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Towards the end of December and during early January, it seems
natural to consider the previous year’s album releases and
ponder – if but for a moment – the procession of artists and
chart-toppers and hidden gems and comebacks and falloffs and
just exactly what it all means for music and it’s overall
health? What’s it all mean for where music is at and where
it’s going?
We took it
upon ourselves to digest these questions and meditate them for
a while. Days later, light-bulbs were flashing over our heads,
we started having epiphanies and the emails, texts messages,
instant-message convos and conference calls started popping
off.
After all
the knowledge and banter and disagreements, we each started
putting 2006 into our own respective boxes. The Working Class
Hero is sure that the differences and commonalities of today’s
music consumers (particularly between the ages 18-40) has a
great deal of influence on the music that’s put out and it all
points to the unique make-up of the various generations (Gens
X, Y and the XY Cusp). Albums, such as Food and Liquor
typified this for him, so he wrote about it. Uncle Harry took
a look at the laundry list of albums dropped this past year
and concluded that music is making a comeback after a
multi-year slump. He was particularly heartened by hip-hop’s
2006 performance, so he wrote about it. That’s interesting
(Uncle’s contention that 2006 saw a hop-resurgence) since
Ant-I-Thesis is somewhat agreement with Nas’ assertion that
hip-hop is dead. So in this New Year, Thesis has said good-bye
not only to 2006, but perhaps a heart wrenching farewell to
hip-hop, too…and he wrote about it. But just as we seem doomed
to bury hip-hop, Music Dude extends hope by chronicling a new
genre of music that we call Bridge. It's a mixture of all
music genres in the black idiom that have come before it and
it might be poised to take creativity and artistry to
never-seen-before levels. You can read about that, too.
What do you
make of 2006 and how it impacts music in a grander context? If
you’re as unsure as we were when this exercise began, then
read the essays and let us do some of the heavy-lifting for
you.
The Music Dude |
