Historically, trends in popular music are gradual processes moving in small increments, so that, for example, the demise of big-band music of the 1940s, the era of Glen Miller, Woody Herman, Count Basie, etc, was a slow decline, gradually giving way to the small groups and combos that would dominate the music scene 20 years later as rock-and-roll was born. In the Caribbean, too, in recent years, the shift from calypso into soca, pioneered by Lord Shorty in Trinidad, was at first scorned by some musicians (one prominent band leader, Art DeCouteau, originally refused to play it) and it was a few years before the change really took. The other aspect to popular music shifts is that many people in the society, born and bred into the existing form, remain oblivious to the changes until, seemingly overnight, they become aware, to their horror, that their kind of music is no longer the popular music of the day. It is as if we have been taken by surprise, and to a degree we have been.
Indeed, I’m writing today to warn you that one of those changes has begun in popular music, so brace yourself. What is developing (there are some North American hits from it already; Trinidad Carnival socas this year are full of it) is the recording of songs largely by electronic means, instead of the traditional band with a range of musical instruments making a recording through microphones and line inputs, into a recording console. Mind you, the shift is in its infancy, and like men singing falsetto it may not dominate, but judging by how folks are embracing it in North America and the Caribbean, we may well be watching the rise of something that consumers will be wailing about in a couple of years.
In the new music, the singer is generally the only non-electronic sound on the recording; everything else, including drums, is electronic. Before we start complaining, it’s useful to understand the reason for this shift because, to a significant degree, it is a natural evolution. Natural, because in the past couple of decades, the trend in popular music has been to an emphasis on beat and rhythm in music and less concern for melody or intricacy. (I covered that topic recently in the ‘It’s rhythm they’re after’ column.) “Make me wanna dance”, to quote the line in one popular song, has become the mantra, with everything flowing from that. So away with a variety of interacting sounds; away with melodies that wander; away with counterpoint, and instruments filling in the background. The human ear can only process so much material anyway, so the aim here is to put all the ‘sound time,’ so to speak, in a recording, on presenting and enhancing the beat, the rhythm, the pulse of the music, for the dance or the party mood. That’s the impetus for the shift which now dominates popular music.
Apart from the ubiquitous synthesizer, modern studios are using samplers, phasers, effects units, to take a generally small signal from just one electronic instrument to give it more dimension, and of course, treat the drum track the same way, so that the cushion of beat is not a background nudge, as in the music of 25 years go, but is now a powerful push, dominating the sound from the first note to the last. Other directions, not even dreamed of now (whoever thought we’d be listening to music on our cell phones) may well come along to create another restructuring in the music. While I admit that the artistic side of me does see the emergence of electronic music as something sad – there is a feeling of loss as the bands with musicians in live performances fade from the scene – at the same time, the practical side of me recognizes the advantages of the technologies at hand now; if I was starting out today as a young musician, I would probably be eagerly engaging them.
Opinions will differ as to the value of these recent developments, but it’s another reflection of the change in our lives in the sense that we are so frantically busy living in this speeded up world, that the time we have for contemplation or speculation is drastically reduced. Hence the music has to capture your attention in four or five seconds; no time to evaluate and see how something may develop. On radio, which continues as the place where most hits are made, it’s a case of “hit me right away or I move on.”
The other change, starting gradually but now in full force, is in live performances. The days of a Sinatra or a Luther Vandross or a Barbra Streisand (young people may have to Google these names) just standing there and singing are gone, or almost gone. These days, as you must have noticed, the stage has to be a scene of constant motion and spectacle, including a dozen or more professional dancers (with the singer dancing along), pyrotechnics, fog machines, hydraulic stages rising and falling, and occasionally the singer is hoisted over the audience in the finale, and will sometimes also start the show that way. Motorcyclists, stunt men, acrobats and jugglers take part, and backdrops now are routinely used for big-screen video projection, even in auditorium shows. In short, in modern musical presentations, spectacle is trumping sound. Again, it’s the battle for our attention, so if you don’t like the uproar and just want to hear the song, stay at home and plug in your IPod because the trend to way more than just the vocalist in live shows is in full roar.
In the end, it’s technology impacting on everything in our lifestyle, including our popular music. At one time, recordings were made on hard vinyl discs spinning at 78rpm; then that was abandoned when the soft vinyl 45rpm and 33rpm LP came along. Remember when that gave way to digital recordings and CDs, and many of us threw our LPs in the garbage dumpster? Well, guess what? With the streaming of music and downloading on the web now commonplace, get ready to consign your vast CD collection to the same dumpster. At the same time, give the new music a listen; you may find something there you like. If not, there’s always John Legend and Adele.
