Good to see you on Substack, David! I read a lot of different blogs here, so it's cool to see you on too.
When people compare art periods they forget that mass media is only ~100 years old. The vast majority of the population didn't watch plays or read what was "trendy" before then. The internet makes manipulation and engineering of mass media possible in ways that are pretty unique to our period. It makes me wonder what "culture" really was like for ordinary people before then.
This is one of the problems with trying to compare today's music to, say, Mozart. The vast majority of people who were alive at the same time is Mozart never heard his music even when he was in the same city as them. Those performances were reserved for the elite. The common Man heard music at church and in the pub. So the best comparison of today's pop music is the folk music of the past. It turns out the two are of similar complexity.
Good to see you on Substack, David! I read a lot of different blogs here, so it's cool to see you on too.
When people compare art periods they forget that mass media is only ~100 years old. The vast majority of the population didn't watch plays or read what was "trendy" before then. The internet makes manipulation and engineering of mass media possible in ways that are pretty unique to our period. It makes me wonder what "culture" really was like for ordinary people before then.
This is one of the problems with trying to compare today's music to, say, Mozart. The vast majority of people who were alive at the same time is Mozart never heard his music even when he was in the same city as them. Those performances were reserved for the elite. The common Man heard music at church and in the pub. So the best comparison of today's pop music is the folk music of the past. It turns out the two are of similar complexity.