Prog = Literature

Daslaf and Terryl, you are absolutely right. I always knew i had a good musical education, but i guess i didn't realise how many people don't. You do need to know how to read to read books, but you never learn how to listen.

Hey MaxerJ, btw welcome on the forum!

I think your connection betweet the progressive reportoire and litature is great! I don't understand all the problems people find in this statement. Both are recognisable, yet they aren't easy to difine. You really should have gotten more respect for this observation!

^Thanks kingfriso!
I was hoping that this connection would make sense - i think it would be easier and better to view music in this sense than to split it up into *shudder* genres *shudder* Really, even progressive music has become a signifier for a particular type of music. I'm not just talking about the ten minute space-rock mellotron solo, progressive now means music specifically designed to be more 'elite' than other forms of music. Even this website acknowledges this. I don't even want to call it progressive now, can we find a new term? Mr Prog Freak talked about Art Rock but he's right that does have too many connotations by now.

King Crimson776 wrote: I didn't actually know Harry Potter wouldn't be considered literature, whereas LotR would. Well, whatever, how about this for the whole discussion: You can try to explain to someone that Beethoven is better than the Spice Girls, and why this is the case... and if they don't get it, either they're not into music and so they'll just go on the image of the SG (or whatever bad pop group), and claim the band is better based on that... or they're just not too bright and you can leave it... I'm sorry but this is way it is, Beethoven is better than the Spice Girls, but there's no way to prove it... you can just try to play it for someone and explain why it's better... but there's no formula for this.

Exactly. There is no formula for literature - people just seem to know. But we are brought up to believe that we should treat all forms of music as equal... when we should treat it like books.

Glad i can make my case clearly.  

daslaf wrote: I guess I kinda made my point, people who doesn't have a musical training, or at least the will to understand music beyond the "sound of distortion", as someone else said, use to stay just in mainstream music, which for me ain't bad at all...

That's true. It's not anyone's fault to stay safe by just listening to mainstream stuff. Some of the pop stuff can be very very beautiful too. For those who take the plunge into whichever genre, it is usually more rewarding. 

A Harry Potter example here. It's not too bad as a piece of literature. Some people call it junk but it has opened doors to many children, even in my country, to wander into the 'richer' literary world. For my case, glam rock acts like Bon Jovi or Skid Row opened my ears, and eventually i end up here.

Alberto Muñoz wrote: Maxer J i like your thinking, but you have to read a book that is easy to find Terry Eagleton "an Introduction to the literature" and read: Rocking the Classics Edward Macan. Also read T.S. Eliot the Waste land poem And you will make sense of some Genesis music

I thought i already quoted Eagleton... no? Well, i have read his work thoroughly for the Lit Studies course i am currently doing... in fact i have the first chapter sitting in front of me.

But i will try to find the others... This is fun because my three favourite things are music, games and literary theory, I've got this thread and I'm doing an assignment about games as a literary text form. They're all merging together!

There's a link between T.S. Eliot and Genesis! Sign me up for classes! Same for Beret Archives!

And I wasn't trying to bag Harry Potter. It is actually fantastic at getting young kids to read!


Edited by MaxerJ - October 03 2009 at 03:52

A very old question with no good answer.

omri wrote: One last thing, the theory, that you have to learn music to appreciate it like you learn to read and write, sounds very logical but infact me and some others here have no musical background but still love the music here (which we don't understand). There goes a nice theory !

Well at least from my point of view, you don't have to know what a time signature is in order to love prog music, or any other not-mainstream genre... You have to go further than just what you hear and feel music, what the artist is trying to express with his/her music, that's my point =P

... We need to treat music like we treat books. Find a literary theorist. Ask them to define literature. They'll tell you it's undefinable. Find a Twilight lover. Ask them to define literature. Same thing. But I bet you if you ask them if Twilight is literature, most of them - if not all - will say no. Why? ...

Edited by moshkito - October 08 2009 at 14:20

Moshkito - Is this what you have been saying? Awesome! I guess i haven't been lurking for long enough...

It is true that post-structuralism and the breakdown of Platonic values has basically left us out in the cold for expressing how our music is better than others... How can we say something is good if we are controlled by the same cultural powers as the person who says it is bad? We can only collapse into the endless spiral of analogies... so our idea of progressive music can only stand up in a post-structural world if we attend to it with the same focus as literature.

moshkito wrote:   "prog" is all about leaving home...

My new sig


Luke. J -

Luke. J wrote: Ask people whether Spice Girls of Beethoven were more musical. You may also ask whether King Crimson or Coldplay are the technically better players. But complexity and technique don't make music automatically better. Most people listen to music for their enjoyment, and if they enjoy Spice Girls (why are they always THE "example" for pop music around here?) more than Beethoven they'll say they are better. It is not that people don't recognise 'better musicality'. It is just that they don't care.

This is why i'm careful treading on eggshells by using 'musicality' instead of 'complexity' or 'technique'. It's a pretty wishy-washy word, but i only use it in the absence of anything better to explain prog.

As for the public appeal, i don't believe there is a certain type of music that appeals to the masses... this is just too structual. Instead, if you see that everything is controlled by social and cultural constructs, it breaks down what people see as music for 'enjoyment'. I would much rather go listen to Karn Evil 9 than My Poker Face - Karn Evil 9 is much more entertaining and enjoyable for me. Long story short, the broad mass not caring about musicality is not a product of natural music selection - I'd like to think we aren't freaks of nature! Instead, it is a product of cultural constructions, which make people listen to music that is hardly better than nursery rhymes.

We can't throw our hands up in the air and say, 'Well, they're never gonna change now!' The mass appeal is always changing - it's not set in stone. Music is only entertaining if you will it to be.

Luke. J wrote: (face it, proggers, progressive rock's classics aren't modern anymore )

This website is probably starting to be a bit biased... people leaning more towards 70's/80's prog over modern acheivements... Personally i think Pain of Salvation and Porcupine Tree are doing a fantastic job at making prog classics that we will be reminiscing about on a forum in 20 years time...

It's really cool to see some of the comments on this thread. Thanks to everyone for putting the effort in to comment.