Where is popular music going in this 4T? There is something of a consensus on this board that hip-hop is our saeculum's equivalent of jazz. Like jazz, it in the 3T symbolized (for moralistic midlifers) hedonism, sex, and crime. Like jazz, it developed out of a late-2T fad genre (disco became hip-hop, ragtime became jazz). Like jazz, it was a subculture riddled with personal scandal, untimely deaths, and drug dealing.

But in the 1930s jazz's style and image changed dramatically. With the repeal of Prohibition, the onset of the Depression, and the ubiquitous popularity of the genre among young G.I.s, jazz became softer, whiter (to put it bluntly), and standardized into a more establishment-friendly form. The 1920s honky-tonk naughtiness of "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Let's Do It" became the upbeat Big Band sound of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Glenn Miller. Is there any chance of a similar extreme makeover for hip-hop? And if so, how? What will it look like, sound like?

In the event of a financial crisis, I think we'll see a rise in street performances. Whether this will incorporate hip-hop or not remains to be seen, but why not?

There could be a genre made up of hip hop and teen pop with a little 90's nostalgia fused together. I know that sounds awful but with good lyrics it could pass the corny-meter. I never thought teen pop producers were all that bad. Just the people who were performing it...

Originally Posted by 90s_Boy

There could be a genre made up of hip hop and teen pop with a little 90's nostalgia fused together. I know that sounds awful but with good lyrics it could pass the corny-meter. I never thought teen pop producers were all that bad. Just the people who were performing it...

Britney one of 'em?

The extreme makeover of hip-hop is already underway. It has been since it reached it's artistic height sometime around 2003. They barely rap in hip-hop anymore, it's becoming more melodic with sampled melodies rather than just a beat and maybe a bassline, and singer-rapper combinations are showing up a lot.

Hip-hop as we knew it in the 90s is dead. So is grunge and other punk-based rock. Both have moved to a more melodic route, and that trend is going to continue on for the duration of the crisis.

Originally Posted by sean '90

Britney one of 'em?

Actually Britney's first album was fantastic... well produced, competently sung and very clean cut. Whoda thunk she'd morph from a late 90s verson of Debbie Gibson, to a Pam Anderson wannabe in the 00s?

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Actually Britney's first album was fantastic... well produced, competently sung and very clean cut. Whoda thunk she'd morph from a late 90s verson of Debbie Gibson, to a Pam Anderson wannabe in the 00s?

Yeah, WTF's up w/that girl, anyways?

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

In the event of a financial crisis, I think we'll see a rise in street performances. Whether this will incorporate hip-hop or not remains to be seen, but why not?

If the streets are safe, that is. I keep hearing that if we have a depression or severe financial crisis that crime and mayhem is going to run out of control, perhaps to the extent of Bandenkreig.

If the streets aren't safe, I can't see those still employed even going to work, much less attending a concert miles from home. Maybe I'm wrong though and people will brave high crime to seek escape.

Otherwise, that kind of thing happened in the 1930's, though auditoriums and ballrooms were also used in rainy or winter weather or at night.

I would think other musical forms will also experience this. Nominal admission fees at most and a casual atmosphere, not the heavily armed fortresses--I mean arenas and mind-blowing ticket costs we have now.

I think recorded music will shift entirely to mp3s and internet by that time. What sez everyone else?

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

In the event of a financial crisis, I think we'll see a rise in street performances. Whether this will incorporate hip-hop or not remains to be seen, but why not?

We will see a rise in street performances of every kind. In music it will be everything; we will see cellists playing Bach's Suites for Cello and keyboard players giving Beethoven's piano sonatas on every portable keyboard possible. All to attract the coin of the realm on the street corner. We will see jazz, country, rock, and of course whatever musical genre can draw a crowd. We will see about every possible performance from poetry readings to juggling, belly dancing, and clown acts.

People who have even a modest level of talent for performance but who long thought it wiser to work in some cube farm in some glass box because of a steady paycheck will find that when the steady paychecks disappear that they will have to find other ways in which to try to eke out livings. In such melancholy times it will be necessary for some to dust off the tenor saxophone and play Melancholy Baby in the hope that some generous passers-by will throw some money into the instrument case.

Originally Posted by Let The Pot Boil

If the streets are safe, that is. I keep hearing that if we have a depression or severe financial crisis that crime and mayhem is going to run out of control, perhaps to the extent of Bandenkreig.

If the streets aren't safe, I can't see those still employed even going to work, much less attending a concert miles from home. Maybe I'm wrong though and people will brave high crime to seek escape.

People won't get away with crime any more than they did in the 1930s. Criminals will be hunted down and punished severely as examples to those who might think of dishonest and violent ways of surviving. Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and Pretty Boy Floyd were all chased down and died in gun battles with police, singly or in groups.

Even if the public temperament is relatively liberal, reformist, and humane (America in the 1930s), the worst predators are likely to be executed. Violent crime will be shown as a means of achieving either death or long prison terms. The streets will be safe, at least by 1970s standards. Heck, I make occasional trips to downtown Chicago and even Detroit for culture, and I have more fear of being hit by a car than being mugged. (Of course, I go where crowds are and don't do any drinking out of town).

Otherwise, that kind of thing happened in the 1930's, though auditoriums and ballrooms were also used in rainy or winter weather or at night.

People will be seeking entertainment accessible to the entire family -- something to which they can take their 80-year-old grandparents and their small children. Popular music is likely to return to what it was around 1935: sanitized, witty, and successful at multiple levels of esthetics. Think of Haydn and Mozart around the time of the French Revolution, and (Johann) Strauss waltzes and Stephen Foster songs in the mid-1900s. Think also of the Big Band era. Good riddance to obscenity-sodden, cynical music of any genre.

Don't ignore movies: the 1930s were a certifiably great time for finding cinematic entertainment. It's possible to watch almost any movie from the time and find something not only entertaining but also "family-friendly".

Technology, to be sure, dictated part of the reality for movies and music: a radio was an expensive object, and few families had more than one. Whoever controlled the radio dial determined whatever everyone else listened to if they stayed in listening distance, whether the material was dance music, a serial, or some religious sermon. Movie theaters were the veritable opera houses of their day, and most communities could afford only so many one. That could throw curves into any prediction should economic conditions allow the survival of a large middle class.

I would think other musical forms will also experience this. Nominal admission fees at most and a casual atmosphere, not the heavily armed fortresses--I mean arenas and mind-blowing ticket costs we have now.

I think recorded music will shift entirely to mp3s and internet by that time. What sez everyone else?

CDs are still durable, and portable CD players and boom boxes are dirt-cheap. The sound quality available from CDs (contrast less-durable LPs and tapes today since they haven't been made in appreciable numbers since the 1980s) People aren't discarding their CDs -- yet.

I have yet to see major retailers abandoning the CD. They may be abandoning genres; some mass retailers that used to be great sources of classical music (Best Buy, Circuit City) have largely abandoned it.

I am convinced in satellite radio as a source of recorded music. it will have a homogenizing effect on genres (in short, the R&B music on XM/Sirius will be the same in Tyler, Texas as it is in New York City) -- but without satellite radio there might not be R&B available in either place, let alone on a car stereo somewhere between Wendover, Utah and Winnemucca, Nevada . That format, once wildly successful, is no longer viable on broadcast radio because it has the "wrong" demographic. Old, that is, and advertisers seem to think that people in their 50s are trash as a market. Satellite radio can make it available so long as a significant audience exists, even if it is only twenty or so people in a city of 50,000. Subscription revenue is more reliable than is the choice of advertisers.

pbrowers2a said of the 1930s "Whoever controlled the radio dial determined whatever everyone else listened to if they stayed in listening distance, whether the material was dance music, a serial, or some religious sermon."

By the time I was old enough to remember listening to radio, they were cheap enough that a kid could have a bedside radio and fall asleep listening to it. But I can tell you who would have controlled the radio in the 1930s - the head of the family, usually the father, with concessions made (after negotiation or simple request) to the tastes of the mother and some made for the kids. But the controls were in Dad's hands as surely as the TV was in the 1950s and the family car from the earliest days on up to the first days of the cheap riceburner cars and the two-car family.

BTW - you mention the road from Winnemucca to Wendover. That is decidedly audiobook territory, but look out for sheep on the road!

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

pbrowers2a said of the 1930s "Whoever controlled the radio dial determined whatever everyone else listened to if they stayed in listening distance, whether the material was dance music, a serial, or some religious sermon."

By the time I was old enough to remember listening to radio, they were cheap enough that a kid could have a bedside radio and fall asleep listening to it. But I can tell you who would have controlled the radio in the 1930s - the head of the family, usually the father, with concessions made (after negotiation or simple request) to the tastes of the mother and some made for the kids. But the controls were in Dad's hands as surely as the TV was in the 1950s and the family car from the earliest days on up to the first days of the cheap riceburner cars and the two-car family.

Such is technology; such is economics. In the 1930s, radios (and phonographs) were sold on long-term installment plans, demonstrating their expense for the time. In the 1950s, radios and phonographs had become inexpensive and televisions were new and expensive. Something expensive (a radio or a phonograph in the 1930s, a television in the 1950s, a VCR or a DVD/CD player in the 1970s, or a "personal" computer in the 1990s, or an automobile at any time) is far easier for the head of the household to control than is something cheap (like a radio, portable television, or DVD player today). I could speak of phonographs and VCRs... except that few people are buying them, let alone the LP records or recorded video played upon them.

I can't rule out that the 2010s will not be hard times, times in which the experience of the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath won't get retold, not so much in film or opera adaptations, but instead in real life by people who once thought themselves secure from the harshest vicissitudes of economics.

If anything, people stand to lose more -- having to divest themselves of consumer goods accumulated in times like this decade that may look good by contrast. The trip may be less dangerous (one might have to travel on Interstate 40 through eastern California, but with air conditioning) or much less time-consuming (cheap air travel in the airline equivalent of steerage) -- but there might be only one radio in the car. The driver will control that. If the travel is by jetliner, then it will require people to travel very light -- and the poignant scene of a former middle-class family having to divest itself of even more consumer goods and mementos (the grandmother having to burn a postcard from a pre-1907 New York World's Fair addressed to the family in "Oklahoma Territory") will be even more melodramatic.

BTW - you mention the road from Winnemucca to Wendover. That is decidedly audiobook territory, but look out for sheep on the road!

Good analysis of a monotonous highway with horrible radio reception, at least by day, except for the sheep (maybe you remember old US 40). At least between Salt Lake City and Wendover one could get SLC, Ogden, or Provo radio through the Salt Flats, through which I insisted on control of the radio because I was driving. Classical music, but not very good -- some overblown trifles by Debbie Sissy (Debussy, who did write some meatier works). My brother and I were driving an old family car from Michigan to the San Francisco area -- my parents found that they could get only a pittance in trade for it on a new car and insisted that my brother get the car... but between the weakening Salt Lake City (Wendover) and strengthening Reno signals (Winnemucca) there were at most two weak signals available locally -- one C&W and one NPR station, either of which was wobbling into oblivion near a mountain pass. The car lacks a CD player, so one can rule out audiobooks for it.

I got three days in the Bay area -- the best three days of the last five years. I guess I don't belong in Michigan Militia country.

The answer to both points you raised - the horrible radio reception in the boonies and no CD player in the car, and dad controlling the radio, have actually been rendered obsolete by four little letters:

"iPod." The ubiquitous iPod. Think that will go away? Hah.

I need to get one and see how it works.

Heard on Progressive 8-tracks in the Awakening:

Dongfang hóng, tàiyáng sheng,
Zhongguó chu liao ge Máo Zédong,
Ta wèi rénmín móu xìngfú,
Hu er hei yo, ta shì rénmín dà jiù xing!
Máo zhuxí, ài rénmín,
Ta shì womén de dài lù rén
Wèi liao jiànshè xin Zhongguó,
Hu er hei yo, lingdao womén xiàng qiánjìn!
Gòngchandang, xiàng tàiyáng,
Zhào dào nali nali liàng,
Nali you liao Gòngchandang,
Hu er hei yo, nali rénmín dé jiefàng!



Coming soon to your Progressive I-pod:

The west is blue, the sun is rising.
America has brought forth a S.W.O.T.E..
She amasses fortune for the people,
Hurrah, she is the people's great savior.
POTUS Rodham loves the people,
She is our guide,
To build a new America,
Hurrah, she leads us forward!
The Democrat Party is like the sun,
Wherever it shines, it is bright.
Wherever there is the Democrat Party,
Hurrah, there the people are liberated!

Be happy in your work!!

I think there will be a plethora of percussion as the Progressives begin to march.

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

Heard on Progressive 8-tracks in the Awakening:
[
Coming soon to your Progressive I-pod:

The west is blue, the sun is rising.
America has brought forth a S.W.O.T.E..
She amasses fortune for the people,
Hurrah, she is the people's great savior.
POTUS Rodham loves the people,
She is our guide,
To build a new America,
Hurrah, she leads us forward!
The Democrat Party is like the sun,
Wherever it shines, it is bright.
Wherever there is the Democrat Party,
Hurrah, there the people are liberated!

Be happy in your work!!

Here's my parody of the Deutschlandlied as an observation of current economic and bureaucratic elites:

Profit, profit over ev'rything!
Damn the public,
Give 'em the shaft!
We don't need excessive government,
All we need is plenty of graft!
We don't want any commie unions
Our indulgence to annoy!
Send the liberals
And their pinko friends
All on a one-way trip
To Hanoi!

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

I think there will be a plethora of percussion as the Progressives begin to march.

Well, the millies kids down the street have started a garage band.
They got a great drummer and have a fairly heavy, Led Zepplinish sound with lyrics more or less about how much Bush sucks.

Even though the mainstream hip hop scene is finally changing (e.g. Kanye West's "Stronger"), I'm still SICK of it at this point. There needs to be a major overhaul in this genre with both the image and sound.

There is still quality underground hip hop but I want to like a song that's in the top 40 list, not something I have to dig around on the internet to find.

I'm hoping hip hop will go back to its more fun and upbeat roots like when it just started entering mainstream in the 80's. Todays rap music is supposedly danceable but it sounds too retarded for me to enjoy (anyone know wtf "A Bay Bay" is supposed to mean?? ).

So yeah...I had to get that small rant off my chest.

Originally Posted by 90s_Boy

Even though the mainstream hip hop scene is finally changing (e.g. Kanye West's "Stronger"), I'm still SICK of it at this point. There needs to be a major overhaul in this genre with both the image and sound.

There is still quality underground hip hop but I want to like a song that's in the top 40 list, not something I have to dig around on the internet to find.

I'm hoping hip hop will go back to its more fun and upbeat roots like when it just started entering mainstream in the 80's. Todays rap music is supposedly danceable but it sounds too retarded for me to enjoy (anyone know wtf "A Bay Bay" is supposed to mean?? ).

So yeah...I had to get that small rant off my chest.

No, I agree. I'm sick to death of hip-hop. It's been the same stuff as long as I can remember. When will real singers and real instruments hit the Hot 100 again?

It will be interesting to see how it evolves and "blandifies", if indeed it does, over the next ten years.

Originally Posted by 1990

No, I agree. I'm sick to death of hip-hop. It's been the same stuff as long as I can remember. When will real singers and real instruments hit the Hot 100 again?

It will be interesting to see how it evolves and "blandifies", if indeed it does, over the next ten years.

Hopefully it doesn't "blandify" in quality. I don't even want to imagine it getting any lower than it is now.

Originally Posted by 90s_Boy

Hopefully it doesn't "blandify" in quality. I don't even want to imagine it getting any lower than it is now.

Me neither. I would prefer rap proper to simply go away.

As for hiphop music that is actually sung... some of it is OK... but most of it seems to be where disco was this week in 1979.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Me neither. I would prefer rap proper to simply go away.

As for hiphop music that is actually sung... some of it is OK... but most of it seems to be where disco was this week in 1979.

If the late 1930s and early 1940s were any indication we are likely to see a fusion of popular and art music into accessible and dance-worthy material that generations other than their creators and performers can appreciate. Think of Big Band. Think of Johann Strauss' waltzes. Think of the music of Haydn and Mozart around 1790. Oh -- Haydn and Mozart are "classical"? Sure -- but their music operates on multiple levels of esthetics. Haydn and Mozart wrote the most accessible of all Classical music.

It will be simple enough for children to understand, but sophisticated enough for adults to find intriguing. It will be naughty more in form than in content; it will be sentimental without being sappy.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

If the late 1930s and early 1940s were any indication we are likely to see a fusion of popular and art music into accessible and dance-worthy material that generations other than their creators and performers can appreciate. Think of Big Band. Think of Johann Strauss' waltzes. Think of the music of Haydn and Mozart around 1790. Oh -- Haydn and Mozart are "classical"? Sure -- but their music operates on multiple levels of esthetics. Haydn and Mozart wrote the most accessible of all Classical music.

It will be simple enough for children to understand, but sophisticated enough for adults to find intriguing. It will be naughty more in form than in content; it will be sentimental without being sappy.

The problem with that projection is: what form of 'art music' would one blend with 3T pop this time around, to get a quintessential 4T style?

In the Civil War Crisis era, it was Romantic period classical music blended with folk melodies to beget Strauss waltzes. During the Great Power Crisis, it was jazz watered down to form swing and early crooner tunes. What art music would be used this time? A new form of art music hasn't really emerged at all within the Millennial Saeculum. There is, of course, modern progressive jazz, however it is but a pale shadow of the classic, mid-20th Century jazz of Coltrane and Vaughan... more like bad R&B-covers as elevator music.

So... what, then?

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

The problem with that projection is: what form of 'art music' would one blend with 3T pop this time around, to get a quintessential 4T style?

In the Civil War Crisis era, it was Romantic period classical music blended with folk melodies to beget Strauss waltzes. During the Great Power Crisis, it was jazz watered down to form swing and early crooner tunes. What art music would be used this time? A new form of art music hasn't really emerged at all within the Millennial Saeculum. There is, of course, modern progressive jazz, however it is but a pale shadow of the classic, mid-20th Century jazz of Coltrane and Vaughan... more like bad R&B-covers as elevator music.

So... what, then?

Strauss for the 1860s, and Mozart and Haydn for the 1780s, made music for the educated and the wealthy. That's not pop music. Glenn Miller *was* doing pop music. What was the actual popular music of earlier 4Ts?

Originally Posted by 1990

Strauss for the 1860s, and Mozart and Haydn for the 1780s, made music for the educated and the wealthy. That's not pop music. Glenn Miller *was* doing pop music. What was the actual popular music of earlier 4Ts?

the decadent Old European waltz in the 1780s, "Yankee Doodle"

"Battle Hym of the Republic (sic)", "Dixie" in the 1860s, Stephen Foster's "minstrel" songs on sheet