Listening to the radio these days is about as painful as watching a Kay Jewelers commercial alone on Valentine's Day. Most of the music is synthesized garbage that sounds as if it were inspired by the eight-bit noises of my hand-held poker game. Rap rehashes its stultifying "give me booty, beer and a blunt" attitude, pop panders mindless lyricism and pre-packaged identities to pre-pubescent tweens, metal recalls the guttural cries of a dying wombat and soft rock isn't rock it's just soft. I don't mind when this stuff is relegated to the basements of Webster Avenue, but please, have mercy on my stereo.
This problem is propagated largely by the fact that large corporate conglomerates bring an impersonal, McDonald's style approach to radio, making one locality's offerings indistinguishable from another's. A good power chord progression outsells originality any day, while creativity, emotion and independence are marginalized like Darwinism in rural Alabama.
As a result, some audiophiles, like Glenn Branca of The New York Times, have lost hope in a propitious future of music. In a recent Times column, Branca wrote that we are at "the end of music." He believes we are witnessing the final, unfortunate shift in the evolution of sound and are in an age characterized by myopia and stagnancy. "The new music is just the old music again Why bother making any new [songs]? Why bother doing anything new at all?" he wrote.
Luckily, Mr. Branca's philippic written with fashionable nihilistic flair is nothing more than pseudo-intellectual sour grapes. Perhaps what he means is that his own thirteen symphonies (he is a composer) have not been received as benevolently as he had wished.
Mr. Branca's bombastic and unsubstantiated claims remind us that while music is perpetual, hearing is intermittent. His article provides less evidence for a dearth of good new music than it does for his half-hearted attempts to find it. When we love to hate what's playing on the radio, it can be easy to ignore the diversity of brilliance surrounding us.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of Dartmouth students share Branca's apathetic approach towards musical exploration, despite access to exciting musical opportunities that transcend the recycled cacophony of FM radio. For instance, only seven undergraduates partook in a discussion with piano virtuoso Emanuel Ax on Jan. 7 prior to his show at Spaulding Auditorium. And there were even free sandwiches! Seldom will we have chances like these to engage in thoughtful (and funny) discourse with a Grammy winner once we leave Dartmouth. Nor will we be able to pay $10 to hear Ravi Shankar's transcendental Sitar playing, or the Carolina Chocolate Drops' revved-up brand of African-American Appalachian string music, or the hard-swinging big-band sound of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Yet student attendance at Hop performances remains sparse. Indeed, according to Margaret Lawrence, the director of programming at the Hopkins Center for the Arts, student ticket sales comprise only 30 percent of overall sales for performances.
We often are too busy writing papers, slaving over problem sets, rushing to meetings, lifting weights and browsing Facebook to take advantage of every incredible opportunity thrown our way. That's okay. I'm not suggesting we collectively embrace the identity of disenfranchised artists who buy $4 lattes, lionize Andy Warhol and waste hours rummaging through thrift shops for the perfect pair of jeans to match striped shirts.
But it's just tragic that we do not indulge ourselves more frequently in the wonderful musical opportunities here at the College. After all, in ten years we're more likely to remember the Ying Quartet's dazzling rendition of Beethoven's Quartet in C Major than our history reading on the impact of Lithuanian involvement in the Hussite Wars.
Life at Dartmouth is one long, gorgeous song. Start the music.
