Music is dead.

[Godataloss]

I like Zepplin. I have all the records (Beatles and Stones too), but I NEVER play them. There is nothing magical about them other than they were extraordinarily popular which is traditionally a very poor predictor of quality in my experience.

 

[Koeitje]

While the poor-rich dynamic is certainly true the fact is jazz, blues, ragtime, r&b, soul, rock and roll, gospel, rap and so on have African and/or Afro-American origins.

Yep, they blended their African music origins with European instrumentation (and some American inventions such as the electric guitar).

 

[bluefuzz]

the fact is jazz, blues, ragtime, r&b, soul, rock and roll, gospel, rap and so on have African and/or Afro-American origins.

Yes, but my point is that none of those genres were exclusively afro-american even from the very start. There were scottish, irish, french, balkan, scandinavian, german, central european, middle eastern and more as well as african influences on all those genres. No musical culture exists in a vacuum and never has.

 

[Pearljam5000]

I like Zepplin. I have all the records (Beatles and Stones too), but I NEVER play them. There is nothing magical about them other than they were extraordinarily popular which is traditionally a very poor predictor of quality in my experience.

And yet 99% of newer music is forgettable and most people still like and still discover Led Zeppelin music even decades after it was released
That's why it's a timeless classic and 99% of the music isn't

 

[Godataloss]

And yet 99% of newer music is forgettable and most people still like and still discover Led Zeppelin music even decades after it was released
That's why it's a timeless classic and 99% of the music isn't

I named 3 bands from that era. By those numbers 99% of the music then was forgettable too. Rest assured, your grandchildren will be "discovering" Adele in 30 years.

 

[Sal1950]

Yes, but my point is that none of those genres were exclusively afro-american even from the very start. There were scottish, irish, french, balkan, scandinavian, german, central european, middle eastern and more as well as african influences on all those genres. No musical culture exists in a vacuum and never has.

Amen, music has been being made by people all over the world since the beginning of time. White, black, yellow, or green, no race has any exclusive claim to any music.

Hell, the recipe for early country music was:
- Take hit song of black person from the same year that wasn't played on the radio, because racism
- record it with a white person
- profit

Man what plant are you from? You have no idea of US music.
If a DJ had played Pat Boons disgusting cover of Tutti Frutti on Appellation country music radio in the 50s he would have been fired or much worse. That crap was made for MOR (middle of the road) radio hoping the kids would ignore the real rock explosion coming, the bible thumpers thought it the Devils music.
Country music has it totally own roots going back to Europe.
Then some black kids, (Little Richard, Chuck Berry) and white kids (Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis) took Country and The Blues, mixed them up and out came Rock & Roll.

Rich white men are however, probably better at getting away with it ...

Not only white, when all people get in a position of wealth and power many exploit it.
Ever heard of Don (Only In America) King Promotions?

 

[MattHooper]

I named 3 bands from that era. By those numbers 99% of the music then was forgettable too. Rest assured, your grandchildren will be "discovering" Adele in 30 years.

Yep.

Back in the day I never figured my kids would be discovering Duran Duran, or ABBA, or Starland Vocal Band or any of countless bits of pop that have become strangely enduring, but...these are the requests we get in the car rides.

 

[pseudoid]

Let us go back to 50 years ago. It has been said that there was something magical about the year 1971 and music.
November 8, 1971 was when LedZeppelin IV (aka Zoso; w/8 minute "Stairway to Heaven") was released.
But wait... that year; there was so much more:
"Sticky Fingers"?
"L.A. Woman"?
"Aqualung"?
"Tapestry"?
"What's Going On"?
"Fragile"?
"Imagine"?
"At Fillmore East"?
"Madman Across the Water"?
"Pearl"?
"Anticipation"?
"The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys"?
"Shaft"?
"The Concert for Bangladesh"?
Yip: All of these above songs were released in 1971 but I will let you determine which groups these songs were by.

 

[pseudoid]

Then some black kids, (Little Richard, Chuck Berry) and white kids (Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis) took Country and The Blues, mixed them up and out came Rock & Roll.

Are you possibly hinting at the "Million Dollar Quartet" and "Sun Records" sessions (circa Christmas 1956)?

 

[Joe Smith]

Endless wonderful things happening in my musical genres - alternative, jazz, classical, ambient, EDM. Today's pop and current artists, I don't pay much attention to, but thanks to Spotify, I find wonderful new artists from time to time I click with - Phoebe Bridgers, Japanese Breakfast, etc. I think The National is doing amazing stuff in the alt/rock genre, last three albums are so good. It's sure easier to find stuff one likes today than in the 70s - commercial FM radio, hanging around record stores, and listening to what friends were listening to - pretty limiting, in retrospect.

All that being said - yeah, '67 to '79, what a musical time to live through - and about '56 to '69 for jazz. Hard to top.

 

[Sal1950]

Are you possibly hinting at the "Million Dollar Quartet" and "Sun Records" sessions (circa Christmas 1956)?

Sounds about right.

t has been said that there was something magical about the year 1971

Seriously, you missed Pink Floyd - Meddle ??
One Of These Days, I Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces
LOL

 

[Sal1950]

All that being said - yeah, '67 to '79, what a musical time to live through - and about '56 to '69 for jazz. Hard to top.

Don't ignore the Phil Spector Wall Of Sound early 60s
Great music and performers

 

[killdozzer]

Well almost...
I can't help but feel that older music is just is so much better than all the new stuff being released today in all music genres.
There isn't one modern rock band that even comes close to Radiohead, Nirvana, PJ etc..
No artist that comes close to MJ
No new Bob Dylan, no new Jeff Buckley etc...
Well you get my point.
All new music and artists are just mediocre at best, except in some rare cases (Joanna Newsom, Regina spektor)
Does anyone here feels the same way?

I couldn't disagree more (and always thought Niravana is crap )

I'm literally getting lost and overwhelmed with mountains of music that is superb. My waiting lists for albums to give a first listen to starting to depress me as I come to realize I'll die before I hear them all.

Then again, I do take a proactive stance, I have several debut radio streaming stations that keep feeding me with what I like. I hear something good, I get an album, it goes in queue. Every now and than I visit all my music portals, like web sites of music magazines (Pitchfork, Rolling Stone etc.) and I read reviews and take recommendations. I always ask my friends to give me recommendations (like, for example; tell me which is your fave female singer of the last decade, your favorite hard rock or this and that). Whenever I find something good I also check the artists influences... It keeps pouring in! Last week only:
- London Grammar (new album)
- Richard Swift (bc he worked with Jurado)
- Damine Jurado (new album, of course)
- Jason Isbell (new album, the Georgia Blue)
- The War on Drugs (new album)
- Public Service Broadcasting (new album, an hommage to Berlin, well Metropolis, really, exquisite piece of electronic)
- X Ambassadors (a true discovery, really good music)
- My Morning Jacket (new album, the The Devil's In The Details is a damn good song)
- Kacey Musgraves (my kind of feminism)
- Carly Rae Jepsen (yes, I also thought she is just a "Call Me Maybe" bore, but that lady can make some pop)
- James Yorkston (I just discovered, way too cool of a guy)
- Sault (new album)
- Julia Jacklin (one of her songs enchanted me, I had to find her first album)
- Jordana (from 2020, album: Something to Say to You)

I'll stop here only cause I don't want to bother people, but this is a small part.

 

[pseudoid]

@pseudoid throws "Vampire Weekend" at the direction of @Pearljam5000... Drops the MIC... and hi-tails it outta here!

 

[Sombreuil]

And yet 99% of newer music is forgettable and most people still like and still discover Led Zeppelin music even decades after it was released
That's why it's a timeless classic and 99% of the music isn't

Do me a favour and go to Bandcamp.com

 

[JaccoW]

Amen, music has been being made by people all over the world since the beginning of time. White, black, yellow, or green, no race has any exclusive claim to any music.

Sure. But that's not what I was saying. I was saying a lot of popular music that we still know of today has it's origins in African-American musicians. Does music influence eachother? Absolutely. But some, like J-Pop, Chanson or Mongolian throat singing are very distinctively linked to certain areas or groups.

I can claim House music was pioneered by lots of African Americans from Chicago. As far as I know Frankie Knuckles, Steve "Silk" Hurley and Marshall Jefferson were all black. Doesn't mean it didn't spread from there to London, New York and the rest of the world and got made by all kinds of nationalities and skin colours after.

Man what planet are you from? You have no idea of US music.

The same planet as you. But I would suggest looking into the actual history as we know it now instead of what you were taught in school decades ago.

But hey, I'm a white 30-something from Europe. What do I know?

I'm from a country that has only started debating that this blackface character really isn't okay anymore since a few years. And there are still people foaming at the mouth that you don't change traditions! Zwarte Piet - Wikipedia

If a DJ had played Pat Boons disgusting cover of Tutti Frutti on Appellation country music radio in the 50s he would have been fired or much worse. That crap was made for MOR (middle of the road) radio hoping the kids would ignore the real rock explosion coming, the bible thumpers thought it the Devils music.
Country music has it totally own roots going back to Europe.
Then some black kids, (Little Richard, Chuck Berry) and white kids (Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis) took Country and The Blues, mixed them up and out came Rock & Roll.

The 40's/50's is a fairly late cutoff if we are talking about origins.

"The origins of rock and roll are complex. Rock and roll emerged as a defined musical style in the United States in the early to mid-1950s. It derived most directly from the rhythm and blues music of the 1940s, which itself developed from earlier blues, the beat-heavy jump blues, boogie woogie, up-tempo jazz and swing music. It was also influenced by gospel, country and western, and traditional folk music.[1] Rock and roll in turn provided the main basis for the music that, since the mid-1960s, has been generally known simply as rock music." - Wikipedia: Origins of Rock & Roll

Go and click on any of those precursor links and you will see mostly African-American influences from Southern US. Did other nationalities play a part? Sure, but mostly later.

"The history of Country & Western. That history includes the banjo, a country music staple that likely evolved from a three-stringed West African instrument known as the akonting. Prohibited from playing the drums, which they could use to send messages to each other, enslaved Africans in the US perfected their banjo skills and also thrived as fiddle and harmonica players. In the 1920s, these black musicians played blues songs for African American audiences and folk songs for white listeners. Their tweaks to the blues ultimately gave rise to bluegrass and western swing, which became country-and-western.

Racial segregation in the music business has muted this history. The tunes black people recorded were classified as “race music” and separated from country-and-western.

“It’s really a result of the way the recording industry in the early 20th century developed this idea of musical genres,” Hughes said. “The categories would be defined by race or ethnicity. They [record executives] wanted to be able to sell records to a particular market, so the string band traditions were moved to the category of hillbilly music, which later became country, and sold to white audiences. The gospel and the blues were sold to black audiences.”

Although these genre divides were arbitrary, they changed the once flexible nature of Southern music, according to Grammy-winning musician Flemons. Artists began to record music in ways that easily lent themselves to classification, and after World War II, “race” music and “hillbilly” became “rhythm and blues” and “country and western,” respectively.

“This is the main reason most people would never associate black music and country music as having the same root,” Flemons explained. “This does not mean that black audiences do not know or like country music.”
" - Lil Nas X isn’t an anomaly — black people have always been a part of country music

Now one influence of a certain style of Country is certainly American folk music. That does have it's origins in a lot of European Celtic, British, French, Spanish and African-American music.

 

[Joe Smith]

Don't ignore the Phil Spector Wall Of Sound early 60s
Great music and performers

True 'dat.

 

[Sal1950]

But hey, I'm a white 30-something from Europe. What do I know?

Yes sir, and that's the main problem.
I lived that history right here in the US, knew some of the people involved, and personally experienced much of the musical changes.
In todays BS political climate many seem hell bent on rewriting history with a PC story.
Problem is they can't rewrite our memories.

 

[Robin L]

If you really want to know where Rock & Roll came from, if you want to know the true originators of the genre, read "Unsung Heroes of Rock & Roll" by Nick Tosches:

Unsung heroes of rock 'n' roll: Tosches, Nick: 9780684181493: Amazon.com: Books

Unsung heroes of rock 'n' roll [Tosches, Nick] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Unsung heroes of rock 'n' roll

www.amazon.com

 

[pseudoid]

Should I feel guilt that I prefer to hear "my musicians" not go there?
Like, for example, Melissa Etheridge musical talents hit the right notes in my cranial (for whatever reason) but when she came out of the closet and became an activist, her music soured with me. Same with many other of "my musicians" who went political, woke, etc.
Lucky for me, I never try to decipher the words/meanings in music, maybe it is a defensive mechanism.