Re: demand for "authentic" ethnic

[Velaires <Velaires...>]

It's not the enthusiasm for an earlier form that I have a problem with, but 
rather the attitude that comes with it that "authenticity" automatically means 
"reflecting an earlier stage of development within the course of the style".  
And with that comes a provincialism about rustic authenticity usually espoused 
by the academe.

I am an enthusiastic advocate of know and embracing any style of music and of 
respecting and drawing on/from history.  In fact, I don't have much respect for 
art that doesn't have its roots well-fed and intact.  

What I find objectionable is the academic need to do unnatural things to the 
organic growth of style and form.  As much distaste as I hold for this "the 
more rustic the tone production, the more authentic and therefore better the 
music", I hold the same  distaste for the side of the academe that enforces 
modern techniques in music that have more to do with math than to do with 
making music that moves people.  Both smell elitist to me.

I believe in my heart of hearts that if you care about music, you care about 
all of music with equality and not impunity.  You care that its made sincerely 
and well, not whether it's made of an Albert or a Boehm clarinet, nor whether 
it can claim "serial integrity" or not not, etc.  "Authentic", to me, is a 
smokescreen when it becomes an end.  Each artistic voice has its own 
authenticity, if the artist speaks truly through it.  Is N.W.A. less authentic 
somehow than Robert Johnson? I doubt it.  But if some guys from Compton in the 
late 80s try to recreate an era they weren't part of, then it's a bit less 
true.  I'm Jewish, and of Austrian ancestry, but for me to try to recreate the 
concerns of my ancestry and claim authenticity in doing so would be absurd.  I 
can echo some things in the course of my statement -- that's my releationship 
to my family -- but to try be THAT thing from back then would be presenting 
someone else's truth as my lifestyle.

Similarly, when somebody holds up the old stuff and says "this is the truest 
stuff" and ends the sentence there (or expounds further upon that in some sort 
of thesis) makes for an interesting academic thesis, but has nothing to do with 
the real lives that occur in a different time.  Music continues to live and 
express.  If the music -- as a product of its world -- is falling short, of 
what he hope for in music, maybe we should look at the world that that music is 
formed by, and try to do something better about the world that can hopefully 
make our cultural expression shine more.

sh


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