issuevoter
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Australian Politics
Posts: 9200
The Great State of Mind
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Technically speaking, none of it will live forever because of the temporary nature of taste, culture, and ultimately, existance. But it is a mistake to think that one form of music is somehow superior, and therefore will outlast another. I could easily defend the genres and examples that appeal to me, but all music is symphonic in that it creates or communicates a mood to the listener. The only difference is whether or not one wants to be in that mood.
By rights Heavy Metal should have gone out of fashion by now, but it just will not die. My take is that it taps into some crazy testosterone overload in adolescence which is probably a universal. Much orchestral music (I avoid the term "classical" because its so vague) is only kept alive by financial subsidies. Same goes for opera.
I'm interested in a broad swath of music and musicology, and what I notice is that many musicians have eclectic tastes. Art forms rise to a level of high refinement, experience a short plateau, and then decline through over-familiarity and Hellenistic corruption. If they have worthy attributes, these are taken to heart and survive in certain niches.
If we are talking about what music will live forever in the tastes of the general public, the answer is probably none. To most people, music is only a minor distraction. An indication of this is that there has not been an instrumental in the charts since Peter Green played Albatross fifty years ago, and now all internet musical pieces are called songs. They just don't have the attention span for something without words.
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