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

File under Philosophy...

I have been thinking about this lately, and am now just putting it out there. I suppose I could say "how will prog be remembered," but this is not as specific as I'd like to be. When I read history books for classes (textbooks), I see political and economic changes with significant impact on the course of history highlighted for importance. But there is also the cultural factor. Explaining the culture of the times in times past, to me, seems much easier than if one wanted to describe the culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Of course this is a generalization, but we cannot understate the explosion of creativity in 20th century music, specifically rock music (and also electronic/new age/etc. but specifically rock for now). I'm sure that when the history books are written after enough time has passed and we don't go as in depth as we can now with 20th century developments in society, there will be certain things covered when talking about rock music. Rock 'n' roll, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Woodstock, superficiality (pop stars), DIY (internet, myspace) bands. But where will the music that is groundbreaking and experimental and truly worthy of being remembered, not because the masses latched onto it and it became a cultural monolith?

My fear is that 20th and 21st (so far) century music history will be written by RollingStone magazine (in essence, if not exactly reality). The mainstream acts and events will get their coverage of course, but what of progressive rock, electronica, new age, and other "niche" genres not covered by mainstream outlets? Will these be included in high school textbooks about World History in the 22nd century, where masses of people can read about them? Or will they be relegated to an upper-level History of Modern Music university course only majors in history or music would ever see? If no one remembers it, it might as well not have happened... Or perhaps it is that the music is around us, and thus cannot ever be escaped. Vinyl albums and CDs have not rotted away yet, and they might not for a long time, so as long as the physical product is out there and there is a means of playing them, is it ever dead?


Edited by stonebeard - March 25 2008 at 00:59

as long as there is audience of any kind of music, the heritage will continue, much as i got my father's vinyls and my future kid will get my cds and my grand child will get his mp3s...

i know, maybe, some music may not be remembered or filed in "the history of music", albeit i find it hard not to, but people who really care will pass on the torch... besides, i don't suppose that there was eg a whole 50's music scene that everyone's ignoring its existence cause almost 6 decades have passed since then...



Edited by toolis - March 25 2008 at 05:04

And just look at this article from a guy who is actually on the R&RHOF ballot that agrees with a lot my points, which I just found:

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).

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.