The question is less about why the Egyptians don't sing like us than it is why we don't walk like them.

I think musical forms represent a people's history. Like let's say things are tough, then their music might be melancholic, but then once they get drunk, they start singing along nonsense lyrics at bars.

Notice that there being a "Youth Culture" in general is something quite new.

And arguably something already vanishing, a product of a particular moment in history. I've seen a number of people observe how the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s had very distinct styles, new musical genres, etc. This seems to have stopped in the 00s. Today some kids dress like hippies, some in the 90s goth style, some as 80s punk rockers, etc. Certainly, styles still come and go, but fast fashion has made them so rapid and so multitudinous that they no longer have the global reach they once did.

It's a sort of balkanization of taste. It's the same with other forms of media. People used to watch the same shows because that's what was broadcast, read the same books, play the same video games. The internet, social media, and technological advances that have massively lowered the barriers to entry for producing media (e.g. single video game developers) have led to an acceleration of multiplicity. When Trent Reznor was a one man band with Nine Inch Nails in 1989, it was somewhat unique (at least for a chart topper); not so much anymore.

Interestingly, it's the very freedom to create and consume, the breaking down of barriers, that makes "everywhere becomes everywhere else." And this happens on the political stage too, e.g. the standardizations of the EU make different places similar. Huge influxes of immigrants make English increasingly common across city centers on the continent, and you even see a lot of English-language universities/programs. A sort of move to "monoculture through diversity" (although it might be called a sort of "anti-culture," since it isn't so much a "cultivation" that is occuring).

Of course, demographics have something to do with it too. The youth once made up the largest share of the population by far. Now they are the smallest. The youth were once themselves quite homogeneous, now they are the most likely to come from diffuse backgrounds. For the Baby Boomers in the US, the presidency came to their generation fairly early in life, and control of Congress shortly after. They kept it for 30+ years, becoming a huge supermajority after the Great Recession, when the average age of people in high office surged (cabinets also average about retirement age). And the share of society's wealth in the hands of the young has followed this trend. So, a more classical view might just be that money and political power drive the dominance of culture.

Another Mark Fisher fan. :up:

Let's pretend unique musical forms aren't dead (nor history either) and 1000 years later, people are listening to Drock music. Why aren't we listening to Drock music now? Is that equivalent to the question of the OP?

@Quk

You seem to be on the right track. I'd condense your ideas into saying music has established itself as a form of cultural expression and so it goes on. I wonder though how much variation there is before we've kind of tried everything. Things feels Mark Fisherish, like we have and Drock music is just a vain dream. But maybe it's a musical unknown unknown, a kind of sonic black swan we can hope for but never truly anticipate. Drock on...

I'm continuing from page 1 of this thread. This is what I was writing while further comments were posted.

Typical elements of Rock'n'Roll, in my opinion, and in short words:
(May partially occur in other styles as well.)

Rhythm:
4/4 measure at high tempo with syncopated eighth notes or with swinging triplets. On the quarter notes: Low drum sounds on 1 and 3, bright percussion sounds like snare drum or handclaps on 2 and 4 -- boom cha boom cha. Occassional "funky" syncopation accents on all percussion instruments, especially on the cymbals. bo-boom cha bo-boom-bo cha etc. There's a lot of swing in Beethoven's 6. symphony in the two Allegro movements, for example. Di-da-da, di-da-da, di-da-da ... swing, swing, swing ...

Melody:
Mainly pentatonic. The pentatonic scale sounds optimistic and forceful. There's no mourning minor chord and no sickly-sweet major chord. Some bluesy "blue" notes may appear, e.g. A+g or E+d etc. Chord progression is simple, mostly consisting of no more than three chords. Audiences can participate easily.

Sound:
Distortion is welcome in the voice and in the melody instruments. What do I mean by distortion? The voice of opera singers, for example, is never distorted. Their air pressure will never exceed the limit above which the clean sine wave of their oscillating voice chords would be clipped. Rock singers don't care about that limit; they often overdrive the air pressure to clip the sine curve, and this generates additional "screaming" overtones, and these overtones cause a psychoacoustical effect: The sound seems to be louder even though the amplitude is not neccessarily greater. Stradivari violins, for instance, are known for their intensive overtones, and that's why they can very well be heard as a solo instrument in large concert halls with an orchestra in the background. A sitar, for example, generates distortion as its strings cannot freely oscillate; so the string's sine wave will be clipped mechanically. Wind instruments too can be overdriven by high air pressure. Trumpets were found in the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. I guess they generate a lot of overtones; i.e. they probably sound like a single string of a Gibson Les Paul played through a stack of overdriven Marshall amps. In short: Distortion is welcome in Rock'n'Roll because it makes the music sound loud (even if it's not physically loud), and this loudness is part of the optimistic expression; see next point.

Rebellion:
That optimism has a goal: Get rid of the repression. Get rid of the unfair authorities. Abolish the monarchy, the slavery, racism, sexual constraints. We are strong. Participate. The future is bright if we are many and if we come together. Beethoven liked the French Revolution and the fall of the monarchy (but didn't like Napoleon later on). Elvis Presley was a rebel against sexual constraints. Rock'n'Roll is an optimistic movement; it supports those that get repressed. It's about the freedom of those repressed people, not about the freedom of the slavedrivers, kings or popes. Ike Turner wasn't a Rock'n'Roller; he was a wannabe king. Tina was a true Rock'n'Roller; her optimism was stronger than the violence she had to endure.

Maybe some ancient Egyptians played Rock'n'Roll already. I don't know. The thread title is just a symbolic picture. The main question is about the link between contemporary music and contemporary environments, and whether Rock'n'Roll can only be a product of our time.

Maybe some ancient Egyptians played Rock'n'Roll already. I don't know. The thread title is just a symbolic picture. The main question is about the link between contemporary music and contemporary environments, and whether Rock'n'Roll can only be a product of our time.

I’m not a music expert, but my assumption would be that later forms of music developed over time due to reactions to whatever music is currently in style. From what I remember the Romantic period was in contrast to Classical, which was in contrast with Baroque. I interpret that as people reacting in certain ways to what they’re hearing. I mean why does music change at all if not due to our stimulation/boredom/inspiration with the music we’re exposed to?

Also, I would assume that different musical styles need a foundation to build upon. It took various exceptional talents to expand musical ideas further and essentially establish new genres. So, rock may not have existed yet because blues didn’t exist yet, and so on and so forth.

I like Fisher for some things, but I'd rather say that we are surfing on the waves of Zygmunt Bauman's "liquid modernity." We haven't entered a "post-modern period," we're just doing modernity turned up to 11.

Maybe the post-modern period will come with some AI singularity, or maybe it will be Deely's vision of a semiotic age, a return to realism (or maybe both?).

Let's pretend unique musical forms aren't dead (nor history either) and 1000 years later, people are listening to Drock music. Why aren't we listening to Drock music now?

I'm not sure, technical and material limits seem to be fading away. We are able to make any sound wave that can be differentiated by the human ear. But AI will allow people to cycle through the possibility space way more rapidly than they could in the old days. Drock is already out there, potentially. It will now be extremely easy to actualize. You can even actualize the music videos to go along with the music easily.

The problem is that, because it is so easy to actualize Drock, and Brock, and Krock, and Zrock, it might simply come and go without market share, entertaining only a few ears. The sound waves will be actualized, but perhaps not the "movement" as a social force.

Here is the analogy I'd use: on a still pond, you can throw a few rocks in and get recognizable patterns of waves interacting. It's a good signal to noise ratio.

By contrast, the future, with AI media, is more like a pond in a torrential downpour. All surface tension is lost as billions of scattered drops hit the surface at all angles, making the effects of any one indiscernible. In such an environment, the only way to effect the overall ecosystem is to do something like hurl a meteor into the lake, or drive a large boat through the waters, or wait for the rains to pass.

As potential media becomes easier and easier to actualize, the actual space of media comes to resemble the potential space. What you get is the elevation of potency over actuality (already the hallmark of modern thought), but now this shift is becoming instantiated in the realm of entertainment media (which is itself the substrate for the realm of man's intellectual life). This brings forth the risk of what R. Scott Bakker calls the "semantic apocalypse." This risk is doubled if man begins to edit himself, his nature (through gene editing, cybernetics, tailored drug administration) such that we get a rupture in our shared cognitive ecology, a sort of divergent evolution.

The Logos might be envisioned as a sound wave, a song. But it is one of infinite amplitude and frequency, such that all waves cancel each other out in their antipode. The result is silence, but the pregnant silence of the Pleroma. It is intelligible act that must break this equilibrium, giving birth to something specific and historical through limitation. As the Kabbalahists say, God's first act had to be one of withdrawal to make space for the world, a withdrawal of actuality into potency.

In the Age of Actualization, we each become like the librarians of Borges' "Library of Babel." A harrowing thought. Basically, I really don't like "AI slop." :rofl:

Maybe Blues music isn't really just 200 years young. Perhaps it already occured 20,000 or 100,000 years ago ...

Some birds sing pentatonic scales. I guess they've been singing it for millions of years.

I love this theory of Rock 'n Roll. Just the idea of digging down into the conceptual bits -- it's some good aesthetic reflection, which is rare to come across.

Maybe some ancient Egyptians played Rock'n'Roll already. I don't know. The thread title is just a symbolic picture. The main question is about the link between contemporary music and contemporary environments, and whether Rock'n'Roll can only be a product of our time. — Quk

Thanks for expanding on your idea. It’s easier to follow with some texture.

I guess for me, rock 'n' roll is rooted in specific influences: a particular time, place, and sound. You can poetically argue that elements of rock existed earlier, but I think that’s probably stretching it. What we’ve really seen is that human beings use music to self-soothe, mourn, and celebrate. It can also be an act of defiance and a statement of identity. No doubt, there are common threads across the centuries.

I've seen a number of people observe how the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s had very distinct styles, new musical genres, etc. This seems to have stopped in the 00s. — Count Timothy von Icarus

When it's music, this is extremely interesting.

The interesting question is how much of the Zoomers and Generation Alpha, basically those born this Millennium, do listen to music of far before their time from the previous century. If/When that happens, musical genres of the past might quite well survive for ages. That might be one reason, because now days popular music isn't so interconnected to time and generation.

Another one good argument is that when making music has become more easier, there simply is too much supply. What then the record companies choose to promote is a lottery. For a musician or a band to get to a great sound stage and to get the music to be played on the radio (with limited shows early playing) was very limiting. When you don't have to have a musician playing an instrument, but a computer will do just fine, it has become perhaps too easy.

Then there's the factor of the technology of the synthesizers etc, which has played a crucial part to the music itself. This has been one factor that has changed popular music and rock, as you also mentioned. You can easily hear the difference from the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's even if you don't know much of the musical instruments and synthesizers used. Today you can have popular music, which is quite similar to the 80's style, but you can notice easily the better sounds (and computers) used.

The problem is that, because it is so easy to actualize Drock, and Brock, and Krock, and Zrock, it might simply come and go without market share, entertaining only a few ears. The sound waves will be actualized, but perhaps not the "movement" as a social force. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Something "new" can indeed come, but the real question is if Rock and Pop music have already gotten to their Zenith and the classic hits will be listened for hundreds of years like we listen now to Mozart, Beethoven or Bach? We are as happy to listening to Bach as we are to Stravinski, even if there's centuries between them.

What if in the year 2100 or even 2200 people will vote Stairway to Heaven to be the best song of all time in Rock? And those Drock, Brock, etc. are simply fads or new genres while people still listen to "the oldies". How long will people be listening to Michael Jackson? I remember when the first radio stations come that just played 80's music and they have been for a while now. It may be that the core of those listeners are just Gen X'ers like me, but the real crucible comes for this argument when the generation that listened to this music genre at first dies of old age. We can already see it that there's not much if any popular music from the 1920's and 1930's played, but it's Beatles and the Rolling Stones are something that likely won't be forgotten. So Rock music from the 1960's and later will likely survive very long.

, , before you get carried away, give some consideration to your terminology

Terms like "Gen Z", "Boomer" and "Millennial" are popular, but they have no basis in science. Demographers and social scientists are now pushing back. — ABC Future Tense

In particular, 's graph needs some critical appraisal. Where is the data for boomers when they were twenty? What year is taken as the median for each "generation" - if it is 1960 for boomers, that would be odd; most boomers are considered to be older than that. And the difference between 1960 for boomers and 1992 for gen x is thirty two years, while that between 1992 and 2008 is half that.

Be more sceptical.

Added: the graph appears to show that Boomers have a disproportionate share of whatever the vertical axis is... "national wealth".

What if there were a group of folk, who are a subset of the Boomers, and who indeed have a vastly disproportionate share of "national wealth". The richest 1% control a substantial share of national wealth, sometimes exceeding 40%. And they tend to be older. More of them are counted as Boomers then as millennials.

The graph hides the fact that "national wealth" is disproportionally had by the ultra rich, peddling the distortion that blames Boomers.

The top 1% own about a third of the nation's wealth. If most of the top 5% are Boomers, that explains much of the disparity. It's not boomers per se, but the ultra wealthy, who have the disproportionate wealth.

Amplification would have been an issue. Some of Bach’s piano works are pretty out there,

Maybe Blues music isn't really just 200 years young. Perhaps it already occured 20,000 or 100,000 years ago ...

Maybe, but there’s no evidence of that. Even if it was around it still would have taken a specific creative spark to turn it into rock. Maybe no one had that creative spark at that time.

The top 1% own about a third of the nation's wealth. If most of the top 5% are Boomers, that explains much of the disparity. It's not boomers per se, but the ultra wealthy, who have the disproportionate wealth. — Banno

Nobody takes their wealth with them when they die.

Things like stock market crashes destroy wealth (which mainly wasn't there) and natural disasters and wars can destroy wealth literally.

Be more sceptical. — Banno

The question was if popular music, especially rock music, will continue to be listened by future generations, but that the rock music will be the songs that actually have been already made and "The Great" rock musicians that are listened are the ones that we now put to be the "GOAT"s. Basically something that we have seen with "classical music".

As we cannot just wait for the next Century to start and look at the musical environment then, we can observe if there are differences in the small niche "generations" that we talk about now.

Coming back to the OP, perhaps it should be interesting to first talk about music in Antiquity and in the Bronze Age. Naturally the obvious issue are the limitations of the musical instruments themselves. But first question here should be: how close is Rock'N'Roll, or our current music today, to the music from three thousands years ago. Obviously we don't have recordings and we have only modern representations of those (which are influenced by modern music), yet what I find interesting is how close that music seems to be to ours. Now, if there indeed is a continuation (and likely there surely is), then we aren't far too off how ancient music sounded.

An interesting history of the oldest song we know about, which also shows the problem of interpretation of ancient songs:



So how close is this (interpretation) of an ancient Egyptian love song to a modern rock ballad? If the interpretation is close (and that's an if), then I would argue it's not so far from modern music played acoustically.