What would slow music be?
A relevant aspect of slow food, per wikipedia, is that:
It claims to preserve the cultural cuisine and the associated food plants and seeds, domestic animals, and farming within an ecoregion.
So local musicians and styles. Does that mean garage rock in Boston, hair metal in LA, and hardcore in DC? Here’s a gurdonark comment on the previous post:
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.
Maybe there’s an asshole factor. The musicians have to be pretty damn great, but the point isn’t to get arena rock musicians to come over for dinner. Having Axel Rose come over to mooch beers is probably a drag.
The World Institute of Slowness has an Alan Watts vs South Park mashup on slow music:
I dunno, though, man. The whole thing seems like it’s pining for the past.
One thing I’ll say about my own (living history) music, anyhow: it’s slow. The edits that most musicians make with software, I do with practice and retakes. If I want a section to be rounder or sharper I need to find a way to get my hands to do it in real time, and then I have to get enough repetition in that I’ll keep doing it when I’m on stage. If I’m making a recording I have to keep doing takes until I get one with all the details the way I want them to be. It makes me think about life in the olden days.