I've had pretty good luck generating interest in "difficult music", although what we around here consider difficult is kind of to the left of anyone else's definition, so you're totally right in that respect.. If you attempt to swing somebody's sympathies to Zorn, SPY VS SPY -- no matter how much you may like it -- probably won't work. "The Sicilian Clan", on the other hand, has gotten people around me quite interested. As for the "excuse" about certain music not getting on the radio. Maybe it is an excuse, but I also think there are people who design and build their music without considering whether or not it's going to fit into an existing broadcast format. What radio format is set up for THE GIFT? That's some non-difficult stuff by any yardstick. But if you're not going to be on the radio (by your own design), you're not going to attract people the usual way. There are zillions of really compelling people who have a problem filling even a small space. So be it. If they care enough to make the music, and the audience doesn't care how how many people share their taste, that's fine too. If those artists really care that much about numbers, enough of them have the musicianship to be in Top 40 bands or whatever. But, thankfully, they care about the music they make, so they do that, even if it's in obscurity. You put up with a lot of crap to do music. You'd better love the music you do. sh on 11/12/02 11:34 AM, Patrice L. Roussel at proussel@ichips.intel.com wrote:
On Mon, 11 Nov 2002 21:44:38 -0800 skip Heller wrote:
on 11/11/02 9:08 PM, D Dvb at d_dvb@hotmail.com wrote:
Sometimes I think the reason why some "difficult" music doesn't reach more people isn't because the average person can't understand it but rather the average person picks up on the snottiness and self-importance that radiates from SOME of the music/performers.
I'd agree with that point if the audience was filled with more people who had not been exposed to that artist before. I think the reason it doesn;t reach more people is because it doesn't get on the radio.
The usual excuse...
I have plenty of examples of friends dragged to concert of (allegedly) "difficult" music and who never came back on their own. And I won't talk about lending records, playing the music, talking about it, etc, with the naive expectation of creating some excitement (for artists I believed deserved more). Most of the artists I was listening to twenty years ago still have trouble to fill a small size room (even with hundreds of records in their discographies). You should expect that after so many records, so many concerts, articles, the word of mouth would work and some (relative) fame would come, no? Since that's not the case, maybe the problem is somewhere else.
The problem of "difficult" music is the music itself. Once you say bye to melody and/or rhythm, you practically end up alone on the road... The second problem is the mass of music produced with the fragmentation of the genres that make practically any non-mainstream artist invisible on any radar screen. The offer of music has simply grown faster than the audience, and since so much of this music barely goes beyond the "interesting" category, this music simply reaches the member of the church and the rest of the world lives fine ignoring it (since the rest of the world does not have money to buy "interesting" records).
Now I am a little bit confused about what people on this list call "difficult" music. The NYDS music of more than ten years ago was definitely in that category. But there is practically nobody in the NYDS these days who does "difficult music" (unless you identify sparce audiences with "difficult"). All I see is nice compositions, "a la maniere de", relectures of folk music, klezmer variations, etc. Which means that if the NYDS has visibility troubles, it is certainly not by being "difficult".
Patrice.