<snip>
A bit further: while a lot of what's being talked about became widely
broadcast in the 60s, whenever that was, as one who predates the 60s I can
tell you that a lot of it was already in place.
[...]
What changed was the reception--the means of dissemination became more
democratic. [MW]
<snip>
Yes. Authenticity isn't self evident and eras certainly don't appear fully
formed. In the UK, trad and skiffle both predate the 60s, for example: thus
the father of a schoolfriend, I discovered, had 78s of Blind Gussie Nesbit;
this in provincial Britain. Satie's musique d'ameublement predates both
environments and muzak by a great many years. Duchamp, dada et al are
obvious forerunners. So too, equally obviously, are the situationists. And
so on.
Identifying the drivers behind quite why so many different things come
together is, I suspect, more difficult. I don't think, pace Jon, that jazz,
folk, film and so forth become admissible simply in belated recognition of
the skill sets involved. Whilst it is true that the means of dissemination
became more democratic this describes an effect, not a cause. Cage's
descriptions of classical musicians who had ceased to listen to one another
or his presentation of pieces in which the conductor simply waved his arms
about irrelevantly speak of something other than, say, the greater
availability of cheap broadcasting and/or recording equipment. My guess is
that other things became interesting out of _need_, in line with different
social formations.
As to minimalism, again there was something else going on besides (and often
instead of) auditory laziness. Thus Satie's *Vexations* becomes interesting
because _simple repetition_ becomes interesting, not because listeners lose
the will to get up off their bottoms or need their ears syringed. Works by
Judd and LeWitt, to put that another way, are more repetitious and
physically less complex than those of, say, Jeff Koons. Though not, I think,
inferior.
CW
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