Segmented Society

David Brooks, an often conservative columnist for the NY Times, wrote about the fractioning of music into subgenres and the lack of any bands that span many age and ethnic groups yesterday, read it here. After reading it, my wandering thoughts are below...

While I cannot comment on the overall musical depth of knowledge of current musicians, I can't really say that I can totally agree that the lack of bands like Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band and Rolling Stones are necessarily a sign of our declining national experience. While I do think that the prevailence of pop performers (let's be honest, we can't really call these American Idol type people musicians) who do not (1) write their own music and (2) know how to play an instrument is disturbing, I think there are still many cases of music bringing people together.

I find this especially relevant since I went to my first breakdancing competition this weekend (as an audience member only). While the competitors were all male, their ethnicity ran from Asian, African American, Hispanic, Eastern Bloc, to suburban white. The DJ played mostly things that I didn't really recognized, but a free dance intermission was prolonged when the DJ started playing James Brown (universal and timeless). There was also a point were he played a mambo tune (interesting to see many of the breakdancers not sure what to do with that, but many of the ladies started taking the lead).



Every once and a while, you still get to see the melting pot in action, and it's quite incredible. While I still see the segmented society that Mr. Brooks speaks about in his column, I'm not sure that music is either a symptom or a cause of it. I often feel that there is a lack of shared experiences, or a lack of recognition of these shared experiences, in our culture today.

Looking back in my life, I can think of 3 moments of "where were you when..." that people my age can look back to. (1) The Challenger exploding (I was in my 2nd grade classroom with Mrs McGwirck (SP??)), (2) OJ's verdict and his Bronco chase (Verdict - Mr Wunderlin's Calculus class), and (3) 9/11 (GE Appliance Park, Dishwasher building, most info came to me on my pager news system since the web was ground to a halt as everyone tried to get on news sites). It's interesting that I think that (1) and (3) are probably a very similar experience for all Americans not from the areas hit (obviously different for those who knew/lost loved ones), but (2) appears to be a very different experience based largely on what race you are. There's still a large schism when it comes to race (and in many ways class, IMO) in this country and I often wonder about how that affects us socially and politically.