What is the distinction between art, pop, and folk music today?

I've noticed that the most recent classical composers anyone mentions these days are all people who were most active in the '70s at the latest. People seem to listen to older classical music than whatever has been deemed classical in the past century. This makes me wonder what the word "classical" means in current music, if anything. Has recorded music and globalization destroyed the separation between art music, pop music, and folk music in modern post-industrial society, or is the term still applied to experimental sound art like Ryoji Ikeda or Otomo Yoshihide? If it's the ladder, then what distinguishes experimental music from the rest? There's a lot of grey area there, as I'm sure all of the AFX and Autechre fans here are aware of.

IDM never dies.

I mean clearly "Bad Blood" is a product of Stockhausen's "Plus-Minus", while the entire Kpop oeuvre shows influences from Schaeffer and Bastien.

Just as clearly, one must acknowledge the influence of post-African rhythms on some of the major composers of the day, such as Pritchard D. Jams, or Thomas Russell Jenkinson.

this might aid you

https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=-pHOU8n5Bc_H8ge1xoJA#safe=off&q=notes+on+the+death+of+culture+essays+on+spectacle+and+society

Is that related to this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

  Quote

What is the distinction between art, pop, and folk music today?

 

1. The category of your youtube channel

2. Whether or not you have a tumblr

3. Who your PR agency is, if you have one

  On 7/5/2015 at 9:15 AM, cwmbrancity said:

this might aid you

 

https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=-pHOU8n5Bc_H8ge1xoJA#safe=off&q=notes+on+the+death+of+culture+essays+on+spectacle+and+society

  On 7/5/2015 at 11:10 AM, th555 said:

Is that related to this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

Trying really hard not to get distracted by this at work, need to read this at some point

  On 7/5/2015 at 9:15 AM, cwmbrancity said:

this might aid you

 

https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=-pHOU8n5Bc_H8ge1xoJA#safe=off&q=notes+on+the+death+of+culture+essays+on+spectacle+and+society

Seems pretty cynical to me. I tend not to seriously consider any of the many apocalypse arguments that try and create paranoia, claiming the present to be more different from the past than it really is.

I don't believe that culture is dying or that it ever will, because culture is an inherent part of human psychology. There always have been a large amount of people for whom culture is merely a distraction and a smaller amount of people for whom it is something deeper and more meaningful, that will never change. Even if art music is dead, that isn't necessarily something bad; very interesting things can happen when high art and low art influence one another.

But it's curious that classical music in the West has gone very quiet in the past few decades when it's still thriving in India. It seems like it may be an inevitable stage in post-industrialization.

  On 7/5/2015 at 7:46 PM, drillkicker said:

 

  On 7/5/2015 at 9:15 AM, cwmbrancity said:

But it's curious that classical music in the West has gone very quiet in the past few decades when it's still thriving in India. It seems like it may be an inevitable stage in post-industrialization.

 

I think I know what you mean about this to some degree, at least in the scope of professional and/or classically trained musicians versus those who aren't, and how the former seem less prevalent in pop culture. Session musicians seem less common than musicians simply collaborating on different projects. People say the internet has bridged the gap for those without such opportunity (which is bullshit, the majors and PR firms still work as gatekeepers and even very successful artists are often "famous" within genre and scene oriented fanbases). The internet does blur the lines a lot though, and it's done wonders in terms of communication, so if anything someone might feel constrained to pursue a linear career in classical music through schools and apprenticeship versus breaking off to do something more in the field of pop music or experimental in their artistic ambitions.

In the past as well as now a lot of bands, experimental or pop, formed out of art schools as a side-project or something unrelated to their degrees, whereas now a lot of "pop" and indie musicians like say, James Blake or Katy B, literally majored in popular music studies. That didn't exist until the 00s as far as I now.

  On 7/5/2015 at 7:46 PM, drillkicker said:

 

  On 7/5/2015 at 9:15 AM, cwmbrancity said:

this might aid you

 

https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=-pHOU8n5Bc_H8ge1xoJA#safe=off&q=notes+on+the+death+of+culture+essays+on+spectacle+and+society

Seems pretty cynical to me. I tend not to seriously consider any of the many apocalypse arguments that try and create paranoia, claiming the present to be more different from the past than it really is.

 

It seems related to accelerationism to me, at least in superficial sense of discussions related to PC music and vaporwave...not the academic concept which I'm largely unfamiliar with

  On 7/5/2015 at 7:46 PM, drillkicker said:

 

  On 7/5/2015 at 9:15 AM, cwmbrancity said:

this might aid you

 

https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=-pHOU8n5Bc_H8ge1xoJA#safe=off&q=notes+on+the+death+of+culture+essays+on+spectacle+and+society

Seems pretty cynical to me.

 

not really, he's comparing the swathes of disposable shit we have to wade thu on almost daily basis today with art that sought/seeks to be timeless & transcendental

imho he's spot on

  On 7/6/2015 at 12:08 AM, cwmbrancity said:

 

  On 7/5/2015 at 7:46 PM, drillkicker said:

 

  On 7/5/2015 at 9:15 AM, cwmbrancity said:

this might aid you

 

https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=-pHOU8n5Bc_H8ge1xoJA#safe=off&q=notes+on+the+death+of+culture+essays+on+spectacle+and+society

Seems pretty cynical to me.

 

 

 

not really, he's comparing the swathes of disposable shit we have to wade thu on almost daily basis today with art that sought/seeks to be timeless & transcendental

 

imho he's spot on

I don't have to go through swathes of shit, so you might just be doing things wrong. I find amazing shit all the time. Every time I go through a used record or cassette store I find at least one cool thing that I fall in love with when I get home and listen to it. There's loads of great stuff being produced all the time, it really isn't difficult at all to find.

same here

its meant for how insidious certain industries are and how deeply they contaminate

when you ask questions as you have about what constitutes "classical" & the effects of globalization Llosa's def worth a rummage, the bloke has serious academic chops

  On 7/6/2015 at 7:15 AM, drillkicker said:

 

  On 7/6/2015 at 12:08 AM, cwmbrancity said:

 

  On 7/5/2015 at 7:46 PM, drillkicker said:

 

  On 7/5/2015 at 9:15 AM, cwmbrancity said:

this might aid you

 

https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=-pHOU8n5Bc_H8ge1xoJA#safe=off&q=notes+on+the+death+of+culture+essays+on+spectacle+and+society

Seems pretty cynical to me.

 

 

 

not really, he's comparing the swathes of disposable shit we have to wade thu on almost daily basis today with art that sought/seeks to be timeless & transcendental

 

imho he's spot on

I don't have to go through swathes of shit, so you might just be doing things wrong. I find amazing shit all the time. Every time I go through a used record or cassette store I find at least one cool thing that I fall in love with when I get home and listen to it. There's loads of great stuff being produced all the time, it really isn't difficult at all to find.

 

i use to be pretty cynical about it as well, it's easy to but there's also a point where you have to just get over it; history is unfair, the public is dumb, but ultimately there is a canon of truly great albums people will remember and recognize...that's why forums like this exist, it's not just for obsessive fanboys to decipher every drum machine hit in AFX songs and/or neckbeards to bitch about [insert electronic music trend here] it's for people to discuss underrated and overlooked classics we find merit in and enjoy listening to over and over again

as a listener there's a point where you just have to give up on trying to hear it all, keep up with new hyped releases, and be ok with re-visiting old albums. entities like the tastemaker outlets, superficial things like end of year lists and the absurdly short shelf-life of great albums being talked about and discussed online are all frustrating to me still on occasion BUT I flourish in my perpetual discovery of new and underground music, especially in niche scenes and genres (in my case, with experimental cassette tape labels).

to quote hank hill "Find what your niche is, that leads to riches"

I'd like to revive this topic because my initial question never got answered, and I still don't know what defines classical music today. It seems that pop music has ended the distinction between what's art music and what isn't, at least in the West. I'd like someone to explain to me if I'm wrong. Are there any classical music experts around here?

Classical music is music from the classical period.

"classical" music isn't as present because more-or-less public, collective institutions are weak in general, so the scene of academically-inclined musicians is 1) weakly structured and broken in pockets with relatively little contact between them, 2) totally disconnected from what goes on in everyday life, 3) not connected enough to what goes on in the rest of music, art, science and theory

basically musicians aren't organised, the public isn't either, and there is no unified cultural scene whatsoever. this is also true of cinema, architecture, literature and anything really.

that said, the pop format is ok but it could benefit from organisation as well

Yeah, first of all, it's not called "classical" and never was, it's basically the same type of label to calling Ae and AFX "dance", somehow correct but not really precise.

There is a problem with audience for it, not creators. I saw this question asked of Beat Furrer (an actual name), current Neue Musik superstar conductor and composer, and he, without flinching, said that there is plenty of new stuff happening, yet too small of a group has the ability to understand the language in which composers articulate their visions, so it's more a problem of an education to him. At the same time, there is a heavy tendency towards restoration with guys like Arvo Part and Giya Kancheli on the forefront, this is the type of "classical" which is very infectious among non-academic producers (so called modern classical).

I once was very interested in the local academic avant-garde scene, so to say, and was struck at how erudite its rather young members are. Music, well, it's not that striking in comparison to most post-WWII masters, i guess that was a special time. Though not all of them became extinct by 70s, for example, Salvatore Sciarrino and Helmut Lachenmann were pretty active to this day.