Saturday, March 17, 2007

Everyone loves a mystery

One short follow-up to the previous post about The Boring Store writing program:

Perhaps instead of emphasizing the niche-ness of new and experimental music, we should emphasize its hiddenness; its mysterious and (quite literally) apocalyptic qualities. This is music that doesn't fit into the conventions of plain-vanilla everyday institutional music-making, and indeed, this is the music that those institutions would rather have quietly go away. There is plenty of music that is readily available in the marketplace and readily accessible in musical character, but does it have the depth to reward returning to it again and again? Will re-investigations of the music reveal anything new or pose new questions about sound, music, or the world around that music? A new and non-commercial music is never going to compete in the mass marketplace with the brilliant veneer of institutional pop or classical music, but it has potential to engage the throughtful and imaginative in ways in which the mass products cannot afford or sustain.

(BTW: Here's a site with a few audio files from the I Love A Mystery radio series).

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