By Odeisel
Art is the ability to synthesize our surroundings into things that never existed. At its most primal, it is all that separates us from animals. Art is humanity in its purest essence. Music is an extension of that same idea, with melody and lyrics taking form of idealism, escapism, activism, and occasionally the delivery of realism. To call a musician an artist, they must display the ability to create, to stretch, and to push that which exists further past its present form.
We call them “artists” perhaps because we lack a better term. The singers are aided by machines. Many of the rappers have no idea how to count bars and have never even heard of a measure. Last but not least we have the producers, who have grown so incredibly lazy that they have resorted to repetition; taking what works and changing minor components giving basically the same beat to different “artists.” Where exactly does the “art” manifest?
This isn’t a voice in the wind, raging against a machine, but more a declaration of sorts. As America slips further down the global rankings in terms of education it is clear that we are systematically dumbing down most or our processes. Does that have to include the few vehicles for bucking convention that we have left? This is a society increasingly based on instant consumption and transience, but that doesn’t preempt that which is timeless.
If you are lucky enough to have come into music on vinyl then you understand the fullness of sound, the richness of music, and the many layers that build a real rhythm. You remember bridges and refrains and not the simple verse- hook-verse formula that pervades the present landscape.
In this “American Idol” era of stardom, style has trumped substance in the eyes of the cultural zeitgeist and consumers are led to believe that the machine is more important than the creators in the delivery of music. Oh it doesn’t matter who the singer /rapper is. We’ll just get the prerequisite producer, the right stylist, and pay off the DJs to force-feed the listeners and we’re good to go.
Ultimately however, we, the listeners carry as much responsibility for this present condition as the machine is. We whine about BET award shows, and then tune in to their next coon show, in a NASCAR-like fixation on the impending crash. We allow ourselves to be used and disregarded like sucker- for-love ass chumps who forgive transgressions in the name of a love never returned. We don’t take ourselves seriously and so how can marketers?
Ask yourself, what would you tell your friend whose girl/guy friend is obviously using them? You would probably tell them to move on, yet we hold tight to the latest trash single, ready with a mitigating excuse for whatever mediocre product slides across our sensors. Take the latest radio single x with its predictable melody, juvenile laughable lyrics, and the lack of actual singing. Oh it’s fun. It’s for the club. He’s young. Run DMC was 18. So was De La Soul. Stevie and Mike were children. That’s not an excuse.
When you have the shoulders of giants before you to stand on, you should be pulling music forward, not weighing our collective humanity down like an anchor. The bar is not too high, because it isn’t actually a bar but a ladder, and it seems that our “artists” are afraid of heights. Technology is a tool, and not a crutch. 
As Stevie Wonder mastered the Moog synthesizer and took his music higher, and producers like Prince Paul and Q-Tip took sampling and created new music using older melodies as the next instruments, technology like the autotune should be used to produce next level music, not whored out to the lowest common denominator. That’s not a slight to those who have used it creatively, but a warning to those accepting the “music” of talentless crabs bringing the art down with trash. If you feel a way, it’s about you. It’s not about antagonism. It’s about realism.
As Black people in particular, there are entire eras of our existence where music was the difference between our destruction and our survival. We used oral tradition to carry our heritage when we had no printing press. We used song to communicate and to escape the hands of slavers. We used songs to escape our collective pain and to protest and to be heard by audiences that wouldn’t have given our voices alone a minute of their attention. And now we have turned the instrument of our salvation into a slow simmering instrument of destruction.
If you are a listener reading this, then take yourself and your children seriously and stop supporting weak music. If you are a producer reading this get off your lazy ass and create. Stop being a beat jacker and be an innovator. If you are a rapper, hopefully you can read, but please learn how to count bars and learn some form of music theory. Knowing what a measure is would be nice. If you are a label then hire people who know what they are talking about. Michael Jackson just sold 415,000 albums in a half week. People DO have money, and they WILL download songs AND pay for them. But not if you release CD’s that are useful only as pizza cutters and MP3’s that are only suitable to torture Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
Music is art. It is a major force in our lives and the way we relate to this world. Music connects our memories like seams linking the soundtracks of our lives with the people, places, and things we did when we first heard them. Ask yourselves this question the next time you sit down to consume music: Do you really want this song to define the next five minutes of your life? If the answer is no then respond accordingly.
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