"Prog music/wider non-mainstream music" in history

inpraiseoffolly wrote: Good music has never ceased coming out, and the vast majority of it across time has been in now way related to prog.  That said, prog can be heard in so many modern acts, even those who are not prog.  It will never truly die, whether or not Genesis and Yes are forgotten.

Many things come out. Some things are best flushed away ...

el böthy wrote: If what you ask if children in the 23th century will ever read about a certain "Fred Firth", then I must say I doubt so.

Ask whether the children now will ever read about a certain Fred Frith, and it seems pretty unlikely for most of them

If I may quote Bob Lefsetz, music journalist, on the reality of "making it".
"Musicians hate hearing the word "good".  They like to believe their sound is unique, the more different it is, the higher value one must ascribe to it.  But most of these musicians purveying these incomprehensible sounds want a larger audience and are frustrated.  Bottom line, the audience determines what will sell.  Its criteria for good might be different from yours.  But there are criteria nonetheless.  The mass audience tends to like tunefulness.  Sometimes a beat, sometimes a melody.  New and different score points, but you have to be able to get it on the first or second listen.  If it takes fifteen tries, the mass audience isn't interested.

Does this mean everything of quality will gain a mass audience?  Does this mean marketing never plays a part?  No.  But the emphasis is now on the underlying product, and it hasn't been for eons.  You've got to start with quality."

He goes on to state that the old guard in the music industry does not like this. They no longer can use their control of the distribution channels (Radio, TV, Print Media etc) to sell their products. And furthermore, the new guard (his words) doesn't like any more than the old guard. Why ? Because they think they should enjoy the massive success ($$$$$) that used to be seen not too long ago. And they're going crazy trying to figure out how. Which is why they don't like to be told it's about quality. Because most music is NOT that good or great. And if this includes your favourite group, or your own band not being able to attract attention,
who wants top admit, the "fans" ( or lack of them) are probably right.
Of course, whining about all the "ifs" and "buts" and supposed "obstacles" are really the reason why no one, or few care to listen to your creation, well ... that's fun ... not that it changes anything. But it feels good, eh.

I await the usual 'this act's music is too complex/intelligent/esoteric/speical , i.e. whatever" saying that the general public has no idea what it SHOULD like.

There is little fear of progressive music becoming lost in the ocean of pop music, magazines, Grammy's, "Hall of Fames" because of the tremendous power the internet gives the fan. Blogs, fan sites (PA), google, LastFM., Myspace, the future looks very good not just for progressive music, but music in general. The ability of bands to forgo a label almost entirely and release their music digitally opens up completely new doors of possibility. 

for progressive music at least, people between the ages of 17-26 are definitely more accepting of progressive music now than any other time since the 70's. if you tried to get kids that age into that music back in the early 90's they'd laugh and call it stupid.

so if anything, the FUTURE looks real good for progressive music these days. that's why i feel this upcoming decade is going to be very interesting for music.

popeyethecat wrote: Things like prog may be remembered like some classical music of old is, like the music written specifically for guitar in the late 1800s, which differed from the most famous music of that time simply because it was written for an instrument that wasn't in the orchestra or particularly popular (as opposed to the lute music of the 1500s).

Good enough for me!

If what you ask if children in the 23th century will ever read about a certain "Fred Firth", then I must say I doubt so.

Prog will probably not be remembered, at least not in the way we would think, but it will be documented and always appreciated by those who know

nightlamp wrote: Opera was insanely popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, but of the hundreds (thousands?) of composers cashing in on the trend, how many still have works performed or studied?  What percentage of those composers still even have works in print or are mentioned in textbooks?

Some people have pointed out "history will decide" whether prog is going to survive or not, but even interpretative history never stands still! That's why Nightlamp's mentioning of opera is instructive. The past two decades have seen an enormous revival of baroque opera, a genre which had been almost forgotten about. Many great works which had lain dormant for centuries (by Handel, Lully, Rameau, Charpentier and others) have now been succesfully recorded and staged.

Something similar has happened with the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. Before the 1980s relatively few conductors performed and recorded all of these (Solti, Kubelik and Bernstein are the only ones I can think of) and the critics didn't take them seriously. Mahler's music was either seen as overblown or as a joke. Until there was a gigantic Mahler-boom! Mahler's eclectic, bitterly ironic music seemed to fit the end of the century's "post-modern" mood.

All of which goes to say: in musical history, as with everything, fashions change. The likes of Dave Marsh and Rolling Stone are not going to be setting the trends forever. Music historians will keep analysing the great rock music boom of the 1960s and beyond, and some of them will undoubtedly explore the byways, including prog.

A first step can already be seen in Simon Reynolds' fascinating study of (mainly British) postpunk (1978 - 1984), RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN. While focussing on bands such as Wire, Joy Division, PiL and the Fall, Reynolds openly states (a) that many of these bands were influenced by prog; (b) that, contrary to punk mythology, the first half of the 1970s was NOT a fallow period in rock history but a time of amazing creativity.

Edited by fuxi - March 25 2008 at 16:01

My thinking is that it will depend totally on the depth of the medium reporting on the musical history of this era.  In other words, if it is part of a shallow textbook that devotes a sum of three paragraphs to the realm of jazz then prog would be lucky to get mentioned in a sentence or two.  But if it happens to be a comprehensive college-level course then I would expect any respectable curriculum to include musical styles other than "mainstream" and include the Zappas and Genesis' (etcetera) of late 20th and early 21st century culture.  Will prog be forgotten?  No more than Mozart was (and few understood his art in his time).