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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
I have always felt that there is a reason beat-based music (dance music, techno/edm, much of hip hop) does not hold up as well as riff-based music (blues, rock, folk) over the years of repeated listens.
To me it is that dance music ( and I am being very general here) is meant to be felt immediately, to make your body move. It takes very exceptional songcraft to make a dance song into something that gets better and better with each listen. Of course you can dance to anything, but I am referring to the quick way in which dance music seems dated and old as compared to riff-based musics.
I love listening to Young Thug, Future, Rich Homie Quan, Chedda, etc. but I also am not avoiding the fact that after 10-15 listens the magic that initially got me into it is gone. I feel that dance music (and hip hop, for the most part, iks dance music) is intended for a visceral experience, and must be simplified to suit it.
What do you guys think?
When I listen to many 10+ year old hip hop tracks it feels very inert and dead, no matter how amazing I found it upon first listen.
Do you think this is why so many young people have no interest in digging into the musical history of hip hop? Like, even the rappers now seem to have no connection emotionally to anything older than 6 years old.
just curious as to what you guys think about this.
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I'm not sure what Rob's getting at is actually being addressed. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem as though his concern is that kids/new artists don't listen to older hip-hop.
It seems to me that he's saying:
There's something inherent about "non-organic" (for lack of a better terms) music that makes it more transitory and less likely to leave a lasting impression/make a lasting impact.
I think in some cases this is true, partly because as Rob noted, there is an immediacy to hip-hop/dance/party music. It's made for one purpose and one purpose only. Also, it's less relatable, because there's kind of an invisible curtain that makes it difficult to identify what the sounds are, where they're coming from, and how they're made. And whether it's hip-hop or dance music, there's a language issue at play. Theses genres rely heavily on vocal samples, and it's more difficult to hear what's being said and usually it can be difficult to relate to what's being said for anyone outside the culture.
Guitar/bass/drum/singer music is more traditionally relatable. On a broader level. There's science behind this. When you see four dudes playing live instruments on a stage, hear the words coming out of their mouths, theres a connection that takes place on a human level. It's related to how we attend to and prioritize information, how we learn, how we form memories...
If the music is secondary to the dancing, it's a different experience entirely. You don't have time to focus on the people making the music. You're swinging yourself around like a rag doll and you're probably five different kinds of fucked up and if it's just a DJ flipping vinyl, or a monkey with a MacBook, there's no facial or linguistic recognition. Different parts of your brain are activated. It's more "of the moment" ... And therefore less likely to form a lasting memory or emotional connection.
But that's not a hard and fast rule. I've been to DJ sets and IDM shows that were extremely emotionally powerful experiences for me. So much so that I remember them years later. But at the same time, I feel like I remember an absurd amount of no-name basement bands better than I remember theatre and arena gigs, regardless of what type of music was being played. And I think it has a lot to do with universal non-verbal communication. A singer looks you in the eye, you notice. Can't see a singer's eyes because you're 80 feet away? Who cares? There are no eyes because you're just listening to a record some dude is spinning? Yeah, very little intimate connection going on there.
But I'm a big fan of elecronic music, dance music and hip-hop, so that shit resonates with me fairly well.
I'm blah-ing. I know it. Blah.