on 7/2/03 8:33 AM, Kurt Gottschalk at ecstasymule@hotmail.com wrote:
Is it me, or does anyone else find the term "creative music" condescending and elitist?
personally, i prefer meaningless terms that come to vaguely denote something than specific terms about which we can argue semantics. that's why 'downtown' is a good term (albeit a geographically specific one). i also like 'onkyo,' simply because i can never remember what it means. yeah, if you think about it 'creative music' has an elitist twang - where's the line between creative and noncreative? - but it's better than trying to decide if something really is jazz or country or soul.
In all fairness, the earlier terms -- jazz, country, soul -- tended to be put on the music in a much less publicity-oriented way i.e. you can do some research and actually trace their evolution over a longer period of time, and they're a helluva lot more street level. With that said, there were certainly musicians whose output cut across party lines -- Lonnie Johnson, Bob Wills, and Bing Crosby are the first who come to my mind. Back around 1980, you had a term like "post punk" being used to describe bands like Gang of Four, the Contortions, and so forth, and it made sense enough that it was sort of okay. On the other hand, the media had by that point formailzed the meaningless term "new wave", which got stapled to every band with short hair. Anyone remember when John Hiatt was "new wave". Said he was in the press release for SLUG LINE. Anyone remember when Billy Joel "went 'new wave'". That skinny tie he wore on the cover of GLASS HOUSES just said it all, didn't it? There used to be the term "college radio", meaning bands that got played there. Someone in some department decided to pimp the word "alternative" in its stead, and look at what "alternative" has come to mean. "Downtown" never bothered me as a term, because that's where the clubs were (even if so many of the people playing the music live in Brooklyn). But "creative"? It's the new "alternative", which has turned out to be no alternative at all. sh