Most interesting post by Mark Belmont over at Image and Authenticity:
With its true spiritual center in Richard Florida-lauded “creative” college
towns such as Portland, Ore., this is the music of young “knowledge workers” in
training, and that has sonic consequences: Rather than body-centered, it is
bookish and nerdy; rather than being instrumentally or vocally virtuosic, it
shows off its chops via its range of allusions and high concepts with the kind
of fluency both postmodern pop culture and higher education teach its listeners
to admire. … Among at least a subset of (the younger) musicians and fans, this class
separation has made indie more openly snobbish and narrow-minded. In the darkest
interpretation, one could look at the split between a
harmony-and-lyrics-oriented indie field and a rhythm-and-dance-specialized
rap/R&B scene as mirroring the developing global split between an
internationalist, educated comprador class (in which musically, one week Berlin
is hot, the next Sweden, the next Canada, the next Brazil) and a far less
mobile, menial-labor market (consider the more confining, though often musically
exciting, regionalism that Frere-Jones outlines in hip-hop). … The profile of this university demographic often includes a sojourn in extended adolescence, comprising graduate degrees, internships, foreign jaunts, and so on, which easily can last until their early 30s. … If class, at least as much as race, is the elephant in this room, one of the more encouraging signals lately might be the recent mania for Bruce Springsteen—as if a dim memory suddenly
has surfaced that white working-class culture once had a kind of significant
berth in rock ‘n’ roll, too.
October 19th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Uh, pardon me? “With its true spiritual center in Richard Florida-lauded “creative” college towns such as Portland, Ore., this is the music of young “knowledge workers” in training”.
Portland has been called a lot of things including “indie-rock capital”, but college town has never been one of them. If this article’s premise is that this music is a result of college students sticking around after (or without) graduating, then Portland is a poor choice. Madison, Austin, Cambridge — you could make a case, but not Puddletown. Portland State University is just now beginning to approach second-tier status (it was Portland State College as recently as the 60’s), and the good private schools (Reed, Lewis & Clark, U of Portland) are small. There have been papers written on how Portland managed to develop as a research center without a major university.
Yeah, bands he mentions like the Decemberists, the Shins, Dandy Warhols are based here. This isn’t my music so I don’t know a lot about them, but a quick Wikipedia scan falis to mention any of them graduating from college. I hope the rest of the argument is better fact-checked.
October 19th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Michael – Good catch and call.