Truth in advertising demands that I start this review by stating that I'm hardly an objective observer of music (as if anyone actually is!) No, I'm a professional pianist, piano instructor, and author of my own piano instruction manuals. I live music.
This alone might make you think of stuffed shirts snooty elitist musicians and cloud your perception of my perceptions. But keep your mind open, 'cause I hail from a musical school which sees value in almost every type of music, not just classical but country, not just Bach but blues. I like them all, play them all, and get a real charge out of teaching them all.
And that's the first reason why I like this book so much - it says so much about PEOPLE and our likes and dislikes. I've always held that music is the way it is because people are the way they are, and any book which examines the human side of what is smugly called "music theory" is a book I've got to read. Thus, the first point in favor of this sanely sized book is subject matter - people and their opinions.
Second point of success is that the editors have gathered a truly eclectic batch of essays which deal with music from a dizzying variety of angles. Eclectic is good, to my way of thinking (so what that you can play everything Chopin ever wrote? can you play a Beatles tune or improvise some jazz?) Just consider these chapter headings:
Does Kenny G Play Bad Jazz?
The Good, the Bad, and the Folk
Extreme Noise Terror: Punk Rock and the Aesthetics of Badness
Rock Critics Need Bad Music
Gad, what a grab bag!
Some of these essays are seriously serious, inserted I think with the editors' tounges firmly in cheek, to demonstrate the uber-complexity of the "minds" of some music "theorists." Other essays simply and quickly make points about how various genres have been marketed. Oh, this is wild stuff, and even my years in the music field didn't provide some of these understandings. Any reader interested in the ebb and flow of music and society will find fascinating material here.
The chief editor, Christopher Washburne, contributes an introduction and only one essay, one of those mentioned above, the one concerning Kenny G. I find myself still a bit confused by him, albeit in an interesting, entertaining fashion. Is Mr. Washburne a card-carrying member of the Music Snob Society? His excellent musical credentials in both teaching and performing of classical and pop music might make you think so. Or is he pulling our legs with wild abandon, hamming up his role as the elitist Music Professor at Columbia University while secretly trashing so many of his snooty fellows in their ivory towers? Whichever, he's assembled a great collection of information here which deserves a read from any person who finds humans and their forays into the world of the arts to be worth more investigation.
