Hey guys, simmer down...heh heh
I am sure we do understand Punjabi music differently, etc. That's cool.
As a musician— or as someone who has put a lot of time and thought into music over the years... I've learned countless instruments, was a pro bass player when younger, playing on cruise ship, at Carnegie Hall, from Western classical orchestra to jazz, led a ska-reggae band, spent a dozen years studying Punjabi musicians, now trying to learn every traditional sailor song...just picked up the concertina couple weeks ago and have been having fun playing old-timey tunes, and as a prof. of music I look at stuff from cultures all over the world...anyway...My comments come from a place of almost
heartbreak when I see people trying to suck some subsistence out of the industry music that is on offer, like water from a cactus in the desert or something, when 1/2 mile away is a cantina with delicious cervezas. (Be warned that most of my analogies relate to food — it's not for nothing that I'm a fatboy.)
So McDonalds restaurants exist for a very good reason—the market and our lifestyles demand them. We all know that it is pretty crappy food, yet plenty of people keep eating it. But here's the thing: I think McDonalds (or something similar - you know what I mean) is great—not great quality or nutrition, but something that just "hits the spot" at particular times. It works after a late night out, or when you're in an airport between flights, or when you've only a dollar in your pocket. I don't wish for a world where "McDonalds" does not exist, and I think it would be snobbish to expect people not to eat there. But I think we realize the function of mcDonalds; we know what to expect from it, what we want to get out of it. Most importantly we know that it has its time and place and should not make up our entire diet. We know not to expect anything special from it, that the preferred experience will come through home-cooking, mostly, and, less frequently, nice restaurants.
This 'heartbreak' is like going into a "ghetto" where substantial number of people are just scraping by eating at McDonalds/BK every day. And you feel like saying, "Here, take this dollar, go buy some broccoli, take it home and eat that tonight instead." In their situation, even though the nutritious home-food is in reach, their main frame of reference for "food" is going to either McD, BK, or whatever. Similarly, I feel like I am running into people whose frame of reference for "music" is basically the pop music industry (or things mediated through that industry). It comes down to ranking less-bad crap above more-bad crap. BK over Mickey D's.
I'll repeat that I'm not a hater of popular music, or necessarily of the music industry. I just think we should have a healthy sense of its limitations and why it exist, and the frame of reference for music must be much wider. All human beings are capable of music, and it's often the music we make ourselves, for ourselves, that is most nourishing.
I would say, singhk1, don't worry about "coming out" on any scene. The music industry does not validate the value of our music. It only decides, for itself, what performances are appropriate, in a cost-benefits analysis, to make a profit from, after being fit into its narrow format. We simply can't use the "formula" used, out of necessity, by the music industry as a guide to our own valuation of music. If we do, we're missing so much...stuff all around us.
