Comparing prog from different countries

could just say Zheul could just be, for argument's sake,  a superfluous title for French prog, so all Zheul bands are

French prog bands.   Per capita, what countries have the most prog bands? Isn't France as

large as Germany and Britain? My favorite German bands are Neu, Novalis, Hoederlin, and 

Cluster, much of the other German stuff for me is a little too "wild."  But France had the YeYe

For instance, if you're exploring the Italian scene it's worth being aware that Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator were - huge, huge, huuuuuuuge there. They had massive riots break out at VdGG concerts, for instance, and Genesis were a big deal in Italy well before they achieved comparable popularity in the UK. It's unquestionable that there was a fertile scene bubbling away there even before the Charisma tours of the early 1970s (must be about 1970-1971 because the insanity of the Italian tour contributed to VdGG's first breakup), but the English acts the Italians embraced - and Genesis/VdGG in particular - catalysed the Italian scene enormously, and I'm convinced it was one of the key factors in inspiring the massive boom in Italian prog acts putting out albums in 1972-1973.

Meanwhile, Bo Hansson was doing his Lord of the Rings album and would eventually get it published in the UK via Charisma, and a bit later ELP helped to put out English versions of Banco and PFM albums for the UK and US market. It's all interconnected...

 

I love that band too!

Smallcreep's day isn't about an elf, too.

As I read this, I thought about the military and pictured soldiers marching to a strict beat. I never really thought about that before with respects to music and the upper and lower class. Uniforms helped too..:) You know, I suppose there was a time in our not too distant past when the only music with drums and a strict beat was marching music (fife and drums, etc)   And from there, we evolved and drums became standard in dance music as well. 

And so I googled this up. From the 16th to 19th century, military units usually had a drum corp which were used to aid troop movements in the field. it was also called "field music". And from there, marching bands, marching music etc evolved. And so to the aristocratic class, you can easily see how drums came to have an important role in their scheme of things - it was used to keep others in line.

And then throw in the fact that drums and drumming has a long history of practice in less developed countries - Africa, Asia, South America. So to the upper class, drumming probably at some point (19th century maybe during the global expansion) came to be associated with tribal cultures, uneducated masses to be controlled etc. And the first use of drums in western culture for dancing - (Strauss wrote waltzes but didn't score them for base drum..:)) - I don't know. Anyone? Was that a black influence in America or were they doing it before then? I kind of wish I had a time machine and I could go back to about 1910 or so, when Professer Hill in the Music Man was railing against ragtime..

Also, consider the evolution of the drug culture in western society which probably sort of paralleled the rise of dancing to the beat, jazz, etc. and then rock.

OK, well, I guess I'm going to relate this to what I feel about Zeuhl music in France where I mentioned that it seemed sort of subversive and jazzy - something that might not to be too popular with the more conservative upper class French. But now do you think that a lot of prog is essentially poorer folks wanting to impress the upper crust with their musical abilities? Them wanting to show that they are more than just slaves to a drum beat? I see proggers as genuinely having a preference for more complex, more "classical" or traditional sounding contemporary music. In my case, I grew up classically trained in piano. We didn't listen to jazz or blues in my house. I listened to a mix of classical music and broadway music as a kid. I liked Faure, Debussy, Romanian composers. The first "popular" song I ever heard that I really liked was ironically called "Classical Gas" which came out in 1968. Remember that one? :)The very name "Classical Gas" suggested a melding of contemporary and traditional values right there, very proggy in spirit, no? :) But its interesting because I also recall strains in the sixties with my parents, specifically over music, and how I wanted my folks to like "Yes" - I thought that it was "classical" enough that they might like it. In other words, prog was a way for me to bridge a gap, to compromise I guess, and I didn't want the old folks to lump me with those "disrespectful punks" who listened to rock music. I did genuinely like Yes and not the Stones, and so it wasn't faking it on my part. But they were wondering if they had brought me up right, while I was saying - "but I like Yes, Mom!" Doesn't that show you I'm OK?

Ah "yes", the memories........the electric piano I bought one year that I almost had to hide from my Dad......

Well, I didn't mean to take this off topic, but getting back to prog by country - the countries in Europe with particularly strong classical music traditions like Austria and France - now I can see these going one of two routes in the 70's. Back then, everything (musically speaking) was eroding in the eyes of the establishment. But there were still lots of kids growing up in both those countries that were classically trained, but just not very inclined to continue in that tradition. Perfect for prog then, you say? Jan Hammer and Jean luc Ponty are two musicians that come to mind. And they weren't going to just sit back and join a typical rock band either - their ears wanted more. But they could have just stayed in their respective countries and lead an effort to forge a prog style steeped in their own country's traditions. They didn't, though - they gravitated west and into jazz, not into "austrian" symphonic prog or "French" symphonic prog. If I had been in their shoes, I might have been tempted to do it differently, but it was maybe a case of if you can't beat them, join them. Probably they did not see any future in an indigenous prog (with non english lyrics), and saw much bigger bucks and more receptive audiences elsewhere. I know I was plucking my money down to hear them anyway, not some obscure prog band from an eastern european country with no label or distribution or marketing outside of their borders. But even without the infrastructure, its not entirely clear to me why eventually, a prog to rival UK prog (I'm talking symphonic prog here) never really developed in these countries. The skills are there. I know that musical genius resides in Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, Paris, etc. And the taste for classical music is there also. So one might have thought that prog would had been the perfect compromise for a country with a strong classical tradition. From what has been written previousy in this thread, I know that UK prog was popular on the continent. Was that enough to satisfy those kids there? Did few feel a need then to take on the challenge of writing an equally exciting prog based on the culture and traditions of their respective countries? Or are my ears biased and they DID try, but I just didn't like it as much (I do tend to favor dissonance, modes, 11th and 13th chords, etc vs simple major/minor. Thats whats "exciting" to me, plus good compositional skills)? Just to give you an example of what I mean from my limited time here - I really like After Crying's "Welcome on Board". Thats what I'm talking about - its to me an exciting, non UK, perhaps uniquely Hungarian version of prog. But to sort of sum this up (man, I've written a book here..), classical music evolved and reached its highest development on the continent, not the UK. But for prog, the reverse is true. And so I guess it was never really intuitively obvious to me that it should have happened that way. That means that if its Russian, its Shostakovich or Prokofiev that does it for me, not a prog band from there,  but if on the other hand its from the UK, I'll take Genesis or Yes, not something classical written earlier (Vaughn-Williams is a good one though)..

It is true though, music knows no borders, and radio penetrates hearts and minds in a way that no human can. I try to imagine what it might have been like growing up in Eastern Europe 50 years ago. The media is from where you get all of your information about the outside world, and it can cause young minds to dream.  And In the 60's  and 70's rock music was a new media - it used cutting edge technologies, recording techniques, and required companies willing to invest in those technologies and techniques. That technology and infrastructure was best developed in the west (UK, US, etc)  where in addition there were already large audiences receptive to jazz and blues and hence big bucks to be made. Probably that made the difference, and maybe why Jean luc Ponty and Jan Hammer, etc chose the path that they did...

From soggy Oregon, USA....far, far from european soil, but searching for enlightenment from my fellow proggers...:)

aldri7