HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAESTRO!
"Today the trend is to minimize the idea of what a song is. To knock it down to two notes. [Laughs] This kind of weird banality. It’s like you say, “Well, today I do the following…” And you call that a song? Or just this reduction kind of thing, where there’s nothing in the pot anymore. Well, you just boiled it all out. What is this then?
Is it just me cause I’m grumpy? Joachim says he feels the same way. He’s 40 years old. So what the hell’s going on here? Where’s the tune? Where’s the melody? Where’s the poetry? Why is that so not in evidence? You can’t blame hip-hop for everything.
Is it the fault of the digital world? I think, maybe, because everything happens too fast, that you don’t build a craft, you don’t build artistry in yourself. And you don’t listen. If you don’t listen to music, all music, I don’t see how you know. It’s like a child learning to talk without having heard people speaking.
What are you gonna do, start talking in abbreviations, like texting? And that’s exactly what’s happening.
It would be like never reading a book. If you don’t read books and you don’t understand experience, how the hell can you write about it and sing about it? Or you’re just going to end up writing about yourself. Then it’s like everybody’s in a closet with themselves, and it’s very limited and it’s very unappealing and I don’t like it.
So you say what’s happening with songs. Music is fundamental and it is human. That’s exactly what it is.
So the question is will there come a time when the Beethoven string quartet will cease to have meaning? Because people can’t relate to them anymore. They won’t understand their role or their lives vis a vis those notes. Is it irrelevant? Can Bach become irrelevant? Can Jimmy Van Heusen [laughs] become irrelevant? I think so. Picasso. Is he going to speak to people? Or are they just going to think it’s weird? We’ll see about that. Time will tell.
by Paul Zollo / American Songwriter
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