Samhain                                                            Winter Moon

Last night Jerry, who has a big band show on KBEM, gave us some statistics.  “2% say jazz is their favorite music.  Another 2% say classical.  .5% like both.”  That puts Kate and me into the .5% bracket.

(Coltrane)

Jazz and classical music are an acquired taste.  Rock and roll and the other forms of popular music are, too, I suppose, but their acquisition comes laced into high school, i-tunes, radio.  Support of their sound comes through commercial channels that, though increasingly fractured, still provide marketing and distribution for them.  They also have youth culture on their side.

Jazz still has a certain underground feel, a music played off the main streets of American culture and by the marginal and marginalized.  It is a music that languishes if it becomes popular, witness the fusion era and the cool jazz played on easy listening stations.  Now, with it’s popularity dwindling again, it can regenerate, offer the lure of the hidden, the cult.

Classical music has a dwindling band of listeners, too, graying as are the jazz audiences. Classical music will find itself refreshed as it, too, becomes the province of smaller gatherings, people devoted to musicology, to the repertoire of yesterday.

Neither of the significant aural art forms will disappear.  Yes, the opportunities to hear them may diminish, but there will always be live performances somewhere for both. The availability of recorded and digital music ensures that they will survive until other audiences find them.

(Musical_Instruments  Evaristo Baschenis (1617–1677)

So it may be that classical music aficionados will attend trios and quartets in performance more than orchestras, though here the SPCO seems to be on firm footing at last.  Jazz followers will head to clubs and bars, much as they always have, and to the occasional festival.  Performers in both will gain renown in smaller groups, but they will be remembered.  Popularity is not the mark of good art, though you can’t deny its value for paying bills.

Beltane                                                                      Early Growth Moon

Repeat after me:  technology is our friend.  Again.  Technology is our friend.

A month or so ago I bought a 300 CD carousel player.  This dates me in so many ways.  In the first place to enter memos (we’ll talk about those in a moment) you can use a keyboard, but it’s not a usb connection rather it is the old male/female pin receptor.  Fortunately, in my ever increasing museum of used computing equipment I had one.  Score!

What that means is that I input a memo about each disk using the keyboard rather than the dial and point method necessary without it.  That would have found me tossing the discs in the thing.  Anyhow so I decide to put a memo for each disc because otherwise how could I know what it is?

Well, that means developing a system.   We have a faux Dewey Decimal CD storage piece that has 4 rows across and 6 down of small wooden boxes that hold anywhere from 12 to 15 or so CD’s.  So we named the rows A, B, C, and D.  That means that each CD has to have a box number, so A1 puts the CD case in the upper left hand corner box.  We’re keeping the cases for the liner notes.  But, wait, there’s more.  Each CD has to have its own number in the box so the first CD is A11 then the name of the CD in very short hand.

Another wrinkle develops with multiple sets of which we have many.  For example, we have a 25 CD set of the complete works of Chopin.   In this case, we’re now into the 3rd box, the number was for one disc, A316D24.  The D24 meaning D24 in the Chopin set.  In order to enter this data two buttons on the carousel player have to be punched, then the text entered, then saved.  300 times.  I’m up to 60 right now and have already begun chewing on my foot so I can escape the trap.

Now to the charming reality that this dates me.  First of all, who buys CD’s anymore?  I mean physical objects that store your music and take up space in your house?  What?  Second, you mean you have to manually enter the information about the music?  Why can’t the file just put it up like it does on my I-phone, I-pad, I-pod?  That’s way easier.  Not nearly so much work.  In fact, no work at all.

That’s the frictionless world most digital natives inhabit.  Their idea of a record collection weighs about 5 ounces and has ear buds.  If you want to listen to at home, you just drop it in a receptacle that links your device to your home speaker system.  Easy peasy.

Kate and I, however, inhabit the stubbornly physical recent past.  Which means we were born before this millennium for sure and far back in the 20th century, too.  This is probably the last time we will try to organize our music because if we decide to do it again, I’ll flee to the 20th century in my time machine.  I carry it right here on my belt.