Allison Outhit posted this to the Pho list:
What we need is Slow Music. Just like Slow Food. It’s a perfect metaphor.
Slow Music would focus on local, sustainable artists who don’t have to travel thousands of miles to get to your “table”. Slow Music appreciates and promotes “heritage crops” (ie, life-long careers… Artists over 30…) as well as tasty new varietals.
Slow Music tastes better, looks brighter, comes in astonishing variety. It may look a bit flawed compared to the airbrushed Frankenbands we’re used to having foisted on us. But that’s because it’s non-GMO, farmed, produced and consumed with care by people who give a damn.
That’s a beautiful idea, not to mention a very fine marketing angle for local music.>
For example, there’s a piano teacher in your neighborhood who really can play the hell out of Brahms, and there are people in the neighborhood who’d enjoy great Brahms playing if they didn’t have to get dressed up and go to symphony hall.
I went last Saturday night to our local library auditorium, where the friends of the library sponsored a really fine jazz harpist doing arrangements of holiday songs, and the local symphony chorus did a selection of international songs of the various seasons. The arrangements and skill on display where amazing.
On the other hand, I saw on public television a major-label ensemble do a bombastic holiday special which was amusing in its scope, but ultimately entirely pre-packaged and non-local.
The comparison struck me.
In the DFW area we have a 2 plus million dollar population base. There’s no reason why we couldn’t “grow local”. Indeed, we used to have an indie rock scene that was very “local grown”.
Houston and Detroit and Atlanta still have hip hop scenes in which the local acts are more important than the national acts.
I think that the Slow Music metaphor is a very appealing way to “see” the way analog music must proceed.
that’s two million plus “people” not dollar.
The “Frankenband” straw man puts me off at first, but your example is a good one. Street musicians come to mind. But not everybody wants to go play on the street.
For myself I’m not totally clear on which music qualifies as slow.