Musical tastes change over time. As far as popular music goes, you can count on what was popular 10 years ago, not being popular today. That's just the way it is.
And the fact that music is becoming so splintered into different categories makes things even that much more limiting. An artist must stay within their "category" or their label and perhaps even their audience will get upset.
Yes, we've become the "give me everything" culture. Take TV. With cable television, there are now so many selections that coming to a decision on what to watch frequently takes as long as the average show lasts. And who doesn't often watch more than one show at a time to help avoid those annoying commercials.
We often feel the same way about our music. We'd like what we want... And we want it now. So we each have our own music on our music players and seldom venture into new music. Gone forever are the days of 60's radio when you never knew what was going to be played next and regularly heard new music and new styles all the time. You infrequently got stuck in one brand or one band.
Even the bands themselves back then, often played many styles of music. One minute they played a blues song, next a country song, and next a folk song. You might not categorize them into one type of music like today.
But Some Things Never Change
It's strange how some fashions of music are always there. Although they may go out of popular style, they appear to have a following of some degree. The Blues is one of those styles. Even though it was made over 100 years back, there's still a massive enough following for the style to have many magazines and online radio stations devoted to the music.
How come?
I think there are 2 reasons.
First, plenty of other styles are based totally on The Blues. Certainly jazz, and country rock, and all kinds of rock'n'roll came directly from the blues. After all , it was Muddy Waters who said... "The blues had a baby, and they called it Rock and Roll."
Secondly, as folk find out more about the music they adore, whether rock 'n roll or country or jazz, they want to learn more about where the music came from. And these types of music came right from the blues. The chord structure and harmonic dispositions are direct descendants of blues musician's from over 50 years ago.
Yes music connoisseurs want to know the history of the blues music they like. So that the music of blues guitarists like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, and hundreds of other creators of this music will always be popular. At some point, they're going to be "discovered" by the next generation who needs to know the history. But in fact they're being "re-discovered" as they have been by each generation for over 100 years.
So that the lineage continues. Lovers of The Black Keys, are led to Howlin ' Wolf. And that leads them to Robert Johnson and Skip James and a bunch of blues originators who taught him. At some point they're going to get back to the beginning and W.C. Handy.
This search is inevitable. Just like it's inescapable that popular music tastes will continue to change.
And the fact that music is becoming so splintered into different categories makes things even that much more limiting. An artist must stay within their "category" or their label and perhaps even their audience will get upset.
Yes, we've become the "give me everything" culture. Take TV. With cable television, there are now so many selections that coming to a decision on what to watch frequently takes as long as the average show lasts. And who doesn't often watch more than one show at a time to help avoid those annoying commercials.
We often feel the same way about our music. We'd like what we want... And we want it now. So we each have our own music on our music players and seldom venture into new music. Gone forever are the days of 60's radio when you never knew what was going to be played next and regularly heard new music and new styles all the time. You infrequently got stuck in one brand or one band.
Even the bands themselves back then, often played many styles of music. One minute they played a blues song, next a country song, and next a folk song. You might not categorize them into one type of music like today.
But Some Things Never Change
It's strange how some fashions of music are always there. Although they may go out of popular style, they appear to have a following of some degree. The Blues is one of those styles. Even though it was made over 100 years back, there's still a massive enough following for the style to have many magazines and online radio stations devoted to the music.
How come?
I think there are 2 reasons.
First, plenty of other styles are based totally on The Blues. Certainly jazz, and country rock, and all kinds of rock'n'roll came directly from the blues. After all , it was Muddy Waters who said... "The blues had a baby, and they called it Rock and Roll."
Secondly, as folk find out more about the music they adore, whether rock 'n roll or country or jazz, they want to learn more about where the music came from. And these types of music came right from the blues. The chord structure and harmonic dispositions are direct descendants of blues musician's from over 50 years ago.
Yes music connoisseurs want to know the history of the blues music they like. So that the music of blues guitarists like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, and hundreds of other creators of this music will always be popular. At some point, they're going to be "discovered" by the next generation who needs to know the history. But in fact they're being "re-discovered" as they have been by each generation for over 100 years.
So that the lineage continues. Lovers of The Black Keys, are led to Howlin ' Wolf. And that leads them to Robert Johnson and Skip James and a bunch of blues originators who taught him. At some point they're going to get back to the beginning and W.C. Handy.
This search is inevitable. Just like it's inescapable that popular music tastes will continue to change.
About the Author:
Rick Honeyboy Hart is an experienced blues guitarist. He's played in several bands over time and now helps others guitarists learn blues guitar on his site www.BluesGuitarInsider.com