Month: February 2019

The Truth Can Only Show Through Art and Music

My father has always enjoyed music. He is a 63-year-old chemical engineer with a heart of gold and a very specific taste in music. He enjoys Blondie, Boston, Eric Clapton, and many other artists that I have never been able to string together with a genre other than maybe “oldies”, which I find to be a little vague and possibly a bit belittling.

As my father has fearlessly battled cancer for three years, I have noticed how important the context of music can be in art and representation. The subject of death for example, is uncomfortable and depressing for all of us. It is easy for people to dismiss the dying because it is a difficult topic to think about. We like to think that dying people are old, serious, or whatever else comes to your mind. So, when my father was forced to spend more of his time than he ever would have spent in bed, I was forced to see how music can bring a reality to situations that people are not often willing to see.

My father is strong, kind, and incredible, with a pretty fantastic taste in music. So, when I watched him in his hospital bed, with his battle scars striped across his bald head, wearing loose pajamas instead of blue jeans, instead of seeing the cancer patient in front of me, I heard Eric Clapton grunting about cocaine or Blondie belting out about perseverance. Every time I am confronted with the sometimes unrecognizable image of my father, the music he listens to outshines this and casts a picture of who he really is and will always be in my memory.

This same concept is applied in classic films like Coffee and Cigarettes. I believe that good art can show one image, while making you feel something completely different. In my last post I talked about 80’s music and how it has been reinvented through the genre of vaporwave. This is another good example of taking an original expected emotion in a period of time and making it completely different, or even exposing what one individual may feel about something that the vast majority of a culture does not understand. I think this is a great way to bridge gaps between cultures, generations, and emotions. Although the preconceived images that people are confronted with on a daily basis about other cultures, generations, and emotions are strong, I think they can definitely be overridden with the truth through art and music.

Computer Music Is Boring, But It Doesn’t Suck

In my last blog post I talked about music that is made by computers and how in jazz or typical music genres it can degrade the quality of the music. To offer up some opposing points of view on that matter, I think that computer music does have a place on its own, specifically in a genre known as vaporwave.

I was first introduced to vaporwave this year by my fiancé, an artist and notorious nerd. At first, I thought what I was listening to (Macintosh Plus – Lisa Frank 420/Modern Computing) was an obscure artist from the 80’s. I quickly realized it was not and assumed it was a joke song until I loved it. I downloaded the full album and my family was soon cursed by Lisa Frank 420.

Vaporwave was established as a genre in early 2011. It is typically made from distinct sounds and commercials from the 80’s and 90’s or mixed from a combination of elevator music and smooth jazz. However, these sounds alone are not what create vaporwave. Vaporwave is the distinct sound of these songs and genres being slowed down, sped up, or re mixed in a “low quality” way. This is reflected by low quality, psychedelic cover art that is mixed up with memorabilia from the 80’s and 90’s including tropical backgrounds, Japanese culture, and marketed products. The genre is almost completely anonymous due to copyright reasons, and it is also the first genre to be entirely based through the internet. This makes vaporwave the first entirely globalized music.

The inherent value of vaporwave is that although it takes the most capitalistic and reminiscently consumeristic sounds from the 80’s and 90’s, take “Saint Pepsi” for example, it makes something totally different out of them. For example, a lot of this art style shows purples and neon greens. Vaporwave takes these same colors and makes them pastel, ultimately removing its context and exposing the genres tendency towards consumerism.

Beyond its original intention of exposing consumerism, it is also easy listening. The genres popularity stems from the amount of creativity within the genre as well as its audience’s enjoyment from being able to work or study while it plays. In other words, it’s catchy without being distracting. Vaporwave is good computer music because it not attempting to be any other genre. It fully embraces internet culture, has a clear message, and can be taken at face value.