If Music be the Food of Life . . .

The other day I was talking with a friend of mine about the sad state of music today, how artists aren’t really artist anymore and are only bothered with selling what they have to sell and not create something that will live on long after they do. About how no one makes albums anymore. they just make sure they have one or two “hit” songs in an album and your done. Speaking ofwhich, what is a “hit” song exactly? Something that momentarily, say for a period of a week or so, stays relevant to the entertainment world and that’s it. They make their money on that and they’re happy!! It’s like they’ve washed their hands off it. And in that moment as a passing comment I said music today is like fast food: cheap, momentarily satisfactory and almost never good for you.

That got me thinking; is the pattern of food over the ages is vaguely similar to music? And it seemed to make sense as I pondered upon the thought. Food started out pretty basic in its early days made from what was available at the time and the place. Same case with music, it started off quite basic and simple primarily focused on vocals and simple instruments. It was also largely regional, and it remains so to some extent, just like different regions and countries have different cuisines so too does music have traditionally different styles all over the world.

With the advent of technology the food started to get more processed, in the seventies came the advent of frozen foods and cans and processed food, and lo and behold music also underwent a similar change with digital instruments playing a heavy part of 70s and 80s music. Both started to become more available too across the world thus bridging the gap between cultures (for better or for worse is a matter of one’s own opinion). And as time passed music and food both seemed to deteriorate becoming things of momentary pleasure that appealed more to the masses. In the case of food this happened in the late 90’s with the advent of fast food chains, and for music sadly the time is now. The rise of Hip Hop and drum machines and “2 weeks hits” all seem to be rampant these days.

They say when you go looking for similarities in something vague you more often than not tend to find it, primarily because you tend to inject sense into the littlest most non-sense-ical things and I’ll admit it’s very likely that that’s the case here too. But I for one would like to believe this correlation because it might just have a happy ending.

You see if you look back at that description of mine you will see that music has always lagged behind the advent, if you will, of food. And if you look around today the age of fast food is dying (though slowly, you know what they say a heart attack will only kill you eventually), chic eats and eating healthy are the “in” things today. Food for many has started to become more about the whole package, about the dining experience, rather than fulfilling a craving. Translate that to music and it could well mean the age of good music might be returning, albeit in perhaps a different form. Maybe what is to come is a new age of music, with music to soothe the soul and once again be good for you, musicians might give up their drum pads and auto tuners and synthesizers for more traditional maybe even unconventional instruments to create music, like chefs are giving away the oil and the processed food for more natural fresh ingredients. Maybe… maybe…

In any case all I can do is pray that my mad theory is right and the age of "fast food music" is indeed coming to an end. Amen.