Democratizing Music: the new panorama

Gabriel Zarzosa — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:58:46 +0000

Speaking of inequality in Mexico has become a truism, brought from any context. It is not a reason to be surprised that our country is home from a poor, even the poorest who might find at any latitude in the world (although African poverty can seem more outrageous finds its parallel with the Mexican children die from hunger both), to the bloody Carlos Slim. The economic front is the axis which regulates all other forms of inequality that we can find, however, from here on we can find the consequences to its ramifications meeting the music industry´s and all its vices. For decades the record companies and thier crooked approach were the ones who decided who was to be heard and who will not. Sometimes guessing right, this practice was simplifing itself until it fell into the sad times before ours, where tyranny of recording was limited to replicate the models that had previously functioning without daring to take risks and entering into the wheel of changes of artistic demands.A situation like this would require certain elements in order to maintain its hegemonic power. The centralization of economic and political power, for a change, was the largest of these elements. Mother of inequality, centralization is the history of Mexico. Just see that Mexico City is home to one fifth of the entire population of the country and, with it, big business and political power. Getting used to this, the traditional record industry, clustered in a few companies, global mostly, used to centralize full capacity of production, music recording and publishing. Under this scenario, no one could be heard without the consent of any executive. The picture, for better or worse, has changed.Technological development has marked a substantial change. A computer can be a traditional study, although not for the professional audio purists, but for a tool for recording, editing and dissemination of musical material. The cost of the process can not be compared and the results are not entirely different. Moreover, the new exchange networks through the Internet are sufficient so that we can hear a Japanese teen taking its first steps in the composition, performance, production, music recording and publishing, tasks that traditionally required a highly specialized instruction. This, of course, has implications that might seem counter to the musical evolution. Listening to this teen does not have to be pleasant and exploration into the sea of crap which houses the network can be a real waste of time. On the other hand, we find furious musicians that their recordings no longer represent millionarie income, but here is where justice comes to democracy.The good musician is no longer good for sexual favors provided to the executive and not the talented owes its good for the eye of a promoter. Thanks to the new modes of production and diffusion of music, the bad is bad and her myspace is visited by friends and family, while the good and talented is exposed to the ears of thousands or millions of people around the world eager for new proposals . This is not a space reserved for the “Indy” is a limitless space for the free path of becoming artistic wich talks about who we are as a global generation.The musician is not a musician by playing once his material while it is recorded. Music has ancient models that tend to the experience of execution while a group of people have a lifetime experience of that magic-laden air smell and sound by wich this contemporary concert is dress up. The musician lives for the music and eats it, not because of selling records, that was an invention achieved erroneously in the twentieth century. The musician lives for the music and eats for interpretting it. Eats profits and eats applause.

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Democratizing Music: the new panorama