The segmented society

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

David Brooks is a conservative writer for the NY Times who I read on a regular basis.

The Segmented Society

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: November 20, 2007

On Feb. 9, 1964, the Beatles played on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Or as Steven Van Zandt remembers the moment: “It was the beginning of my life.”

Van Zandt fell for the Beatles and discovered the blues and early rock music that inspired them. He played in a series of bands on the Jersey shore, and when a friend wanted to draw on his encyclopedic blues knowledge for a song called “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” Van Zandt wound up as a guitarist for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

The 1970s were a great moment for musical integration. Artists like the Rolling Stones and Springsteen drew on a range of musical influences and produced songs that might be country-influenced, soul-influenced, blues-influenced or a combination of all three. These mega-groups attracted gigantic followings and can still fill huge arenas.

But cultural history has pivot moments, and at some point toward the end of the 1970s or the early 1980s, the era of integration gave way to the era of fragmentation. There are now dozens of niche musical genres where there used to be this thing called rock. There are many bands that can fill 5,000-seat theaters, but there are almost no new groups with the broad following or longevity of the Rolling Stones, Springsteen or U2.

People have been writing about the fragmentation of American music for decades. Back in the Feb. 18, 1982, issue of Time, Jay Cocks wrote that American music was in splinters. But year after year, the segmentation builds.

Last month, for example, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote an essay in The New Yorker noting that indie rock is now almost completely white, lacking even the motifs of African-American popular music. Carl Wilson countered in Slate that indie rock’s real wall is social; it’s the genre for the liberal-arts-college upper-middle class.

Technology drives some of the fragmentation. Computers allow musicians to produce a broader range of sounds. Top 40 radio no longer serves as the gateway for the listening public. Music industry executives can use market research to divide consumers into narrower and narrower slices.

But other causes flow from the temper of the times. It’s considered inappropriate or even immoral for white musicians to appropriate African-American styles. And there’s the rise of the mass educated class.

People who have built up cultural capital and pride themselves on their superior discernment are naturally going to cultivate ever more obscure musical tastes. I’m not sure they enjoy music more than the throngs who sat around listening to Led Zeppelin, but they can certainly feel more individualistic and special.

Van Zandt grew up in one era and now thrives in the other, but how long can mega-groups like the E Street Band still tour?

“This could be the last time,” he says.

He argues that if the Rolling Stones came along now, they wouldn’t be able to get mass airtime because there is no broadcast vehicle for all-purpose rock. And he says that most young musicians don’t know the roots and traditions of their music. They don’t have broad musical vocabularies to draw on when they are writing songs.

As a result, much of their music (and here I’m bowdlerizing his language) stinks.

He describes a musical culture that has lost touch with its common roots. And as he speaks, I hear the echoes of thousands of other interviews concerning dozens of other spheres.

It seems that whatever story I cover, people are anxious about fragmentation and longing for cohesion. This is the driving fear behind the inequality and immigration debates, behind worries of polarization and behind the entire Obama candidacy.

If you go to marketing conferences, you realize we really are in the era of the long tail. In any given industry, companies are dividing the marketplace into narrower and more segmented lifestyle niches.

Van Zandt has a way to counter all this, at least where music is concerned. He’s drawn up a high school music curriculum that tells American history through music. It would introduce students to Muddy Waters, the Mississippi Sheiks, Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers. He’s trying to use music to motivate and engage students, but most of all, he is trying to establish a canon, a common tradition that reminds students that they are inheritors of a long conversation.

And Van Zandt is doing something that is going to be increasingly necessary for foundations and civic groups. We live in an age in which the technological and commercial momentum drives fragmentation. It’s going to be necessary to set up countervailing forces — institutions that span social, class and ethnic lines.

Music used to do this. Not so much anymore.

Kevin Hatton · From: Buffalo, N.Y.

Briliiant. Absolutly correct. Its all sports now.

Earnest Bovine · From: Los Angeles CA USA

Obviously the segmented society is related to the fact that many people nowadays can't decide if they like a piece of music based on how it sounds. So many people have to know first what "genre" it belongs to.

I don't know which came first, the segmentation, or the affetced distaste for music that is "not from one of us". I suspect it is a result of marketing; i.e., now that everyone can afford to make his own CD, but no one can afford to advertise to billions of people, marketers are forced to try to appeal to only a niche.

Eric Jaeger · From: Oakland, California, USA

The article doesn't mention it, but van Zandt is doing more than creating a curriculum, he's funding it, creating content, and volunteering to do some of the teaching. It's a great idea, and I think kids are open to it. My girlfriend's son, who's a damn good thrash guitarist, came in bubbling about this new guitarist he heard that was "awesome"... Joe Maphis.

Ther eis hope.

-eric

Mat Rhodes · From: Lexington, KY, USA

I hope this is the beginning of a long-term trend. You never know how many other established musicians and entertainers might want to get in on the action and be a part of the solution, not the problem. What's old is new again.

You go, Silvio...

Leslie Ehrlich · From: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Kevin Hatton · From: Buffalo, N.Y.

I'll give you a good example. The Texas country music scene. Its a whole world in itself. Thank goodness.

Eric Jaeger · From: Oakland, California, USA

Springsteen guitarist hopes to offer curriculum on cultural impact of rock and roll.

USA Today (11/12, Marklein) reports that Steven Van Zandt, a guitarist with Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, will unveil the first project of his Rock and Roll Forever Foundation on Monday, "a middle- and high-school curriculum designed to introduce a new generation of teens to" rock and roll music. Van Zandt, working with education publisher Scholastic, inc, hopes "to distribute a 40-chapter curriculum, including teachers' guide, lesson plans, DVDs, CDs and Web-based resources, free, beginning with the 2008-09 academic year, to the nation's 30,000 or so middle and high schools." Van Zandt wants the materials to "explore the cultural and historic impact of rock, beginning with pioneers such as Little Richard and Elvis Presley, through soul music, early girl groups, the British invasion, the psychedelic period and ending with today's newer groups." The effort is endorsed by the National Association for Music Education.

As noted earlier, a great and praiseworthy effort. I wish more musicians would do this. I see authors promoting literacy and reading in schools all the time.

-eric

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

At the risk of sounding formulaic, I'd say that children who grew up hating their parent's music are walled off by stone, children who liked their parents (& music) are pretty wide open. There's no telling where the marketing of music will go - it's sure a confused mess right now - but there are thriving local, original scenes. I have some teenage guitar students with wildly eclectic & varied tastes, all the way from early blues, swing & jazz to contemporary indie, new classical....

Can our current overload of fantastically-talented musicians, with open access to every influence under the sun, really lead to a collapse? Perhaps, but why would it? David Brooks is a billionaire-by-marriage who writes from his perch in a certain social scene, and his perch as the token conservative political writer at the New York Times - I really question his authority & knowledge on this one. Who and what is he listening to, anyway?

David L. Donald · From: Koh Samui Island, Thailand

Segmentation is Trickle Down Socio-economics.

The Political Sphere is SO driven by demographic targeting,
that it has rubbed off on the common people.
Hey there Blue or Red, jazz or country, Rock or Rap

The Commercial Sphere is SO demographic driven by demographic targeting,
that it has rubbed off on the common people.
My music goes to your ad space on some
computer derived/defined cyber-place,
and that because something LABLED SIMILARLY,
is there already.

We are CONSTANTLY being told we are in a group of some sort,
and that those NOT in that group are not good enough,
or worse against our goals.

Add to that the ancient curses of :
Parochialism;
Or my small town is better than your small town next door,
Jingoism, My country's way of life is WAY beyond yours,
so yours is now marginalized sorry, try and keep up.

Racism and inverse racism;
Someone in OUR grouping did it first IT'S OURS,
hands off, and by the way, If you ARE
presumptive enough to try this,
you just ain't gonna EVER do it right.
ONLY our folk can do it right.

Yes, that's right the original bugabboo segmentations,
are just getting sub-divided to make it easier
to NOT stray from the fold.

Then we add the computer aided bean counters...
Opps, every one stays in their corner and ventures not forth.
Our formative youth are INUNDATED with
formalized segementation of the lives from above.

So is it any wonder MUSIC which typically reflects life from the streets and classrooms,
has become dozens of niches,
barely decended from any pluralistic historical basis?

Of course also people are devaluing music education in many many schools.
So WHERE will Steve Van Zant's great idea actually get installed?
_________________
DLD, Chili farmer. Plus bananas and papaya too.

Real happiness has no strings attached.
But pedal steels have many!

Richard Sevigny · From: Salmon Arm, BC, Canada

Segmentation... hmmmmmmmm...

Sounds like the old Divide and Conquer to me Exclamation

_________________
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

-Albert Einstein

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

Like most things, cultural and marketing segmentation can be looked at from more than one angle.

Yes, I think it is partly divide and conquer. But how much of this is pushed by the marketeers and how much of it is pull by the public? That is not always obvious, but I think both elements are present. Even if the push is dominant, it wouldn't be possible without a public that was receptive to it.

So I think the other point of view has more to do with increasing cultural diversity and the fact that more people feel free to do what they want and not follow any particular mainstream thread. To me, this is the ultimate consequence of what happened culturally in the 60s and 70s. Ironically, it makes what happened in the 60s with the Beatles or Stones utterly impossible right now.

I'm not sure it's going to be easy to put the genie back in the bottle. Modern technology gives people the freedom to do what they please. Completely ubiquitous professional-quality music production tools are available, and the web is the ultimate communication and distribution tool. A single wave isn't probably going to sweep through the entire culture, but independent artists should increasingly be able to function.

So - honestly, I don't see this type of segmentation as necessarily being bad. What I dislike is being chained to the mainstream. I say "Thank God" I don't have to be limited by what these mainstream purveyors push out to me. Does it bother me that "supergroups" won't be able to sell out arenas? Not a bit. I hate arena shows anyway. They are a very poor substitute for seeing great music in an intimate setting like a club or small auditorium, the way I used to see shows in the 60s and early 70s. No "rock star royalty" anymore? Fine with me. It was a bogus concept from its inception, IMO, and it fundamentally what's wrong with popular music these days. It's about obsession with stardom, power, and money - mainstream musical content is mostly vacuous now.

Don't get me wrong - I think any effort to put across musical history is good. But I don't think it should be restricted to any one genre - the history of American popular music is an amalgamation of a huge set of different approaches. That is what has made it so powerful. As much as I love it - it isn't just or even mainly the line connecting the Mississippi Shieks, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers, and other artists closely connected with this. American music is also Celtic-influenced mountain music, polka and other Germanic styles, Hispanic, Tin Pan Alley, jazz, religious music of many stripes, numerous styles of country and western music, and lots of other things that don't seem to get through the "rock and roll" filter that pop musicologists seem to obsess over these days.

All my opinions, naturally.

Orville Johnson · From: Seattle, Washington, USA

David Brooks is a moronic shill for right wing bullsh*t. While its true that consolidation of media under the right wing regime that pushed thru media deregulation in the 90s has limited our choices and dictated the corporatization of "popular" music, there is plenty of good music happening, lots of kids who are aware of roots music and history and are synthesising their own takes on it, and, for anyone that wants to look past the corporate sources, more and easier access to recorded music history than ever before.

i'm glad people want to bring music and arts education and history back into the schools where it belongs rather than furthering the right wing notions of delivering test-driven, corporatee cogs in the machine making, mind numbing curriculum to the masses, but I feel encouraged when I teach at the various workshops I do and see lots of young people interested in this stuff.

dividing and conquering is the technique of the right wing and their paid shills to make us feel alone and isolated. don't buy into it. Just because it isn't on the corporate news TV and radio doesn't mean it isn't happening. Blow up your TV, play your guitar and teach a kid how to play.

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Maybe he's just trying to make money after Silvio got whacked..

Winking

EJL

Randy Phelps · From: California, USA

Reductionism sounds perfectly reasonable. But, if a person goes point by point through the essay...none of it is actually true with any close examination.

I like Steve Van Zandt. He is passionate about the music he loves but the hubris of his curriculum is stunning. The dimunition of music programs has been widely overstated but the interest in school music programs has plummeted as students have been offered other choices. There are lots of reasons and causal factors for that.

As for creating and exploring the racial aspects of the current music scene is nothing short of audacious! There are some truly interesting elements in this essay... the element of a kernel of truth (the music world is at a crossroads) mixed with either the unintentionally false analysis because of nostalgia or the misstating of the facts for rhetorical purposes to motivate music fans to see the author as rational... either way it is manipulative....

The unstated conclusion is that we as a culture need to return to a time prior to segmentation. The GOP used to stand on a platform of returning to 'traditional american values and a time when life was simpler and the government was small and not an active participant in your life.' The only problem with this is that music was always stratified and listeners have always been segmented (at least since the 1950's)

Rock from the late 60's to its demise some time in the 80's was always white. Soul and R&B was always black (always with small remarkable exceptions)...

There is an organic function of human psychology that naturally sloughs off bad things and amplifies good things. We tend, if left to our own devices and a poor sense of history, to think of times past as being particularly good.

The author cleverly feigns a lack of knowledge of very much of Steve Van Zandt's 'world' yet deftly paraphrases the Rolling Stones "this may be the last time" and liberal comedian Jon Stewart's "not so much" while maintaining that he is the 'square' commentator who 'kind of gets' that popular music has made some very wrong turns and can only be fixed by a very revisionist methodology that in the near term supports rock'n'roll as history (very popular) but in the long term embraces the concept of 'going back to the good old days'.

I'd imagine that Steve Van Zandt if he reads this essay will shudder that his ideas are being used in this manner... much like the horror and anger Bruce Springsteen exhibited when Ronald Reagan's camp intentionally misunderstood what "Born in the USA" was about and used it in its exact opposite context knowing full well it would suck some of Springsteen's fans into his fold even though Springsteen's own beliefs were in complete opposition to Reagan's.

It is a tangled web... and the goal for a lot of these folks is to win by keeping it tangled.

Joe Miraglia · From: Jamestown N.Y.

14 post replies so far, only one from a southeren state. Why Question

Joe

Orville Johnson · From: Seattle, Washington, USA

joe, i don't understand your comment. what does the south have to do with this subject in particular? or is it something about the racial content? no ill will, i just don't see what you're getting at.

Joe Miraglia · From: Jamestown N.Y.

Orville, Not Racial,its about music.That is if the post is about Counrty Music,CMA, old country new country, the posts come in from all over.Joe

David Doggett · Posted 25 Nov 2007 9:10 pm

Yeah, I agree Brooks seems to be hung up with the conservative longing for a simple/better past that never existed. American music has always been a complex dance of the various segments coming together (or borrowing from each other), diverging, and coming back together in a different way, repeatedly. At the beginning of radio and recording, there were black “race” records, white country, tin pan alley, upper class Europhile classical music, and various immigrant folk traditions. All the way through the 20th century, jazz and then rock’n’roll mixed these in various ways, sometimes converging, sometimes diverging. It’s still going on. The music industry has always chased both the divergent specialized markets and the convergent crossover trends.

Fifties R’n’R started with Elvis blending Country and R&B, and was full of R&B crossovers like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, the doo-wop groups, etc. Sixties rock was actually less integrated, and was actually a segmentation for the white baby-boomer college crowd emerging from the even more segmented folk period. Brooks seems to be looking back dimly to something he probably had little awareness of at the time. Likewise, I venture he has no clue about the convergent aspects of modern pop, where white artists like Brittany Spears, Timberlake, Kid Rock, Josh Stone, etc. borrow heavily from R&B and Hip Hop.

It appears to me Brooks sees more integration in '60s rock than there really was, and completely misses the massive integration in modern popular music, because he was/is out of it in both cases.

Likewise politically and socially he has funny vision. Into the mid-‘60s there was legal segregation – talk about segmentation. And the political arena may seem to have been less segmented back then simply because huge chunks of the population were totally disenfranchised and excluded from it. Today they are running for president. Maybe there seems to be more divisiveness and segmentation today simply because there are now more viewpoints (left and right) that have fought their way into the arena to have a real voice.

David L. Donald · From: Koh Samui Island, Thailand

Several interesting points made.

I don't think the
"Music World is at a crossroads"

I think it is trying to get on the LA Expressway
in a Renault Dauphine...
_________________
DLD, Chili farmer. Plus bananas and papaya too.

Real happiness has no strings attached.
But pedal steels have many!

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

Look you meanies, David Brooks needs to make a living too, OK? The fact that he can do so by writing vapid, unresearched, meaningless sociobabble should be a cause for celebration! I'll bet you hate Barry Manilow, Whitesnake and The Captain & Tenille too. Evil or Very Mad

Richard Sevigny · From: Salmon Arm, BC, Canada

Marc Jenkins · From: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

While I think Van Zandt is up to some great stuff, the article above is certainly misguided.

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

David L. Donald · From: Koh Samui Island, Thailand

Cain't really write off Aerosmith either.
_________________
DLD, Chili farmer. Plus bananas and papaya too.

Real happiness has no strings attached.
But pedal steels have many!