I can see if people want to argue “There is no tradition of music composition being a category”. I’d disagree, but it’s an argument.
And I can see “We don’t want to award a music composition prize, we don’t think it’s a good idea anymore”. Fine, award nothing, or create a new prize.
What I can’t see at all is “Let’s award this prize to something that is great and deserves some kind of prize, but that definitely belongs in a different and equally-well-defined category that there are already prizes for, and definitely doesn’t belong in the category our prize is for”.
I guess my question is, why does what Kendrick Lamar is doing not count as music composition? Is it because he’s not making music? Ok, I’m ready to argue that point.
Is it because what he’s doing doesn’t fit your criteria for composition? In that case I don’t understand the difference between creator of music and writer of music and composer of music. Kendrick is clearly the artist in charge of all aspects of his music, even if it is a somewhat collaborative process. But Jazz being allowed to win opens the door to that sort of collaboration. I’m going to need you to explain better. I genuinely don’t understand.
Every genre has a tradition. To be part of a particular tradition’s present and future, you have to make its past part of your own past, by studying it and absorbing it, somehow. There’s no need for anyone to be defensive about this; every musician who has trained in music is automatically part of whatever tradition they’ve trained in. It’s not magic, and it’s not elitist except in the way that a runner who trains is elite compared to one who doesn’t. This is exactly how rappers work, all knowing each other’s work, all feeding off of each other’s work, making playful and not-so-playful jabs at each other, and so on. If you’re a rapper who doesn’t know Tupac’s work, you’re seriously lacking. Even if you don’t like his work, you still know it, it’s part of your tradition.
What about the rapper who doesn’t really know Aaron Copland’s work? Is he less of a rapper because of it? No. Is he outside the tradition of American music composition because of it? Yes. It’s not discriminatory to say so, any more than to say that if I’m going to call myself a rapper then I better know Kendrick’s work and Tupac’s and so on. (There’s more to it of course, but that’s part of it, just as knowing the American music composition tradition is necessary to be part of it.)
So if it’s not “concert music” (don’t like the term but it’s better than classical) it does not count? So the Jazz compositions should not have happened either?
Eta: don’t read any of this as defensive. I promise I’m not attacking you either. Just trying to understand your viewpoint.
There are lots of awards that are genre specific, but the Pulitzer is not one of them. The award is for “a distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year.” There’s no mention of genre there - and no, “American music composition” is not a genre. If it’s supposed to be only for one or two genres, it should specify that somewhere. If it’s going to present itself as representative of American music as a whole, it should consider the entire field.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. And your comparisons to the World Series & Tony Awards are idiotic and show that you have no clue what you’re saying.
Has the Pulitzer Price for Fiction ever been awarded to a genre title? Has the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction ever gone to a textbook? Has the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry ever gone to a book of lyrics? (BYW, the Poetry Prize is the only one which specifies it must be a “volume.” Does that mean the Prize for Fiction or History can go to an ebook but the Poetry Prize cannot?)
For 75 years, the Pulitzer Prize in Music meant classical music, with two odd exceptions. As I asked above, does anybody on the the planet think this actually and specifically represented the single best work of American music of the year? Does anybody think this was merely coincidence?
People know what the Pulitzers mean by their categories. If the Music Prize this year went to another classical composition would you be here complaining that the Prize isn’t genre specific? Assuming you knew of their existence before this thread, you would have been nodding along with everybody else because that for 75 years the Prize was designed for classical, given to classical, and was the way classical got recognized in our society.
Now maybe the world shouldn’t work that way. Maybe the Pulitzers are going to change to meet the times. Maybe I’ll grow wings and fly. But none of it will happen because the Pulitzer committees suddenly wake up tomorrow and exclaim, “Oh noes, we’ve been ignoring the lack of specificity in our descriptions for longer than any of us have been alive!”
In the grand scheme of things, 50 years isn’t much.
You’re right that I need to dig deeper to get a better understanding of the genre. I’m not completely ignorant of it, though.
I was , for instance, absolutely aware of the improvisational aspect of hip hop. In that respect, it’s something that I should have commented on indeed, and which definitely can prove a fertile ground for development and complexity. However, that’s not exactly the feeling I got from the lyrics. I admit that I missed a lot of it, but what I did get wasn’t exactly deep. It could however change with time. But as far as beats are concerned, I’m almost certain that, while they can be extremely complex and interesting, they have less potential for development and subtlety than harmonies or melodies.
If anyone had reason to take umbrage at the choice, they would (a Pulitzer would be a big boost to their careers), they would. Yet they both are delighted with the choice.
As an aside, people tend to think of William Randolph Hearst as the epitome of the bad excesses of yellow journalism. But Joseph Pulitzer was no different and maybe even more sensationalist. Yet Pulitzer doesn’t have the negative reputation as Hearts.* I’m certain that was because he created the Prize, which makes people overlook his reputation as a newspaper publisher.
If the answer had been “no,” I would have said I want the Pulitzer to go to a classical composition, since there should be some prize specifically for such works, and there are other high-profile awards that someone like Kendrick Lamar could win (e.g. Grammys).
I think you guys are misunderstanding Exapno’s question. IIUC, he’s asking if anybody thinks that the classical works that won the Pulitzer in previous years were the single best work of American music in their year—not if anybody thinks that about DAMN.
Old-school hip-hop DJing is effectively dead, as far as mainstream hip-hop goes. People still do it, but you will never hear it on the radio, not anymore. The advent of samplers and sequencers made the on-stage DJ more of a hype man or at worst, a prop, rather than the integral heart of the music itself. Nobody spins records in the studio anymore, beats are all now programmed up by a “producer” who may not have ever even touched a turntable before.
You should check out the works of Terminator X or DJ Jazzy Jeff from the 80s. The depth and complexity of the music they created out of just snippets of other tracks is legitimately amazing.
That’s not fair. DJ Shadow just released an album last year and it was a huge hit. Madlib still cuts tracks. While ultimately they employ more than just two turntables they both have significant turntable roots. There are lots of producers who are making genuine music too. To keep it Kendrick, his albums are more than beats. Boom Bap hip hop is out of fashion (not dead) but there is still a lot of musical stuff going on.
Right. Because the DJ and the MC have evolved into related but separate arts. I know my previous post does not really express this, but I was really just lamenting that separation. DJs and MCs were once an integral team, but today the relationship is more like mercenaries than teammates.
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Terminator X** happens to be one of the few DJs whose work I’m familiar with .
My brother listened to Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet a lot in the early 90s, also their previous two albums, I think. I can’t say I loved this music but I wasn’t hostile either. It certainly didn’t sound like anything else I knew, and it was undeniably cleverly done, which made it worth listening to.
About the beats, and music in general, being all done on a computer : this is exactly what I deplore. I’ve spent most of my life playing various instruments and, while I recognize that computers can do things or create textures that are out of reach of even the most gifted musicians, I see this lack of physical contact, of direct interaction with sound production as a major impoverishment. A lot of flash, very little substance.
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