Po-Mo sounds

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

           John Bailey:
           Music is the artform least explored by pomo criticism - it's a real
           blindspot. A former professor of mine organised an international
           conference on postmodernism and music last year. Couldn't get 
           along to it, though.

           I think the answer to your question is: depends.

           Are we talking music that registers the condition of 
           postmodernity, ieis symptomatic? 

           Or music that deliberately interrogates that condition?

           Or music that echoes the kinds of features usually 
           ascribed to other "postmodern" texts?

           Etc, etc.

           I think everything from punk to John Cage to pretty much all 
           hip-hop can be considered postmodern in certain senses. In fact, 
           I sorta think that if you're listening to anything from within this 
           postmodern frame we live in, it's then necessarily postmodern, 
           even Strauss or somesuch.

. . . .Just thought how both Strausses were re-conteuxualized in "2001, A Space 
Odyssey", with the sound of the opening bars of Richard's 'Also Sprach 
Zarathrustra' forever linked to the film, representing a kind of mock grandeur 
on account of the subsequent overexposure/overuse in commercials and other 
movies.

Used to do a lot of work as recording engineer, often recording early music 
ensembleswith "historically informed performances", which in their way are 
another sort of recontexutualizing. But the weirdest [and worst] I've 
encountered was a S.F. Opera production of Mozart's 'Cosi Fan Tutte' 
obviously derived from watching too many episodes of Laverne & Shirley.