I'm currently reading Since Yesterday, Frederick Lewis Allen's chronicle of the 1930s. Towards the end, there's a fascinating passage about that crazy noise the kids these days are listening to:
Among many of the jitterbugs--particularly among many of the boys and girls--the appreciation of the new music was largely vertebral. A good swing band smashing away at full speed, with the trumpeters and clarinetists rising in turn under the spotlight to embroider the theme with their several furious improvisations and the drummers going into long-drawnout rhythmical frenzies, could reduce its less inhibited auditors to sheer emotional vibration, punctuated by howls of rapture. Yet to dismiss the swing craze as a pure orgy of sensation would be to miss more than half of its significance. For what the good bands produced--though it might sound to the unpracticed ear like a mere blare of discordant noise--was an extremely complex and subtle pattern, a full appreciation of which demanded far more musical sophistication than the simpler popular airs of a preceding period. The true swing enthusiasts, who collected records to teh limit of their means and not only like Artie Shaw's rendering of "Begin the Beguine" but knew precisely why they liked it, were receiving no mean musical education; and if Benny Goodman could turn readily from the playing of "Don't Be That Way" to the playing of Mozart, so could many of his hearers turn to the hearing of Mozart.
It seems literally impossible for us to hear swing the way Frederick Lewis Allen did--for our brains to render Begin the Beguine, or Don't Be That Way, or even Sing, Sing, Sing as a "mere blare of discordant noise". They sound smooth, sweet, nostalgic because we're trained from birth to understand those sounds, not only through the music, but through all the associations our culture has built up around those sounds. I've been downloading some of the popular music from 1912, the year Allen graduated college, in an attempt to get myself in that frame of mind, but after several listens through hits like Back to the Land of Golden Dreams I'm afraid it's impossible. Especially the noisy kids downstairs won't turn down that crazy hip-hoppety stuff they listen to.
Yeah Begin the Beguine is an orgy of sensation.
That was the discordant noise of the 20's?
"I've been downloading some of the popular music from 1912, the year Allen graduated college, in an attempt to get myself in that frame of mind,"
Good luck. I think you might as well try to forget a punchline from a good joke or regain your virginity.
I was just thinking how narrow the range of stimulation is that we enjoy - that for which we are prepared, but not yet jaded - but there is one thing that extends that significantly. We have a great capacity for sharing the enjoyment of others.
Think of the exotic foods you've tried the first time. If you made something like that at home by accident, you'd spit it out and gag. With a friend suggesting it to you, you are ready to accept it. For them, it is once again a new thing.
I guess that doesn't really help you though, unless you find someone about 115 years old to listen to that music with. You might look for a novel set in the time with a lot of references to the pop music of the era. That might help you to link the music to worldview, get into character so to speak, to accept it more fully. That kind of book is probably easy to find for the swing era, but not the 1910s.
It just occurred to me... watch "Oh Brother Where Art Thou". While it isn't a perfect slice of time, and is set 20 years later than you want, it immerses you in pre-swing/jazz music.
It has caused a transformation in me and others who have never liked bluegrass, gospel or other "old timey" music.
Mark Steyn commented on this recently. He printed Newsweek's reaction to the Beatles: "Musically they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah!”) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments."
That seems very harsh to us today because we can't imagine hearing the Beatles music for the first time. Remember, this is Newsweek talking, not some high-brow mag. But the Beatles, and other such music is the background noise of our culture. We can't hear without it, and we can't think of it not being there.
That's a great book, but has the title: "Only Yesterday", really changed since I read it ?
And, as per http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/ALLEN/cover.html
it really was about the 1920's, no?
And then there's that indie music that's inexplicably so popular these days. In contrast to swing, no "smashing away at full speed," no "furious improvisations," no "rhythmical frenzies," no "howls of rapture," but instead slogs through the mud that induce chin stroking and yawns.
Eddy,
Your comment, "We can't hear without it, and we can't think of it not being there." to me really strikes at the heart of a lot of intellectual property issues. While I want content creators to benefit from their work, I'm also torn that once that content becomes our culture, it becomes, to some extent, the very lens through which we view everything else. With that in mind I struggle with giving them complete ownership over that content in the long term simply because they created it. They may have created it, but society accepted it, adopted it, and transformed because of it.
Of course, it's much easier to make arguments as to why they own it and should benefit from it...
Sorry, didn't mean to change the subject to music copyright law...
Since we're on the subject of music history ...
I've recently been working on a project that involves listening to scores of old Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey recordings from the teens and twenties. What's striking is the sexuality that is so evident in them, yet so gracefully pulled off using innuendo. In fact, what makes the sexuality so sexy is the innuendo. And of course, part of this was necessity, I know, and I am not a blow-hard about to decry the degeneration of media since the so-called "Good-Old-Days". But how can you not miss the eyebrow raised salaciousness of a line like, "I need a little sugar in my bowl, I need a hot dog in my roll ...".
Snap, RENT-A-CLU came back with a better answer:
http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/History/American-History/Since-Yesterday/6219
Two different books..
Megan,
Try turning the volume up on the swing pieces beyond what you're used to listening to them at. I suspect that we've gotten used to these pieces being played at a lower volume that contemporary audiences would have experienced them live, and that kind of dulls the impact.
Mark Hoffer,
Frederick Lewis Allen wrote "Only Yesterday", about the Twenties, and another book, "Since Yesterday", about the Thirties.
Matthew,
Thank you, that was me, MEH, above, correcting my earlier misimpression..
The popular music of 1912 was unbelievably simplistic and gooey compared to "Begin the Beguine", but in Megan's citation that's not what Allen would compare swing to; he compares it to Mozart. Allen probably never liked popular music in college, and in 1912, if you didn't like popular music, you basically never had to hear it: there was no radio. So he doesn't know how to compare like to like. (In "The Benny Goodman Story", there's a similar scene where Benny proves his bona fides at a high society party by playing Mozart. Why is it always Mozart? And why does anyone imagine American high-society swells are more likely to understand any music, classical or otherwise?)
This seems interestingly similar to the Newsweek reaction to the Beatles noted by Eddy above. They seem to be comparing the Beatles to Sinatra. Obviously the right comparison for the Beatles isn't to Sinatra; it's to Elvis. But the reviewer clearly disdains and is unfamiliar with the entire genre of rock'n'roll, and can't hear that, for that genre at the time, the Beatles' chords, song structures and harmonies were very complex and innovative.
Humility is in order, though. I can still remember hearing the Sugarhill Gang for the first time in 7th grade and thinking, "This isn't music."
I think it's wonderful you're even trying to get into the mindset to hear something new. Bully for you on this project. I think it's great, and this is one of your better music posts. I even enjoy the idea that the past is another country, given that I do so enjoy not being able to understand (even in England) what the hell everyone else is talking about.
We just bought a new car, and we've been digging on the 1940s channel on the free XM radio. It's so nice to listen to stuff that's only vaguely familiar and that isn't laden with cultural baggage. It's really relaxing.
With one exception... With all due respect to Peter, I don't find the euphemisms and the juvenile sexual references to be anything more than juvenile. I find it creepy as hell adults can't speak frankly about sexuality. Otherwise, I enjoy the stuff that's been copied/referenced/rebelled against a couple generations ago.
I remember when I first started listening to stuff like Non, Throbbing Gristle, Hafler Trio, et al. It was refreshing to think about music differently. Hell, I remember when I was 12 or so and bought the JFA live record. I had no idea what to do about it when I heard it. My parents hated it. But it was different enough to be interesting.
And there are worse things to be than interesting.
Brooksfoe,
Maybe Elvis would have been a better comparison, but Newsweek's rant doesn't make sense even taking Sinatra for a given--the Beatles less melodic or with less harmony than Sinatra? GMAB.
Allen was pretty moderate compared to Professor Harry D. Gideonse, of Columbia University; "Swing is musical Hitlerism, There is a mass sense of 'letting one's self go'".
I second MattXIV's comment. I've played a lot of the old swing reportiore, as well as later work (Toshiko Akiyoshi, Clare Fischer). A big band in full swing, live, is a dramatic sonic experience.
It's hard to think of Begin the Beguine as anything but tame, but seeing Cab Calloway or Basie's orchestra live must have been something. The movie The Cotton Club gave some sense of that.
The good news is that there are a handful of big bands that tour, and you can experience it, although not in a small dance club.
I think Matt is on to something. My experience with swing music was that a rather staid middle-aged man played it at a reasonable volume while sitting and doing crossword puzzles. That middle aged man, my father, had quite a different experience. He listened to it live, at big dance halls while drinking, dancing, chasing women and waiting to turn 18 so he could go fight in the war. You don't just hear with your ears; you hear with your state of mind.
I'd like to put in a brief, shameless plug for Megan, since she's been downloading popular music from 1912... I've got a lovely CD compilation of the greatest hits from that year:
http://www.archeophone.com/product_info.php?products_id=30
(Disclaimer: the folks at Archeophone Records are very good friends of mine, but you should definitely check out their catalogue if you're interested in early recorded music. They won a Grammy this year for one of their compilations.)
I'm with Graeme - if you want an experience unfamiliar music that sounds utterly discordant until you acquire enough experience to "get it", there's plenty of that around, and that's the closest you can get to Allen's experience with swing in the 30s.
The most radical free jazz, noise music, black metal; all of them have a first impression to the un-exposed of being utter trash. All of them likewise (at least in their better forms - individual instances may, of course, actually be trash) reveal their own consistency and their own rewards to the listener who braves them.
(To take Graeme's example again, I find NON, at its best, quite soothing and relaxing (for instance, "Embers", at about 15 minutes long) - but to a random new listener, the same music would more likely feel like an assault on the ears and audible torture.)
I can remember the emergence of the Beatles. Even my father took a shine to them, on the grounds that decent popular music had apparently died for him with the end of the Swing bands. So after the years of dreary crooners and feeble rock-and-roll, here was a resurrection. Didn't last long, really, did it?
Here's some ancient Dreck on the subject, from the archives (a selection):
It's clearly time to get out my Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, James Blood Ulmer and Zs.
I do get to like this stuff, but some of it's still crap. I'm a big Miles Davis fan, but I haven't put on Bitches Brew or Jack Johnson or On The Corner in a long time. None of it has grown on me in 30+ years.
Somehow I think Begin the Beguine grew on people (or just became insipid) faster...
I don't disagree with Dreck when he mentions the obvious issue with atonality or noise. It's not always about being challenged - sometimes it's just nice to jump around the room to The New Pornographers at the end of the day. Whitehouse isn't something I would ever want to hear on a daily basis.
Music is so ubiquitous that it's very easy to forget it's art. That's one of the reasons I love Racially Yours by The Frogs. It's nice to listen to something that breaks down a complex issue in a challenging way. I listen to it and I think about how I might have attacked issues differently than they did, either through the lyrics or the music. And there are enough moments where I feel uncomfortable that each listen can be a fascinating experience. Too often music is just pre-supposed to be pleasant and nothing more.
That's just not how it has to be, which is why I think this topic is so fascinating...
I would also argue that the early and later industrial stuff has, in its way, permeated the culture. I don't just mean that to say that Brian Lustmord and Graeme Revell have gone on to do music/noise for films. I think there are a lot of elements from those experiments that have influenced culture in the 30 years that people hardly notice, now. I was thinking about that when I gave the new TG a listen. Why bother with new material when the influence of the original is still impacting culture?
Of course, my bride-to-be still calls noise 'haunted house music.' And she can't stand the black metal, either. I agree with Sigivald there: Mayhem can be COMPLETELY hypnotic in a way the uninitiated listener would never expect. I'd be lying if I said I figured that out right away.
It's also interesting to listen to early 1960s girlie music from around the world (and it's so easy to find this stuff in the age of file sharing), as you get a different sensibility. The most obvious example is of stuff like Manuela or Peggy March from Germany. It sounds like the pep rally fare that was coming out in the US, but there's also a real beer hall sensibility to it that's interesting. Or Brazillian or Turkish Psych bands... Or early stuff by The Swans... The Shaggs...
It is very hard to regain your musical virginity. I think this is one of the main motivations for the interest in "world music." Which is in essence music that we are not inundated with.
My own personal story about musical awakeing. I grew up in rural Southern New Jersey. (Such a place existed in the 60's and early 70's.) I was interested in jazz because of the jazz flavored rock and the snatches of jazz I heard on the radio stations coming out of Philly. So I went to the county library and read books about it. I was so psyched to hear Charlie Christian. Ground breaking guitarist! When I was able to find the albums ( and in those days at that place it was a real chore, I was completely let down. It was like the old joke about Shakespeare - cliche every other line. I didn't realize that every studio guitarist in 1972 could play every lick that Christian ever recorded.
There's just no way to get that information out of your head. No way (that I know of) to experience the newness of music you have experienced before. (Enormous commercial potential for a drug that could wipe out memory of specific types of experiences. Imagine walking up to the monuments in Washington with no memory of having seen them in pictures. etc, etc.) Price of the information age I guess.
Megan, thanks for posting that interesting thing by Allen -- I will have to check out Since Yesterday. And you should read Only Yesterday, if you haven't.
I've often tried to imagine how difficult and "wild" Bach would sound if I had only heard, say, Telemann before. Regaining your musical virginity may be as impossible as recovering the other kind, but it's worth some effort.