I know several folks who think music today is just derivative of past revolutionaries. I am sure that there are people pushing the envelope and doing stuff that is expanding the field; I’m just not familiar with them. Where are they?
I know that rap itself is fairly new and there’s a lot of new stuff being done with it, but what about other fields? Does electronica have something up its sleeve? I think Radiohead managed to bring about a pop-electronica-rock sound that was pretty innovative, but aside from that, what else? Where is jazz going, besides the annoying Smooth movement, which seems to be the most popular nowadays? Is anyone going off the 12-note scale, or producing strange harmonic progressions, or heck even just making it big with new combinations of instruments and styles?
Any insights, from reggae to country to classical, whether they be truly revolutionary or just evolutionary, would be appreciated. Examples that sound good would be even more appreciated
The giant music companies are strangling creativity.
New outlets are not welcomed by the giants–rather, they are seen as threats, & crushed utterly.
It’s much easier to blame downloading, & sue your potential customers, than to admit that you don’t know how to run your business, & improve your product.
The giant music companies have been accused of strangling creativity every single year since there were giant music companies. And in every single year some upstart came along outside of the system to make new and interesting music. Whether it became hugely popular was strictly up to the public.
That’s exactly as true today as it ever was. When some musical innovator comes out with a new sound that people like, it will be picked up no matter what the giant music companies have to say.
I don’t know what’s out there at the experimental fringes and I doubt that you do either. But I do know that it isn’t being suppressed by giant music companies.
“Mashes*” are gaining steam these days, I would expect to see more of them. Some guy named DJ dangermouse just made the “grey album” by combining the just vocals from Jay-Z’s black album with the music from the Beatles white album. It’s become an internet phenomenon. Club Djs are doing it all over the place, it’s becoming quite popular. In fact Jay-Z and Linkin Park just made a mash album called “Collision course”. I think it will become mainstream because people are pretty stupid and like to listen to safe, familiar music. Now we can take the Macarena and fuse it with a the Prodigy’s “Fire starter”, and have a completely new old song. In addition, the combinations are practically limitless, which will go a long way in us not getting sick of it too soon.
*Mashing is a new variation on an old theme. Taking two songs and mixing them together, but instead of a turntable, it’s done electronically. Usually two records may only line up for a few seconds, but with mashing, any element of any song can be manipulated to merge perfectly with another song, for as long as needed.
Why has everybody here assumed that to be considered to be pushing the envelope, the musicians must also be enjoying commercial success? Rarely have true innovators also been huge moneyspinners - the record companies have almost always erred on the side of caution.
Pop = mainstream. Pop is has rarely been responsible for innovation at any time.
Had these boards been around 15 years ago, I’m sure that the same things would have been said. Music was floundering in the malaise of too many cloned hair-metal bands.
I don’t mean to single you out, Bosda, cause God knows you’re not the only one who says stuff like this, but it’s this sort of thing that really pisses me off about discussing music here on the SDMB. Where the hell did you get the idea that the OP was asking about pop? Was it this?
Yeah, he must be asking about pop, right?
Off the top of my head, I can think of at least five albums released last year that are going to be viewed in five years as changing the direction at least one style of music is going. Can any of the naysayers in this thread insisting that it’s all been done before even name one non-pop album released in 2004?
In 1952 nobody saw Elvis Presley coming. In 1960 nobody foresaw the Beatles. In 1975 punk and the New Wave were unthinkable. Nobody saw disco coming, or rap, or hip-hop, or electronica, or alternative, or grunge, or whatever might be around today.
All of these have several things in common. They’re all pop music, they all transformed the popular music industry, and they all came out of small record companies and were later co-opted and made massively huge by giant record companies.
What will be big in 2007? Not a clue. But I’ll bet that nobody here will have foreseen it and that even ultrafilter’s five albums will have nothing to do it. (“Changing direction” is pretty weak compared to a revolution, though. Are we really talking about the same thing?)
When you get down to it, none of the revolutionary new acts you mentioned were all that different from what came before them (with the possible exception of the Beatles; I really don’t know their predecessors all that well). It’s not the music that changes quickly; it’s public tastes.
And yes, the direction that the five albums I have in mind are pushing will still be relatively popular in 2007. Without a doubt, it’ll remain mostly underground, but it’ll be there.
I’m still waiting for the naysayers to comment on my challenge to them, so I’m going to hold off on posting the list just yet. Shoot me an email if you just can’t wait to know.
I mean anyone with so much as a toe in the water knows that there is music the world and time over that satisfy Windwalker’s query (“going off the 12-note scale, or producing strange harmonic progressions, or… new combinations of instruments and styles”) but none of it is very popular now, or has transformed pop music the way rap (for instance) has, in the US.
Anyway, that, and the trends he cited, is why I would assume Windwalker’s question was more along the lines of ‘What lies in the current <popular> music frontier?’. What’s the next rap, the next rave/electronica?
And the answer to that is damned if I know. Maybe something along the lines of what World Eater was talking about. Makes sense in way - rappers sampled the past to back a lot of their stuff, so now people are sampling rappers. Cheap to produce, too.
And of course we can’t rule out the occasional huge talent that will miraculously surface through the muck and mire of the industry and make everyone gasp for a while.
I think the Next Big Thing is going to evolve out of industrial, or electronica. Maybe with some hip-hop influence. For that matter, I’ve been hearing some interesting Arabic/East Indian influences in hip-hop, and I’m looking forward to seeing where that might go.
