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by Elizabeth Ware
Spring is a great time of year; one of my favorites. The sun starts to shine more and the days are getting longer. Flowers start to poke their heads out of the ground, leaves return to the tree, birds come back and resume their serenades, and it feels good to be outside. I look forward to opening the windows and letting the fresh air in – even if it makes me sneeze for awhile. It’s fun to sweep of the deck, curiously wonder what will reappear from last year’s garden, and start making plans to plant new things in the ground. All winter long, I’m waiting to inhale spring. It feels good
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Spring also ushers in a new year of festivals and concerts. Berks Jazz Festival is the smooth jazz equivalent of crocuses pushing their heads out of the cold winter ground. Music starts to come back to life. New CD releases start to appear. I think we all share the anticipation for Music Spring, perhaps even more so this year. Concerts and festivals aside, it’s been a long time since we’ve experienced an exciting Music Spring. I personally, find it harder and harder to find a new CD that excites me enough to want to write a review of it.
For me, they all either sound the same, or they sound like repeats… and repeats of repeats. Déjà vu all over again. I’m even finding it hard to get excited about my favorite artists’ new releases. It’s not just smooth jazz. It seems as though somewhere in the mid-to-late-90s truly new music stopped appearing anywhere on this planet.
A good argument can be made (and has) that the music industry fell deep into the greed pit of the 90s, and in doing so, chose to delight in profit to the exclusion of creativity, when they should have used some of that profit to develop and encourage it. In doing so, they effectively put themselves on the same road as so many other industries… now all gasping for air and hoping for a life-line. Now, in 2009, radio is irrelevant and most people buy their music on iTunes and listen on their iPods or internet radio. It is, at least, easier to find the remnants of creativity there.
Still we seem stuck between what was – big labels and hit-making radio station; and what could be – artists with free reign to produce truly cutting-edge music. We seem stuck in that eternal winter of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. What we need to do is to stop the wake, bury the bodies and get on with living. It’s a new season… a new Music Spring. Let’s open the windows and let the fresh air in. We are all waiting desperately to inhale it.
.
Spring also ushers in a new year of festivals and concerts. Berks Jazz Festival is the smooth jazz equivalent of crocuses pushing their heads out of the cold winter ground. Music starts to come back to life. New CD releases start to appear. I think we all share the anticipation for Music Spring, perhaps even more so this year. Concerts and festivals aside, it’s been a long time since we’ve experienced an exciting Music Spring. I personally, find it harder and harder to find a new CD that excites me enough to want to write a review of it.
For me, they all either sound the same, or they sound like repeats… and repeats of repeats. Déjà vu all over again. I’m even finding it hard to get excited about my favorite artists’ new releases. It’s not just smooth jazz. It seems as though somewhere in the mid-to-late-90s truly new music stopped appearing anywhere on this planet.
A good argument can be made (and has) that the music industry fell deep into the greed pit of the 90s, and in doing so, chose to delight in profit to the exclusion of creativity, when they should have used some of that profit to develop and encourage it. In doing so, they effectively put themselves on the same road as so many other industries… now all gasping for air and hoping for a life-line. Now, in 2009, radio is irrelevant and most people buy their music on iTunes and listen on their iPods or internet radio. It is, at least, easier to find the remnants of creativity there.
Still we seem stuck between what was – big labels and hit-making radio station; and what could be – artists with free reign to produce truly cutting-edge music. We seem stuck in that eternal winter of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. What we need to do is to stop the wake, bury the bodies and get on with living. It’s a new season… a new Music Spring. Let’s open the windows and let the fresh air in. We are all waiting desperately to inhale it.
