While conservatives bemoan the collapse of culture, if you step outside, fantastic music is being made.
Sometimes heaven punches through to our everyday reality. We suddenly feel as though we no longer need to struggle or strive or fight. We feelIt happened when I heard “Nothing Compares to You.” Not the Sinead O’Connor classic, but the recent single by New Orleansmy favorite album of the year so far. It’s also a reminder that while conservatives bemoan the collapse of culture, if you step outside, fantastic music is being made.
As music writers such as Stanley Crouch and Ralph Ellison have noted, the American black music tradition isn’t one of pessimism and despair but of affirmation, love, and hope. The blues, as Crouch observed, is about “dealing with adversity with grace.” Of course, there can be great tragedy, anger, and depression in America’s native music forms. Yet there is always hope and a deep faith in God.
Indeed, the black American music tradition has always celebrated the power of love — both erotic and spiritual. In her bookscholar Martha Bayes argues that in the 1960s, this tradition was corrupted by “perverse modernism,” including bands such as the Rolling Stones that started singing about drugs and violence. Gangster rap was a particularly bad period of perversity.
It’s 2024, and rock music has been usurped by dance, pop, and even jazz. Beyoncé made a hugely successful country album. Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift deliver euphoric songs influenced by 1980s synth-pop optimism and love. Critics could argue that popular music isn’t about “social justice” anymore, but there’s nothing more serious and challenging in this world than love, faith, everyday life, and relationships.
The undertow of the disastrous 1960s party is indeed dragging a lot of people down. But American popular music has largely escaped.
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