bitflipper
Regarding generational taste differences...it's something that's been routinely regurgitated as an excuse for whatever youthful silliness every generation has embraced. But I have rarely experienced it myself.
1. My grandkids love classic rock and are surprisingly knowledgeable about it
2. My father turned me on to the Beatles
3. Every competent musician I've ever known has enjoyed music from every era going back to Medieval times
Not that anecdotal experiences are of any value in an argument, but my experiences have been different.
4. I have always actively sought the wisdom of my elders, regardless of the subject. My grandfather taught me my first chords on a guitar. My great-grandfather tried to teach me to play harmonica, but it didn't take. I have relied on older mentors to learn everything from electronics to roofing.
Only of your elders? I know - a wise elder explained to you that wisdom was purely a function of age, right?
I am happy to learn things from my elders, my peers or people younger than me. The critical thing is not their age but that they have knowledge that I don't. Young people may have far less overall knowledge than we do, but that doesn't mean they have less knowledge than us about
everything. In reality they often know much more than their elders about the things that are very much a part of their lives but not ours. And if we assume others know nothing of any value, we lose the opportunity to learn from them. Sadly, I have found that almost everyone knows something or other that I don't about something.
5. Physics never changes. Electricity and sound work the same way they always have. Young people may not feel the need to understand them, but that has no bearing on reality. How you feel about something has no bearing on reality. No matter how stressed you feel when flying, it has no bearing on whether or not the plane stays in the air. And if you're guitar's out of tune it doesn't matter that in your mind it isn't.
Art and physics are not the same thing. Art/music is influenced by culture and the criteria for evaluating it changes.
What we're really suffering from is a general devaluation of expertise. How often do you see the word "expert" in quotes, as if it describes some mythical concept that doesn't really exist? As in "the 'experts' said he'd never walk again, but now he's running marathons". Well, that's a great story, but to extrapolate that to a general lesson requires ignoring the 99.99% of the time when "those so-called experts" were right.
Expertise takes time to acquire. Yes, that 10,000-hour rule has been somewhat debunked, but it's still true in principle. If a teenager is a great musician, it's because he's extraordinarily dedicated to its study. The vast majority will not - and could not - have put in the necessary hours to attain expertise. But their precious self-esteem demands that we lower the standards of accomplishment until punching colored buttons while waving your hands in the air is considered a musical performance.
So this means I can't enjoy both Glenn Gould playing Bach and the Ramones playing Teenage Lobotomy?
I am of course all for expertise, and I agree we have seen a devaluation of knowledge and respect for achievement. But one must be careful that one is not self-centered in evaluating things and also not confusing objective evaluations with subjective evaluations.
A song like, say, Whole Lotta Love is not particularly sophisticated melodically, harmonically or lyrically. Does that automatically make it inferior to any and all music that is more sophisticated in those areas? There are many knowledgeable musicians here whose critical evaluations will vary regarding any given piece of music. What are the rules for evaluating things? And who wrote them? And did they do so objectively or self-servingly?
In my case, I would say that my elders were very much right about their own music but sometimes quite clueless regarding their critical evaluation about my generation's. They just didn't understand that different criteria applied.
So how do we critically evaluate music that we don't relate to - because it isn't part of
our culture - without oversimplifying things to the point where we also throw any and all less sophisticated, less refined, less schooled music under the bus?
Personally since I don't really want to put in the time listening to and learning about music I find uncompelling, I am happy to simply not have an opinion on it. It may well be rubbish or it may be somehow profound; I don't know and I don't see why I have to care either way. I'm happy to let people who have some - what's the word? -
expertise in whatever genres I am unfamiliar with make the critical evaluations about them.