Careless Interpretation : The Diary of A Music-Junkie

This is a story about my friend Ucu, and how his 10-year-long-college-study made me realize that graduating quickly is such a loss.

Ucu always makes me think further than i expect. and i love the guy for that. his detail memory along with his wide range of knowledge never ceased to make me think and question things. i mean who would regret having 10 years of university studying if eventually you get to have this sort of accumulation of knowledge, even if its a "little bit" deviated (even though he studied mechanical engineering, he understands philosophy like hell).

today, i gave him a book entitled atlas of philosophy from dtv. the occasion was his graduation party. i meant it to be his handbook, pocket book, guide book or whatever you wanna name it, which he gonna take everytime he listens or read something unfamiliar within philoshopical realm. because this book, as written in the cover, is a little atlas. it succesfully explains concisely, by using interesting chronological order, the evolution and existence of any philosophy that ever appear on earth. moreover, the book uses pictures to help explain the development and concept of a philosophy, a bit like one of those picture dictionary but i bet its harder to make because it tries try to picturize those intricate, abstract concepts in philosophies. i believe this book could make him at least - if not best - better in his understanding and positioning of all those various philosophies. well, thats the least you can do to a completely philosophy-addicted friend.

having feel envied by him, i get myself into thinking mode: what exactly made somebody like ucu could have such a wealth of memories and knowledges about so many things? and what makes him remember such things long after he read it? after long long thought, i finally know what does it take to be like ucu. you have to LIKE and feel the NEED of reading or listening or watching every single piece of concepts you encounter.
i knew it because ucu is like that. he loves that kind of stuff because he feels that its nourishing for him, and he feel the need to explore more. much like me actually but in the area of music. but you know what? ucu opened for me a different, a lot of different gates to explore.. philosophy, arts, architecture, all if you see through his explanation seems to be in a single line of knowledge. and music..he likes music too, and he can connect it too to philosophy, etc. who else of all my friend could explain the concepts he find in literature art to explain the fenomenons in music? only him. this is one example: ucu said that literature creates the medium where you, as listener, is not merely a passive participant, but an active player. in reading a book, he continues, a reader is involved in creating his own imagination out of the texts in the book. and further ,after i showed him my nu jazz/electro jazz collection, he connects it to music, especially instrumental music, by saying: and that is the same with instrumental music, in which you are driven to imagine the scene or story of the particular piece of music. so, in terms of readers or listener’s participation, there is no difference actually between listening and reading.
good point, don’t you think? a rather smooth effort of to show how many artistic concepts are actually interrelated.

maybe all are indeed connected. who knows? but it’s sure is tempting to know.. but knowing or not knowing, one thing is for sure, ucu is the one responsible of making me ask the question in the first place. im glad to have a friend like this, who could be a resourceful as well as questions-inducing at the same time..
now, if i see this, and realizing that all that he had was brought up during his college days, i wish that i had take my time in college (probably wait a few years) to study all those sort of things. the fact is you will never have time to think when you’re already working. for me now, there’s no more time for me. soon i will finished master, then ill go home, presumably to find a job, then work, then money, and then ill drown in that neverending cycle in which i will produce a handful of money only to loose it all and start again on the first day of the new month. is this hows it all going to be?
ucu made me realize that there’s more to life than the desk at the office. ucu made me realize that i should have embark on a journey to that intellectual side of life first before i plunge into the sad, routine and mechanistic world of industrial slave.

then i thought it would be nice isn’t it, if you could be a student as long as you want. and search and study about things you wanted to know as long as you want without having to think about getting money,to buy all those consumptions you need to consume. then everyday would be just about finding and learning new things. doesn’t that just make your adrenaline pumping? the feeling of discovering something new..like einstein who realizes that behind all this so called complex world theres the beauty of simplicity. how great would life be..

it took 10 long years for ucu to graduate from his mechanical engineering. during that time he was a student, but not only of mechanical but of philosophy, art, architecture, etc, and all of that other fine things in life. from my point of view, its not a loss when he didn’t completed on time, on the contrary, its a great advantage. one which possibly no one could ever accomplished. how lucky he was to walk a path like that..

ucu made me forget for a while all that demand and forces you feel from your surroundings, which screams at you saying: you have to graduate quickly!
ucu remind me that being and remaining a student is great. and what you received in during the journey of being a student is more important than any points of GPA or any thrills of completing a study on time.
for those of you who are still a student, take your time and take good care of it and use your status as your motivation to search for more and more knowledge, even if they are far out of your supposed studies. for when you’re not a student anymore, the time will dim upon you to study anything anymore. you’re just bound to be part of this optimized, robotized, routinized industry.

it is indeed very tempting to repeat it all again if i could. but i couldn’t. now, i have to face reality and steal a little bit of time here and there to study what i want. welcome to the future. we’ll see how we’ll get through it.

cheers. merry belated christmas and happy new year.

The industry

let’s make something clear here. in the last blog i discussed something about the two communities that - through my story - seems to have been in battle for ages. i mean let’s be frank, i haven’t discussed who they are, correct? let’s discussed about it now - not just to make all this discussion more nourishable but also to proove and sharpen my opinion and correct unintentional mistakes.

from the previous blog, lets make something clear:
underground is the community of styles with 2 characteristics:
- very various styles
- low exposure
while mainstream is the "chosen few" community of styles with 2 characteristics also
- few styles
- high exposure
the mainstream are the lucky ones of all styles that were picked out to be general directions for the industry at the moment. their road to winning this position has a very strange dynamics, somewhat unpredictable, it consists of a mixture of forces of luck, media coverage, money politics, culture, etc, pulling and pushing at the same time. just think about it why does urban or R&B as we now know it becomes one of the major general direction of music industry? for comparison: why were indie pop never become such a hit like R&B?
the answer is as i said previously: strange dynamics.
but the hell with the background story, it doesn’t matter. what matters is the fact that underground is a pool of creativity and it deserves to earn more exposure. it has a lot of different styles in there, in fact, it holds the very end of "pop" music evolution, and it is actually the sources where the mainstream big labels dwell to get fresh new sources, and gradually tilting the center balance of what so called the general direction at the moment to new forms of general directions, one that is contaminated with the new styles taken from the underground.

let’s take a look at this new definition of ours and take it as tools to analyze our current state of affairs. let’s take a look at industry. industry exists mostly in the mainstream, in the area of the "chosen few" (mainstream) styles, they may or may not have anything to do with the inception of a/some styles into the mainstream styles, but one thing for sure is they will dwell only to those "chosen few". why? because the cash demands them to be so. because industry is all about capital placement and profits out of it, the "chosen few" held the biggest market potential (naturally since they have the largest exposure which makes a big part of the society listens only to these styles) therefore biggest profit potential. now here comes the problem, when they dwell around this market potential, squeezing cash out of this big cow of society that listens to the "chosen few", they are hardening up the status quo of these mainstream styles and try, either intentionally or unintentionally, to prolong them on the throne for as long as possible to squeeze even more cash out of them. its just a matter of taking lower risk for the industry, but for the underground, this is truly a bad situation.

when just few styles are proped by political forces like the ones from industry to prolong the reigning musical throne as long as possible, the opportunity for other styles to appear to the surface and got listened to a bigger part of the society diminishes. even more so, since industry pretty much close with media and have the capability of buying spaces in media, deliberate effort to invoke the media to sustain mainstream styles supremacy contaminates the mind of the people so much that other styles becomes such an alien to them, other styles becomes such a courageous venture that deemed to require tough listening, challenging record searching and high self-confidence to be differ from the music of their partisans. all this reduces the underground music from the society and, more damagingly, stupefies the society by exposing the society only into only some of the choices, therefore guiding the society un-educationally, indirectly forcing the society to spend their purchasing power on these pre-established choices, belittle the society’s ability to choose, needing the society not to think about what they want but merely accepts what the industry gives them. all very deep wrong-doings.
it is exactly the reason why medias especially entertainment, as often said, instead of smartening the society, are doing the opposite things, stupefying the society.
becoming the media bears the heavy task of having to show the full face of reality, putting everything objectively in its rightful place, and not be tempted by money poured by industry. so far the media failed..

all this is not to say that industry is a bad thing. its the nature of industry to grope as much money they can and try to prolong their cash machine, either intentionally or unintentionally. in fact the existence of industry creates wealth for people and spurs the flourishing of musical works. but the result of their doing, thats what concerns me. the institutionalization of just a few styles from a great wealth of other styles is unfair. how to get equalized opportunity for other styles to be heard, that is the main question here. theoretically, the answer is you can do it reducing the power of the industry or increasing the power of underground. or the third way is getting better control of the media, or in fact create your own media. a opposition media? a plot that everybody has tried to get more market share right?
well maybe, the problem is not in the opposition but on how the media is executed..

in the last blog, i described something about interactivity, packaging, and the ability to choose. actually i was describing how was the media in the future suppose to happen. actually it is happening right now, but not in enough momentum so that more and more people who are mtv-oriented can convert into something more of their own music and be opened-up to the great diverse styles in the underground. remember the goal is equal opportunity between mainstream and underground, so that people can choose, people are better aware about whats going on, what is available in the music world, people can educate themselves to choose which music suits them the most, in another term people.. can single out their own styles of music.. the current technological situation have provided the ability for us to browse the internet, study what we want, and even buy our own music if we know which one. this is great. but when mtv is still as great an impact as it is now and grammy’s still regarded by majority of people as the definitive music rating show, its hard to get equal opportunity for underground. basing on the previous two sentences, then, what we must support and continue doing is the medium like the internet, specifically medium that can give us not just information of all sorts of styles, unbiased, but also let us choose and determine ACTIVELY what we want. Hence, interactivity, and ability to choose. There are other ways beside the internet to go interactive, macromedia have done it since long time ago, by making interactive authoring software to be put on cd. Berlin people had one step forward ahead of us in this kind of media. want more detail? im not gonna discussed it over here, its too precious for me.. come to berlin or meet me, then ill tell you.

the other aspect are packaging. now why do i forward that? because packaging, as well as content is becoming extremely important in this age. packaging is the single thing that differentiates when contents are still incomparable. this is where underground should fight hard also, not to fool anybody, but to support the contents and to thrive to the state of singularity. for the electronic artist, it is a major way to give hints of contents to their somewhat constantly-ill-explained instrumental works. even a title of a song for them is very important in helping the listener in forming an image in their head of what the song talk about. its fortunate in the underground society, as with the immense speed of evolution of musical ideas in the underground "melting pot", immensely high also the speed of design ideas. i guess this is because the high need to be different from anybody else within that grueling extremely dynamic melting pot society. their designs usually always defy the laws that the industry or the mainstream follows, it always breakthroughs, creates new forms, more actively than ever happen in the industry. the only advantage that the industry has is they have more money to realize it, while not so diverse ideas, while the underground always the other way around. as materials becoming more affordable or design technologies develops, the cost of design will go lower and lower and underground packaging could produce a lot more impact than mainstream’s.

finally, there has to be a way for a match to the industry to exist. collectively, undergrounds can, and should, for the sake of us, the listeners, cause there’s so many good music around, which you don’t know which i don’t know, which the knowing of it would elevate the quality of our lives.. now, let me ask you… what could be better than that?..

The revolution

the evolution of music derives itself as a result of masses of diverging waves of people everywhere experimenting with music and mixing one type of style with the others. technology supports this with the invention of computers and better electronic sound processors, facilitating even the most introverted musician in his bedroom to be the hot gun of forefront music. in other words, technology becomes the catalyst. the speed of evolution become faster than ever now. beware labels and societies for new music and powerful alllies of music are coming up everywhere in every single day. in the end, there could be no mainstream or underground, because the underground is as powerful as the mainstream. its just a matter of numbers. when the numbers listening to label dropped down to a parallel level with the underground, powers are equally divided. and its coming to that now, the craze for everything underground in fact will vanquish the underground itself, for when the majority beaten by the minority then the minority is the majority itself.

the sale of mp3 in internet portal only merely gonna explode the expose of the underground, since promotion cost and selling cost will be lower than ever. and iTunes are the big gun in internet marketing right now. the times of being affraid of market share eaten away by the big bulldogs of labels have gone now. internet is the underground’s savior, and so they say (the labels) the internet music marketing are dangerous. that is for the big labels at least.
then when everything is equally powered, its all then just a matter of preference. the preference will rule. so far, our preference is controlled by mtv. but this will also be change. the wells of information is popping up everywhere, from free magazine, from risk-taker music shops who take regularly imported cds to its shelves, from sophisticated radios who ready to gamble its rating in AC Nielsen just in order to serve its listener to the best of music, from the pages in internet, from the newsletter you get when you subscribe to a record shop in the developed countries, from the playlists of ever-flourishing number of djs in the country, its just crazy to see all this happening. there’s a revolution going on here and somebody’s gonna be the victim.
when small underground labels in collective will start biting away big labels market share, then the big labels would start taking sides with the small underground, proclaiming new underground bands as theirs, turning the status from underground into mainstream until the balance of power and money returns back to the big labels. in effect, the market share returns back to big labels and the new undergrounds will evolve again to fight against the late underground who has become mainstream because of big labels.
the cycle will continue, there will always be underground and mainstream but within underground you will always find the new evolved music. it is their job to evolve music and as if the big labels job to take that evolution into the mainstream and destroy the novelty and newness of it all while taking a big gulp of money out of it. the undergrounds will always be the slave which produces the gold and the big labels always be the greedy businessmen who take it all up. the question is not how to kill the greedy businessman, but how to make the union of slaves have better powers? there should always should be the businessman to be hated to. they will be the mirror of what the undergrounds don’t want to become. when Nirvana become mainstream many of the undergrounds thought the band has sell itself out and this disappoints the undergrounds. but as with all natural things in state of balance, another pole in the other end is always needed, to balance it all, to be what we are.. its just simply that: undergrounds exists because of mainstream, and the other way around.
once again the question is not how to kill the greedy businessman, but to make the slaves are more heard.
and they are more heard, with all those internet revolution and the wells of information, but are they enough?
check out grammy and weep.. or even don’t check the grammy at all for they not worthy of our attention, for they only discover what has been thrown at them by the labels, for they only discover what is great in the American perspective. and to make it worse, they, with their subjective American perspective and politically-infused nominations have the greatest media coverage in this little world of ours, inaugurate them indirectly as the prominent source of rating of music and qualification of music in this tiny somewhat American-minded world.
the thing is that we cannot separate each opinion from its source, means the credibility of each opinion is determined also by the identity of the source. Since grammy is an opinion of a board of American jurys then of course their opinions cannot be separated by their American identity. The identity personified what experience has each and every one of those jurys went in the world, which will of course be utterly different with the experiences of the jurys from European side for example. Since experience determines point of views then..end of story. everyone should know that, but then as i said they should, but in reality of course they don’t. The result will be as suspected and as happens right now, Grammy’s had been forgotten as the product of American point of view and considered and amplified and accepted as the great music qualificators in the world, which almost always again and again create diversions from many other great artists that the writer think should get an award if there is one (not necessarily grammy’s but just any awards). its not Grammy’s fault to become the largest viewed music show in the world, but indeed its strange how its triumph in winning the media had been able to collapse and divert our objective reasoning into thinking that their choices might perhaps to be the best choices are available out there.
and this is where the undergrounds should struggle…
at least for the smarts and sophisticated at brain, for undergrounds never tried to doctrine out the mainstream community…
the slave need to be more heard and appreciated.

the underground society is like a modest person, but strong at will. it is like an artists at its peak of love of artistry not money. it wants to share its love of art to people but doesn’t want to do it too bluntly for when the majority adopts it, the society will lose their identity and singularity and become just another part of the majority, therefore losing their trendsetting ability and uniqueness. it want to be famous but not of hype and mtv, it want to be famous by talk of mouth and ideas. it got different approach regarding media. its media must also be underground. the society underground always want to invent something, its reflecting its need to be the trendsetter, it got its attitude. its usually the smart ones of the society.
underground wants to grow but in view of the one who wants to join them must have also independency, free out-of-the-box thinking and underground spirit from the majority, not influenced by media-spurred propagandas. they will filter this by the most simple mechanism: the unusual/unfamiliar music thats usually dismissed by majority-thinking people. the music either strange in characteristic or don’t have clear identity will appeal only to certain people who are free-thinking enough to accept it. these are the people who will be the new members of the society underground. it defies the laws where preference is grown by repeated exposures by media such like those done by the big mainstream labels, for it will turn the preference resulting from objective-free-thinking into doctrinism-resulted preference, and this means defiance to the essential underground spirit which the society so truely upholds.

Against the massive bombardment of the media frenzy mainstream manouvres, one of them such as Grammy Awards, underground must have its own way to expose more of itself in its own way (naturally and free-thinkingly) in order to create more interest for them for the majority but always in the light of pure un-influenced mass media-blocked preference. internet and those wells of information are helping but are they enough? underground award shows will only create what they’re trying to avoid, the doctrinism through media, let that be just the game of the big label people.

interactivity, the ability to choose, coupled with the packaging ingenuity which has usually accompanies underground labels might be the answer, but about that, we’ll continue on later…