Devolution

We are well into Advent and the great feast of Christmas will soon be here so the question of presents looms large, especially what presents are appropriate for whom. For several people on my list, I will give, in one form or another, the gift of music. Pondering the possibilities inevitably led me into my favorite pastime, abstracting things beyond all recognizability; in this case, considering the state of contemporary popular music and what it says about us.

I was reminded of a scene from "10" where the Dudley Moore character has followed the Bo Derek character and her new husband to a posh Mexican resort where they will be spending their honeymoon. On his first night there, the Dudley Moore character goes to a lovely poolside bar where the bartender is played by Brian Dennehy. There is a very nice arrangement of "Laura" in the background, played on a piano.

The two men engage in the following conversation:

Moore: "They don't make music like that anymore. At least, not much anymore, anyway."

Dennehy: "Is that good or bad?"

M:  "What do you think?"

D:  "Actually, I'm opposed to bartenders making value judgments while on duty."

M: "How old are you?"

D:  "37, but I look 40."

M:  "No, you look 33."

D: "That's because I'm really 25."

M:  "Well, each of us is the product of an era. That music is my era. Beautiful melody, great lyric.

"If you were 19 and 20 years from now you were dancing with your wife or girlfriend you knew in high school and you said to her, 'Darling, they're playing our song,' do you know what they would be playing?

D:  "Uh-uh."

M:  "'Why Don't We Do It in the Road'. What kind of f...ing era is that?!"

D:  "To each his own."

M:  "Now that's a good song."

(You can see the whole scene here.)

I was going to update the gag by referring to some particularly hideous example of contemporary popular music from 2012 but the research process was overwhelming. There is so much that is so awful --- aesthetically and morally --- that I had to withdraw, so you fill in the blank.

Recently I read a wonderful review in The Atlantic by Benjamin Schwarz of a new book by Ted Gioia, Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire. Gioia's book sounds terrific, offering "a guide to more than 250 key jazz compositions --- the 'building blocks of the jazz art form'," and I plan to give it this year to my jazz-playing barber.

But Schwarz's thesis, and this is the title of the review, is that we have come to "The End of Jazz" because the Great American Songbook is gone. John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet is quoted as saying,

          Jazz developed while the great popular music was being turned out. It was a
          golden age for songs. They had a classic quality in length and shape and form
          and flexibility of harmony. The jazz musicians were drawn to this music as a
         source of material.

Schwarz's conclusion is that

          The Songbook, a product of a fleeting set of cultural circumstances when popular,
          sophisticated music was aimed at musically knowledgeable adults, was the
          crucial wellspring of jazz....and there is no reason to believe that jazz can be
          a living, evolving art form decades after its major source --- and the source
          that linked it to the main currents of popular culture and sentiment --- has
          dried up.

There is a long story --- not a joke but a story with a moral --- the conclusion of which is that the ultimate wisdom is "This, too, shall pass." Undoubtedly true. But when thinking about the current state of things musical, it's very difficult not to see a pretty steep downward curve from 19th Century lieder and Stephen Foster, to the greats of the Songbook --- Berlin, Kern, Porter, the Gershwins, et al, to the breakthroughs in rock'n'roll in the '50's, to whatever it is we have now.

The music business, like real estate, is one of the great examples of capitalism: people will pay for what they want. No one is forcing contemporary music down our throats; we are being given what we ask for and will pay for.

Christmas remains a profoundly important time, despite the tidal-wave of time and energy devoted to commercializing it, and one of the most important elements of it is a kind of defiant act of faith in ourselves and our future. Just days after the shortest day of the year, deep in "the bleak midwinter," we celebrate life and the hope that is symbolized by the Incarnation.

So I will not give in to despair about our music but will keep the faith, in whatever ways I can, but especially by listening to music with "a classic quality in length and shape and form and flexibility of harmony." A gift indeed.

Bonus: An audience participation question. If you wanted to update the conversation from "10," and assuming that "Laura" would still stand as representative of the Songbook, what contemporary song would you use to replace "Why Don't We Do It In The Road"?