The Ghosts of Generae Past

We've all seen the t-shirts with the slogan, "Rock 'N Roll Will Never Die" on the front, maybe sporting a grinning skull with a rose clenched between the teeth and a snake crawling out of an eye socket. You can probably find one for cheap in a discount department store right down the street. This sentiment is not a new one, nor has it been restricted to Rock 'N Roll alone. It has been the cry of devotees to a genera throughout the ages; people who feel a certain emotional connection to their beloved style stake a claim of eternity on it; it's the ever-human attempt to perpetuate something for generations to come. But what distinguishes the living from the dead in music? Is it how much money that style does or doesn't bring in, or how many people play it? I believe that there is more to it than that, and that many of the generae we claim for eternity have already died in bed next to us.
The great clarinet player and innovator in Jazz Sidney Bichet once said, "Jazz will never die." And if you look at the industry, he's quite right. There is most certainly a niche for the continuation of what we call "Jazz". But consider Sidney's Jazz to what we call Jazz today. He started out as a midwife of dixieland, and continued until his death in the sixties. But can we honestly say that any of the Jazz that's put out now could attain the depth of Coltrane or Holiday? Hardly.


We call Latin a dead language, yet somehow people still make money off of it; they can speak it, and can tell you everything about the culture in which it thrived. These are the archivers of Latin, the "language experts," who look at it as though it were a prized butterfly collection on their wall. There are even five distinct permutations of Latin still in active use today: French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese. Then how come Latin is considered "dead"? What constitutes its demise? Here is where we get down to the essence of the livelyhood of something: The reason Latin is dead is because no one lives it anymore. Like a father, it has had childeren and passed on. Similarly, we need to accept the passing of some of our beloved generae from the present.

Hip-hop is the first type of music whose childeren have foreseen and accepted its demise. Several times lately there have been moguls who have said, "Hip-hop is dead." And it's death is due to the very things that we think keep other generae alive: boosted sales, more artists, bigger niche. What those things have produced is something so far from the heart that pumped life into it, that it has either become a whole new entity, or is a walking shell of with no vital organs attached. This style has gone through the life-cycle more quickly than any other in history.


Our society is one of containment and rehashing. Every new record has its comparisons to other records; every category has multitudes of sub-categoreys; most artists are enamored with the past, and their music reflects that. We are a culture of conflation. Distinctions are constantly blurred at the edges. A wide grey expanse buffers strict white and straight black. Is this a bad thing? Yes and no...

We cling to these types - "Rock 'N Roll", "Jazz", "Hip-hop" - because they're familiar, they're comfortable - they're safe. Who is doing anything dangerous anymore? Something that requires real faith to execute day in and day out...something fresh...something alive.

But there is a New Birth on the horizon...one that gets us back to those "dearest freshness deep-down things" that Hopkins so elloquently observed were interred in the soil - in the soil and soul of humanity.