Recently, I have gotten halfway through writing a half-dozen posts or so only to toss them, regretting a personal and angry tone that they had taken. This blog is supposed to be about music worth listening to, not about how angry a certain-critic-who-shall-not-be-named or some institution or regime or policy can make me. So, I'll try to stick to the music...
If it hasn't been clear enough already, "renewable music" is an ethical category, not an aesthetic one. And the music I have mentioned here as "landmarks" can heardly be heard as a single, coherent repertoire. It's all just music that I happen to value and wish to share. Much of the music mentioned has fallen off the big public radar screen, and this is a time when music of any sort is increasingly devalued by the forces of markets and institutions that can influence, commodify and control the availability of music and the circumstances in which it is heard. The term "renewable" has a well-known ecological association and that association is intended. We cannot listen to everything, but arbitrary losses of rich but not-widely-known musical repertoire cannot be justified by an economization of listening. The natural musical ecosystem is full of niches that can thrive independently from market forces, but those forces, with their tendency towards an all-encompassing monoculture, are difficult to escape or to resist. If this small blog can be a part of that resistance, then it will be worthwhile.
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