) who insist that their personal aesthetic preference is the only objective reality.

What is vexing -- amusing, maybe, but vexing -- is that these people seem to be incapable of entertaining the notion that their subjective preference is just that. It seems to reveal a complete logical inability.

Perhaps there is a corollary to the Dunning-Kruger Effect dealing with aesthetics -- but one suspects that most of the folks so-afflicted in the aesthetic arena likely have the same conflation of the personal with the universal in other spheres of like, like,  oh, say, politics.

It often seems that the fundamental disconnect for these folks is, indeed, at the logical level. They tend to be 'true believers' -- firmly and fully committed to whatever their declared ethos is at a given time -- even as their belief systems may at times change.

Consider, for instance, the onetime, hardcore, Mao-quoting leftist who, a quarter century later, makes a name for himself as a well-known ultra-conservative. One political extreme to another -- yet, to many observers, he's still the same, barely-rational, absolutist, my-way-or-the-highway true believer. (I'm thinking of a specific guy, but there are actually a few folks who fit that general descriptive now, amusingly.)

Still, maybe it is their personality type which prevents logical connections from being made at the personal level. Let's face it, most of us have a bit of trouble getting a full, objective grip on ourselves.   

[Mark L]

WRGKMC, that was an amazing, intelligent and well-thought out answer.....to a question I didn't actually ask

blue - you hit the nail on the head, mate

[RockViolin]

You'd be shocked an amazed at what happens to some people when you give them a baton to wave around and a podium to stand on. 

[veracohr]

I'd think the musical equivalent would be genre purists. Those who say things like "that's so not punk/metal/whatever" and disparage outside influences on their genre of choice.

[blue2blue]

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veracohr wrote:

 

I'd think the musical equivalent would be genre purists. Those who say things like "that's

so

not punk/metal/whatever" and disparage outside influences on their genre of choice.

---

 

My take was somewhat more nuanced. I didn't mind influences from country, blues, jazz, reggae, tango, etc, sneaking into the edges of punk/new music... but when influences like The Archies and Josie and the Pussycats started sneaking in... I was running out the fire exit.

[Ernest Buckley]

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MarkydeSad wrote:

We all know about religious fundamentalists - zealots who think that what they believe is the only truth, and that anyone who believes otherwise will be subject to eternal damnation

Is there a musical equivalent of these people? Do you actually

know

any musical fundamentalists??

---

Yes, many Beatles fans think that if you don`t love the Beatles with all your heart that theres something wrong with you. I never get rude remarks on HC until I say something like, "The Beatles are overrated."

[Mark L]

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Ernest Buckley wrote:

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MarkydeSad wrote:

We all know about religious fundamentalists - zealots who think that what they believe is the only truth, and that anyone who believes otherwise will be subject to eternal damnation

Is there a musical equivalent of these people? Do you actually

know

any musical fundamentalists??

---

Yes, many Beatles fans think that if you don`t love the Beatles with all your heart that theres something wrong with you. I never get rude remarks on HC until I say something like, "The Beatles are overrated."

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You must be a real sour square not to love the nutty, noisy, happy, handsome Beatles

[Lee Knight]

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MarkydeSad wrote:

WRGKMC, that was an amazing, intelligent and well-thought out answer.....to a question I didn't actually ask

blue - you hit the nail on the head, mate

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That was funny Marky. I agree.

 

I'm proud or misguided enough to say that I've always loved all types of music. This includes bubblegum, jazz, classical (serious blah blah) bluegrass, heavy metal, electronica, dance, 60's, 70's, 80's, every era including the first stabs at music as we know it, big band... you name it. But not ALL music.

 

I still have my personal barometer for quality. Though... I still still tend to appreciate things that fall frequently on the side of questionable for most musicians. And too, very much on the side of "stamped with approval" by the guys in the know. I look at things from the point of view of, can I do it? when it comes to the pop side of things. When it comes to more serious types of music, well... I might not get some of it, but I assume someone does. Lots of it I do. Most really.

 

So... do I know zealots? Oh yeah. That's OK too.

[Lee Knight]

Ras, that's just not knowing the genre. I don't think there's anything wrong with genres. They all stretch and grow and change over time. Some faster and some slower. And some digress. But playing the gig is paramount to good musicianship in my book.

[nat whilk II]

There are people who have invested heavily in one particular musical tradition, and want to produce music or teach other musicians how to be skilled in the context of that tradition.  The run of the mill piano teacher is that way pretty much.  So this sort will want to maintain the standards of quality that are part of the consensus of that tradition.  I think these people are super valuable - even 'tho some of them take the extra step of elevating their chosen tradition above all other traditions and consider it the best or the only valid or respectable tradition, etc.

 

Some people just flat resent all this "quality" talk and see little difference between the respectful traditionalist and the obnoxious ubertraditionalist.  They see or hear someone going on about the need for doing things "right" and they just shut off and tune that person off as a snob or elitist or some other variation of what Mark meant by "music fundamentalist".  Personally, I think the traditions are in the long run all we've really got going for us.  The traditions are like great structures that have been built by the incremental additions of countless musicians great and small over long periods of time, that provide us with a vantage point to see further and take the tradition into new places.  The old "standing on the shoulders of giants" sort of thing.

 

So I see two faults in common parlance.  The traditionalist who has taken on an attitude of superiority, and also the anti-traditionalist who is too busy being offended by the ubertraditionalist to even recognize what they themselves owe to all the others who created "Music" in the first place.

nat whilk ii 

 

 

[RockViolin]

Yeah, I think a person can be a fundamentalist without being a zealot, in music anyway.

Piano teachers, for the most part, have their M.O. It may be based on years of piano teaching tradition. If a kid waltzes in and is like, "teach me how to do this, and that, and I wanna know how to..." I don't think it neccessarily makes the piano teacher a zealot, or even a fundamentalist if they say, "Walk before you run kid, and unless you have three feet this is how my students take the first step."

What happens in a Jeet Kune-Do class if you walk in and demand to learn the one inch death punch? You meet Master Stump and have a seat, for as long as it takes. 

In many areas of music, and life, there is a way and there are people that can teach it. Maybe after a while, having learned many ways, you can streamline and mix them up at will and call it No Way.

[blue2blue]

I think there are clearly some traditions which cry out for a sort of  passionate [but necessarily Platonic] surrender by the student -- not to mention a profoundly deep commitment. Whether one is seeking to become a world-class cellist or a world-class sitarist, I suspect one is going to need to start young and be fiercely commited to pursuing -- and extending -- craft. (And, talent, whatever one supposes that to be, probably wouldn't hurt.   )

 

That said, I'm not sure such an approach is altogether necessary for those learning to play music for their own fulfillment and pleasure. Horses for courses.

[Anderton]

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MarkydeSad wrote:

 

We all know about religious fundamentalists - zealots who think that what they believe is the only truth, and that anyone who believes otherwise will be subject to eternal damnation

 

Is there a musical equivalent of these people? Do you actually

know

any musical fundamentalists??

---

 

The people who booed Bob Dylan when he played electric instruments at some festival, I forget which one.

But I don't know if that was the kind of fundamentalism of which you speak. I think it's more a subset - the "You aren't playing the same thing that I liked in the first place, therefore you suck." Another subset would be those who go to hear a band, but want to hear them play only their hits, not any new material.

[Mark L]

 

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Anderton wrote:

 

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MarkydeSad wrote:

 

 

We all know about religious fundamentalists - zealots who think that what they believe is the only truth, and that anyone who believes otherwise will be subject to eternal damnation

 

Is there a musical equivalent of these people? Do you actually

know

any musical fundamentalists??

---

 

 

The people who booed Bob Dylan when he played electric instruments at some festival, I forget which one.

 

But I don't know if that was the kind of fundamentalism of which you speak. I think it's more a subset - the "You aren't playing the same thing that I liked in the first place, therefore you suck." Another subset would be those who go to hear a band, but want to hear them play only their hits, not any new material.

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That was Newport, I think

He also played at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, where someone in the audience famously shouted out 'Judas!'

[Hard Truth]

According to Al Kooper, who was in Dylan's band at Newwport, they were having technical problems and they sucked that day. So, the story is something of a myth.

[Lee Knight]

Awesome freaking post.^^^

[Lee Knight]

Wherever you learn it, you learn it.

[RockViolin]

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Lee Knight wrote:

Awesome freaking post.^^^

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Thankyou, Lee!

 It was your shoulders I was standing on.