Saddos ....

[Ein Heldenleben]

Not much knife crime or misogyny here..... but a great deal of inventive, exciting music making.....

https://hiphopwired.com/playlist/hhws-top-30-greatest-female-rap-artists-of-all-time-ranked/

Excellent essay too....

Just try staying in your chair when the bass kicks in on this one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeIJmciN8mo

Thanks .How long will it be before the HIPP movement gets its teeth into Rap? With particular focus on authentic mikes and amps perhaps..

Would it then be HIPP-Hop?
Sorry been a long week ….

[jayne lee wilson]

Thanks .How long will it be before the HIPP movement gets its teeth into Rap? With particular focus on authentic mikes and amps perhaps..

Would it then be HIPP-Hop?
Sorry been a long week ….

Just put Starships on, wind up the volume and dance around the speakers....

[cloughie]

A reference to your comment regarding the pop music of recent decades. It also seems to apply to your approach to other music, where the COWDUNG* of 20th-century performance practice appears to be your historical bag.

* "Conventional Wisdom of Dominant Group", cf Hal Waddington's "Tools for Thought".

Nah - got a very broad taste really but some things just annoy me and waste my listening time. We all have our likes and dislikes and I just highlighted some of them. I guess there is music you prefer to avoid too Bryn, historically informed or otherwise!

Perhaps I’m just a prime candidate for Forum Saddo 2021 - he said as he lowered the stylus on to a Klemperer Bach Suite!

(Actually I’ve only got them on CD!

[jayne lee wilson]

Nah - got a very broad taste really but some things just annoy me and waste my listening time. We all have our likes and dislikes and I just highlighted some of them. I guess there is music you prefer to avoid too Bryn, historically informed or otherwise!

Perhaps I’m just a prime candidate for Forum Saddo 2021 - he said as he lowered the stylus on to a Klemperer Bach Suite!

(Actually I’ve only got them on CD!

Starships were meant to fly, Cloughie! And you should fly too.....!

[Ein Heldenleben]

Just put Starships on, wind up the volume and dance around the speakers....

In fact I went for Please Please Me (2009 remastered album) followed by Nelson Freire : Villa-Lobos

[RichardB]

This may not be a sentiment shared by many here, but my feeling is that if there's a whole musical style admired greatly by young people whose opinions and intelligence I respect, then there must be something I can find in it which might serve to expand my own musical horizons. Of course not all hiphop makes reference to misogyny or violence (no more than does opera probably, or for that matter "classic" pop music). What I often find interesting is an inventiveness with sound materials and their combination which goes some way beyond the sonic imagination of most contemporary composers for the orchestra.

Having said that, I was glancing the other day at the Guardian's end-of-year list of the "fifty best albums" of 2021, and I was a bit shocked to find that I'd only heard of a handful of the artists. So I'm gradually working my way through them now. The stylistic range is enormous (and no Adele or Sheeran in sight) but in most cases the music comes across more as embodying original ways of combining more or less familiar features than being original in and of itself. I guess this is partly a symptom of the way everything is available all the time nowadays so that the flow of influence and inspiration is wide but shallow. Contemporary composition seems to be in a similar situation, to judge by most of what I hear these days.

[Ein Heldenleben]

This may not be a sentiment shared by many here, but my feeling is that if there's a whole musical style admired greatly by young people whose opinions and intelligence I respect, then there must be something I can find in it which might serve to expand my own musical horizons. Of course not all hiphop makes reference to misogyny or violence (no more than does opera probably, or for that matter "classic" pop music). What I often find interesting is an inventiveness with sound materials and their combination which goes some way beyond the sonic imagination of most contemporary composers for the orchestra.

Having said that, I was glancing the other day at the Guardian's end-of-year list of the "fifty best albums" of 2021, and I was a bit shocked to find that I'd only heard of a handful of the artists. So I'm gradually working my way through them now. The stylistic range is enormous (and no Adele or Sheeran in sight) but in most cases the music comes across more as embodying original ways of combining more or less familiar features than being original in and of itself. I guess this is partly a symptom of the way everything is available all the time nowadays so that the flow of influence and inspiration is wide but shallow. Contemporary composition seems to be in a similar situation, to judge by most of what I hear these days.

I think we are in a thin period for popular music at the moment. It happens in all genres opera , the novel , then something new breaks through.
For what it’s worth I think there’s an over reliance on sampling and , for want of a better phrase , basso ostinato..
I also think Sheeran and Adele’s harmonic palette is approaching BBC Carol Competition levels of triteness

[cloughie]

Starships were meant to fly, Cloughie! And you should fly too.....!

Maybe … if I knew what you were talking about! I’ll settle for Heldenlben’s choice - I’ve not heard it for a while!

[jayne lee wilson]

Maybe … if I knew what you were talking about! I’ll settle for Heldenlben’s choice - I’ve not heard it for a while!

See #30....

[cloughie]

This may not be a sentiment shared by many here, but my feeling is that if there's a whole musical style admired greatly by young people whose opinions and intelligence I respect, then there must be something I can find in it which might serve to expand my own musical horizons. Of course not all hiphop makes reference to misogyny or violence (no more than does opera probably, or for that matter "classic" pop music). What I often find interesting is an inventiveness with sound materials and their combination which goes some way beyond the sonic imagination of most contemporary composers for the orchestra.

Having said that, I was glancing the other day at the Guardian's end-of-year list of the "fifty best albums" of 2021, and I was a bit shocked to find that I'd only heard of a handful of the artists. So I'm gradually working my way through them now. The stylistic range is enormous (and no Adele or Sheeran in sight) but in most cases the music comes across more as embodying original ways of combining more or less familiar features than being original in and of itself. I guess this is partly a symptom of the way everything is available all the time nowadays so that the flow of influence and inspiration is wide but shallow. Contemporary composition seems to be in a similar situation, to judge by most of what I hear these days.

Is there maybe a finite limit on ‘originality’?

[RichardB]

I think we are in a thin period for popular music at the moment. It happens in all genres opera, the novel, then something new breaks through.

I'm not sure. For one thing, "genres" aren't eternal things that come and go - opera, for example, didn't exist before the 17th century, and nothing really new has been done in "compositions conceived for the opera house" for half a century or so. A "thin period" might just mean that the genre is no longer relevant to the present state of cultural evolution, except in so far as it perpetuates some supposedly important institution that emerged in a previous period, like the aforementioned opera house. If we see a lack of vitality in popular music we might just be looking for it in the wrong place! Not that I'm claiming to be an expert, you understand.

[RichardB]

Is there maybe a finite limit on ‘originality’?

If there were, is there any reason to suppose it's been reached?

[cloughie]

If there were, is there any reason to suppose it's been reached?

No idea - An interesting question though!

[cloughie]

See #30....

Not in your recordings of the year then?

You like that Jayne? - it’s dreadful!

[RichardB]

No idea - An interesting question though!

What do you think the answer might be?