I was discussing music with my 21 year old nephew the other day. I was just saying how these days dance music is the mainstream - still, when I would be looking about now for a completely new sound to be coming up, as different as dance was to rock, when in 1989 it was completely underground and pretty much socially unacceptable. My parents like most thought it 'evil' and now they don't blink an eye as it introduces their favourite sporting events. So I was wondering what music is underground now, what is subversive today that will be completely normal tomorrow? He didn't know. He maybe isn't the kind of guy to be into whatever is out of the mainstream, so it just isn't something he was familiar with - not even the idea of the inevitable cycle of subculture to mainstream that has gone on as long as the generations have aged and reproduced! Evolution you might say. Anyway the thing that got me was when, having googled a list of subcultures for us to pick though, to demonstrate what I meant, he barely recognised any of them and generally thought it funny - not anything major (!) so he said, off hand, maybe there just aren't any new music forms to be discovered? Maybe we just already have covered them or did them and there isn't anything else left. AAAAAAAAAAAA was my internal reply, :steady eyes calm face:. How can anyone think that? What a sad state of affairs! I suppose I had taken for granted that it is obvious there is an infinite scope for experimentation and exploration in nearly all fields, within natural bounds - in this case of audible sound, or maybe even beyond that? What if our ancestors had just given up finding new ways of doing things? It sort of shocks me that someone younger than me has already shut down their imagination to the degree that they can't imagine there being anything very different or new? I suppose he just spoke without thinking. It's weird anyway. On the other hand I have had a few reminders lately that I am maybe a bit quirky. But shit.
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