2 Apr
2014
2 Apr
'14
9:25 a.m.
On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 08:48 +0200, Tim Goetze wrote:
[Fons Adriaensen]
"Ausdruck befreit vom Sinn" (translated something like "Expression freed
from any statement") - more or less the words of Christoph Schlingensief
I can't agree with this as something good, it's evil, music is alive
when there is a statement, when there are emotions by the artist who
makes the music.
Music made without personal feelings is a lie, a long time before we got
scripted reality television, humans already made music comparable to
scripted reality.
It's even better to make music with emotions that belong to the couch
doctor, than to follow Fons ideology. Sure, the musician must be able to
stand the feedback of the audience. Take a look at old Black Flag
videos, Henry Rollins has been laughed at. They double up with laughter,
years later the same people who made jokes about him, became Fans of
Rollins Band.
There's no need for music to describe reality, but even fantasy stories
without political or psychopathological statement needs true emotions.
If the creator disappears completely, how should the music get alive?
If music is about 'communicating'
anything, it should probably
(IMHO) first communicate itself. There's nothing more boring
than an artist trying to communicate his or her very personal
feelings, be they sorrow or anger. The very least you need is
a wider context that is relevant to others, and the music (or
any form of art) that will most strongly communicate anything
but itself will be the one that in which the creator himself
disappears completely.
To quote Miles Davis, "I think people want to hear music and think
what they want to think."
(I think this is especially true for live performances. I -- like
probably most of us -- hold dear a couple of recordings exactly
because they so strongly express a particular emotion or state of
mind.)