The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality)

@remembrances,

Very Proustian.

There are those who can create.

There are those who can also appreciate.

Then there are those who can do neither.

These odds aren't necessarily positive, the most likely way for people who think this is a problem to reduce the problem is to do music themselves.

I guess I understand, although I will never agree with, the prevalent mistrust and dismissal of rap on this forum. Maybe it reflects the aging white demographic that is many of the members here, but to write off a brilliant art form with so many gifted and talented artists has rap and hip-hop has seems short-sighted.

I am too old to like rap music in general , but i am enough young to appreciate the real poetry, and rythmic rethoric.... Then it will not change my musical taste but you were right about the ignorance linked to the complete dismissing....

Like for any musical form in considerations, there is "rap" and there is rap.... I already listened sometimes to some very beautiful rap artistically done....

It is like free jazz; there is indeed "free jazz" and free jazz.....And some free jazz is truly genius....Like some rap....

Music in all his manifestations are only many perspectives takes on the human soul, and most of us can only take a short part of this pie....

How many in america feel love for classical chinese erhu music? Or japan koto? Or Persian tanbur? Or arabic Oud ? Or Bulgarian folk voices?




History of mathematic is for me a part of the  history of the human spirit...
History of music and poetry  is part of the history of the human soul...
How many portion of these pies constitute also a part of our own spirit and soul journey in our less than one  century visit  on earth? Not so much....

I guess I understand, although I will never agree with, the prevalent mistrust and dismissal of rap on this forum. Maybe it reflects the aging white demographic that is many of the members here, but to write off a brilliant art form with so many gifted and talented artists has rap and hip-hop has seems short-sighted.

Great Post....

I concur with you on all points...

And why not? Could it be that the pharmaceuticals might be less than favourable to anything that challenges germ theory?

They are 2 points in one here and very important one...

By lack of education most have forgotten that science is never and never will be anything else than an history of science...Dixit Goethe :

«History of science IS science» Majuscules are mine...

And techology power and technocratic authoritharism with money power combined is the absolute negation of science.... Transhumanism is a religion of the worst kind....

It will be easy to deconstruct it entirely with a Cassirean analysis of the symbolic form, like the one Cassirer himself did about Nazism in his days and under it exiled in the US...



Music being also a symbolic form, the analysis of the decline of music must be an analysis of the decline of all the other artistic forms in the repolarization of the values dominating european and Occidental culture and civilization...

This forgotten values origin and source explain the drying up of the blood life of Occidental spirit and his freezing up under the techocratic refrigerator....

@mahgister,

"Incredible..... Without history people are pathetically lost about societal issues...How easy it is to manipulate the brain of someone knowing no history....How difficult it is to try that with an educated man...."



This is the point. History itself is under attack, along with truth.

How many of us are familiar with the old germ v terrain theory debate?

And why not? Could it be that the pharmaceuticals might be less than favourable to anything that challenges germ theory?

Education can be a wonderful roadmap for the journey ahead, but it’s only that.

No more than a map.

Better than nothing for sure. Otherwise you are at great risk of being manipulated. Usually for the goal of increasing someone’s profits.

In any case musical literacy matters less and less today due to technology. It didn’t even matter that much in the days of the Beatles. Remember they couldn’t even read or write music, just chords.

Luckily for them they had George Martin and they still had to build songs up by constant rehearsal.

I suspect the way most songs are assembled today are quite different. And a different set of skills are required. The only thing that counts is the end result. Everything is geared towards that goal.

Sales.

In that way nothing has changed. Today’s artists are still doing what Bing, Frank, Nat, Elvis, Buddy, and the Beatles were all trying to do - make money.

I don’t believe any of them were trying to make art that would last even 50 years. But they did.

Yet who knows what tomorrow’s audience will be into? Artists like authors are also prone to the vagaries of fashion.

W Somerset Maugham was the best selling author in the world in the 40s and 50s. How many read him now?

Maybe it's not about the decline of musical standards after all?

Maybe it never was?

Maybe instead it's only more about the decline of our generation?

I dont give a dam about the communist chinese party....History will condemn it completely for killing millions....

BUT

When an American diplomat or any Occidental diplomat speak to a chinese diplomat does he know that after the great historian school works for 70 years now of Joseph Needham that:

Time between discoveries in China and the West (source: Joseph Needham *)
(ex: 800 years passed between the discovery of vaccination in China and its discovery in Europe)

Agriculture

Row cultivation, intensive weeding: 2200 years
Iron plow base: 2200
Harness trait: 500 - collar: 1000
Rotary tarare: 2000 Multi-row seed drill: 1800

Astronomy
Sunspot observation: 2000 
 Solar wind observation: 1400
Engineering arts Cast iron: 1700
Crank: 1100
Cardan suspension: 1100
Cast iron / steel transformation: 2000 -
Siemens process: 1300
Suspension bridge: 1800
Technology Oil and gas use: 2300
Paper: 1400
Wheelbarrow: 1300
Caliper: 1700
Porcelain: 1700
Umbrella-Umbrella: 1200
Matches: 1000
Printing: 700 - movable type: 400
Paper Money: 850
Seismograph: 1400
Navigable canals at levels: 1900
Rudder: 1100
Watertight bulkheads: 1,700
Medicine Blood circulation: 1800
Circadian rhythm of the bodies: 2150
Endocrinology: 2100
Diabetes / Urinalysis: 1000
Thyroid hormone usage: 1250
Vaccination: 800
Maths. Decimal system: 2300
Zero square: 1400
Negative numbers: 700
Magnetism Compass: 1500
Declination of the earth’s magnetic field: 600

Education
The first draft of the examination dates back to an edict of 134 BC. AD under Emperor Han Wudi who founded a school to train future civil servants in Confucian classics. One of its most important reforms is the establishment in 134 BC. J.-C. competitive examination for the recruitment of civil servants. The system of exams is fixed under the Sui Dynasty (581-618). In 606, under Emperor Sui Yang, the Jinshi was established an advanced examination system for the selection of civil servants *

Joseph Needham, author of the great encyclopedia on Science in China of which Wiki says: One of the pioneers in the field, he contributed to the recognition of China’s scientific past with, in particular, the publication of the monumental Science and Civilization in China (en), an encyclopedic collection that addresses all the developments in Chinese science. 





What do you think cross the mind of any chinese listening to the complete arrogant ignorance of history at large of most  Occidental people and nowadays even of their own history?

Incredible..... Without history people are pathetically lost about societal issues...How easy it is to manipulate the brain of someone knowing no history....How difficult it is to try that with an educated man....

There is only one problem in the actual decadence of occident it is the subordination of education to money....Nothing else...

No surprize that the leg of occidental history dont make no more sense...

Techocracy now will replace money.... We are going to the The "better world" of Huxley....

n80,

"The public school system is the domain of the left. The left drives STEM. The right approves."


Unfortunately true of the UK schools curriculum too.

My 16 year old daughter said her history school curriculum has dictated that her class spent two whole terms learning about the African slave trade and one term each for the past two years on WW1 trench warfare.

Fair enough, but she said there has been nothing on ancient Greece or the history of the Roman empire.

Therefore the entire history of the Romans in Britain and the importance of the ancient Greeks for the development of western civilization has been totally omitted.

Her artwork seems to be centred around a few post WW2 artists and photographers.

Once again no mention of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Dali etc.

As for musical education, this seems hardly any better today than it was back in my school days.

Thankfully our music teacher, who never bothered teaching us anything about Bach, Mozart, Beethoven etc did bring in his collection of Beatles LPs. He was quite an eccentric, often dressed as John Lennon as on the Abbey Road sleeve, and would bring in his own record player to play his discs.

On one shocking occasion he threw the school’s turntable across the room, claiming it was rubbish! He said he had a better record player in his car.

We may not have learned anything about Beethoven or Mahler, but he did make us write out lyrics from various songs from Sgt Pepper. So thank you for that Mr R, if not for the seemingly endless recorder lessons.

Anyway, this neglect of an historical context does seem to be a strange way of delivering education; whereby most British children will leave state education at 16 with hardly any awareness of what has gone before.

History still matters, doesn’t it?

Things weren’t much better in my day but at least we got to learn about some of the prime ministers since Pitt the Younger (Gladstone, Disraeli etc) and some of the key events in history such as the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Boston Tea Party!

In the UK we also seem to have a particular blind spot when it comes to the influence of the various Roman invasions of Britain under Julius Caesar and the emperor Claudius and their subsequent importance and legacy.

Another key event that gets glossed over is the English civil war of 1651 which is up there with Henry the 8th and his break with the Catholic church in regards to British history.

Yet Cromwell, as far as our education system (?) goes, remains to this day a largely unknown figure (like Guy Fawkes) who is mainly there to be mocked from time to time but never explained or explored.

I guess, as Michelle Shocked once sang, "The Book of History has many missing pages."

Especially in the books of the ones who seem to be setting the schools curriculum nowadays.

I’d like to think that in the British 2 tier school system, free and paid for, the private schools (from where most of our political leaders emerge), are still bothering to teach their children something of classical education and the arts.

Branford Marsalis said that jazz ain’t for kids. The same can be said for classical for kids of the past x amount of generations.

My daughter graduated local public high school in 2018. She played violin in the school orchestra since 4th grade. By the time she graduated the school orchestra was most impressive and she had come a long way. Her teachers were highly dedicated and the kids loved them.
No doubt music, especially classical music suffers greatly in overall popularity these days but it still thrives in isolated pockets. But there is a lot of competition.....more diverse forms of music available than ever. So it’s a two edged sword. Sad in some ways but interesting in others. It’s all a matter of perspective. I was one of the only kids I knew interested in classical music growing up so....

You speak about Empire and wars....Technocratic and economic empire...Usa liberating Europe... Perhaps but not without Russian tremendous effort against all the German forces....

I was speaking about spirit and culture....Take a written journal, or a TV news in america now; what is the content?

Almost nothing about world events and culture....An invisible censorship is there coming from where?

Freedom is not about being in jail or not, first and mostly..... Freedom is in the consciousness nowhere else....It takes naivete of popular culture to associate freedom with guns....That remind me of those fearing death and believing in technological immortality now...

Both of which exist in their current state simply and precisely because the U.S. permits them to do so.

The power of America empire comes from the Us dollars and the money system after the war...This is what you spoke about....The real america is not that, it is the creativity and the idea of freedom and possibilities given to men...

I spoke about the spirit and it is what we see in the cultural world...I spoke about values not domination....Values are directly relative to our link to the rest of the world and has nothing to do with money or power...

For culture power or money dont even exist.....😁Not knowing that is absolute ignorance....

This was called with a word that has no more meaning now: the " soul"

Where is the soul in Hollywood now? A rarity indeed....

But there is great number of giant souls in America, they are not in the TV nor in politic, nor in sight....My example was Chomsky the Einstein of linguistic, and a great historian, taken in the invisible jail of the censhorship like Soljetnitsyn in soviet Russia, apparently free unlike Soljenitsyn, but silenced by indifference and powerful censhorship...I dont like Trump but who has the power to silence him few days ago?

Dont take my remark an attack against the soul of America but an attack against the new materialist power dominating us all in Occident now and breaking America and the world at the worst hour......Especially now this year.....Eyes are made to see....

How can we oppose Chinese dictatorship in this way? A war is not the way to go....Except if we stay so weak spiritually....Then the guns will be the only answer.... Idiots prepare wars which are the business of others way more powerful, was saying the general Smedly Butler a great american soul 80 years ago....

Ignorance is closure of the mind in itself for people or countries....

@bdp24 , Are you seriously suggesting that the decline in public schools teaching the humanities began on the right? Even if you could prove such a thing, it would be hard to support that that is still the case. Technology has driven the STEM curriculum. Big tech keeps it that way. Even if not intentionally.

The public school system is the domain of the left. The left drives STEM. The right approves.

Hard to pin the creation of obedient one dimensional worker bees on the the right. That's a whole different ideology and politic there. It is certainly someone's goal right here and right now though.

@bdp24 That was over 40 years ago when Ronald Raygun was Gov.

You have had plenty of Liberal Governors to restore the art’s in that time.

Just making more welfare bees right Jerry Brown x2

mahgister wrote:
"How can you distinguish head and tail in your life in north-america with a so abyssal ignorance?"

Seriously? North America has cornered the market on abysmal ignorance? Where do you suppose the wisdom resides? Europe? That’s laughable. Certainly not modern Europe and maybe least of all modern France. Both of which exist in their current state simply and precisely because the U.S. permits them to do so. If it is important to understand history one of the first things to understand about modern history is that the U.S. is the single determining factor that keeps Europeans away from each other's throats.


And don't get me wrong, I'm not an apologist for modern culture, American or otherwise. Far from it. Nor am I a cheerleader for U.S. policy. I'm just looking at the last 100 years of Western history. Nothing worse than Western European smugness after WWI, the Russian revolution, WWII and the Balkans.

Cd318
So true +1
Books can burn just as easily 

There is a way....

One of he first great anti British revolutionary and patriot for the liberation of India before Gandhi , was Sri Aurobindo Ghose...

The British jailed him like many Indians....

In his captivity he decided that he must liberate the world and not only India.... He then pacifically spend the rest of his life meditating, writing the biggest metaphysical spiritual poem in all english litterature,Savitri, and become one of the truest spiritual man of his century...

He never was impeded by hindsight....He recreated yoga.... And spoke truly in advance of all we actually sees around us....


«Seing is not hindsight nor foresight, it is touching the center or putting a veil on our head, calling it red or blue dont change the fact that it is a veil»- Anonymus Smith


«You remind me of my wife asking why i dont like the green bow tie and not the red one she give me at the same time the day before...I dont like bow tie anyway»- Groucho Marx

@mahgister,

"Hollywood was and is propaganda masquarading in art....Chomsky wrote about that...Where is Chomsky in american TV? the most influential linguist is unknown in america and he is also one of the most interesting historian of the American empire...Nowhere to be seen...."


Err.. Chomsky does tend to say unpopular things, which in this day and age especially are liable to be banished to the further reaches of the university library - or your favourite search engine.

These are worrying times for anyone interested in preserving historical integrity. For instance historical truth can now easily be airbrushed out, or carefully selected to only present only one side of the story.

With digital manipulation this process can make the truth from the fake very difficult to discern.

Once again the value of archives is demonstrated. Just as precious out of print vinyl is sometimes our only link with certain performers and performances so are those out of print books which encapsulated the feel of the the times in which they were published.

Hindsight can sometimes be a wonderful thing, but it can also be a terribly destructive one.

Truthseekers must tread carefully.

Lucky childs.....

Congratulations....

I have always had music in our home.

As a former musician right into my 30’s I taught my children an appreciation for all types of music.

All 3 of my children played in middle school, high school and at University. 2 were offered music scholarships as well as academic. They both chose academic scholarships studying Chemical Engineering and one is studying Language and has a job teaching English in Japan.
I think it starts in the home, and if the child has an interest they will pursue music in school. My oldest son played in the OSU ( Oklahoma State) Jazz Band, the Percussion Ensemble and in a Jazz Ensemble. He’s has had the pleasure of sitting in on a session with Snarky Puppy at UNT.

But the one thing I can not keep my kids from is the peer pressure of listening and liking RAP.

I did manage to teach them an appreciation for Hockey and Moto GP.

Culture is driven toward the top or toward the bottom....If money drive culture guess where it will go?

An example: how for a century Hollywood was never able to tell a story about the most extraordinary visual show there is on par with Chinese emperors history, and an essential piece to understand occidental history, the one thousand years story of the Byzantine empire? No Ben-Hur is NOT about Byzantium and dont count at all....Nor crusades film which are mostly about Europeans going against Islam...It is very instructive that crusaders films never speak of the remnants of Byzantium either... They go acting like Byzantium empire never exist at all... 😁 Hollywood was and is propaganda masquarading in art....Chomsky wrote about that...Where is Chomsky in american TV?  the most influential linguist is unknown in america and he is also one of the most interesting historian of the American empire...Nowhere to be seen.... 

Not a single movie about Byzantium  i can remind of.... is it not extraordinary? An ignorance so deep?

The first comic book i read young at 6 years old was a comic book about Trebizonde and Byzantium but it was written in french.... It alert me immediately....Ay 6 years old.... I take greek course and latin for years that was helping for sure...I only learn to read but that serve me for life and it was later my job main point....It is another story. 😊

How can you distinguish head and tail in your life in north-america with a so abyssal ignorance?

How can a democracy can ever exist? For sure appearance of democracy is important but it is not a really working democracy...Anyway no empire can be a democracy sorry....

History is the only tool box of critical thinking , there is NO other...

Then so go with music what has begins long ago with the forgotting of history....Music is sounds selling industry....I am almost unable to listen to 95 % of what is made commercially or popular in the last 30 years...Classic, jazz, Indian and Persian music and a bit from others cultures made my night and day...



«Music is the only way to touch the soul with your hand....»-Anonymus Smith

«Music is history whistling in the ears or only ears buzzing»-Anonymus Smith

Great ‘

  I remember listening to a lot of rock, 60’s - 80’s.

 Singers sang had harmony, people played instruments,
 
 now, it’s all computer tripe, auto tune, singers do not sing anymore.

  Dio, Delp, Marriott, and tons of others.

 I miss actual music bands, not these lip syncing, cd play music, for the fans. Cant stand it

A tragic end to be sure.

Happy Listening!

Sejodiren. I sure tried. I “attempted” to play the trombone in the 5th grade. My band instructor pulled me aside and said a musical instrument may not be for everyone. I’m scarred to this day.

n80 - thank you from us all. And yes, what a blow Covid is.
Our local youth orchestra gave my daughter one of her passions (sax) and her friend her career (she went on to the Royal Academy to study flute) and another her entry into the armed forces as a musician. I hope so much it reopens after all this.

For the last three years my wife and I have sponsored our new local symphony at the second highest sponsorship level. Not bragging, she has been active in the organization and its what we wanted to do. And it has been a pleasure to be able to do so.


But that would have indeed paid for some nice audio equipment.

Sadly, the response to COVID may have killed our new three year old symphony. No performances in a year. No ticket money coming in. Sponsorships understandably drying up. I don't know how those musicians are staying afloat. Currently no performances planned and we live in a state that has not had mandatory shut downs since the spring.


Music venues in the region have been shuttered for about a year as well.

No matter where you fall on the politics and/or science of COVID, it is decimating the working musician and venue owners.

How about we don’t spend another $1000 on a very marginal sound quality gain, and sponsor our local school band/orchestra with it instead? If we all bought a kid an instrument instead of buying the next bit of kit to install in our pampered, anti-social, private man-cave listening rooms we would be making things better, instead of complaining about the decline we have caused.
(Because we were there, right? It was us that did it...)

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

@schubert  Certainly economics play a role. Where there is no money and in regions where the mobile population is leaving it is going to be hard to fund or even maintain interest in the arts.

Where I live, which is still considered by much of the nation as the illiterate and backwards south, growth has been exponential over the last 20 years and especially the last 5-10. Lots of people coming in. Lots of money coming in. Lots of talent coming in. This increases the tax base which give schools more to work with and local cities and towns with money for arts etc. It also increases the number of people with an appetite and desire for the arts. 

I saw a special on Detroit about funk music in the early 70's and how that was a direct product of black families with high blue collar incomes from the auto industry allowing their kids to buy instruments and play in basement bands.

Money talks. And sings.

You can drive the interstate in the "rust belt" from Syracuse to Chicago
and go through a dozen smaller city's that have lost their Symphony because of where they sit  .

From a standpoint of young people and the decline in musical literacy I would disagree that there is a problem....based on my own personal experience. From where I sit it is thriving. I have a niece (9th grade) who plays viola, one niece (11th grade) who plays guitar and clarinet, 3 nieces who sing and whose mother is a trained classical singer. I have a cousin who is an accomplished tenor and pianist, I have another cousin who is an accomplished pianist and singer (musicals) and whose son is studying jazz guitar at UVA. My wife plays the flute. My own kids can both play piano a little but are otherwise musically illiterate.There is no common thread or even location among these people other than some loose family connections. The first niece I mentioned plays in a public school based symphony, the second plays in a private school based symphony.

All of this in the "backward" southern US.

Our community (small southern city) just recently established an excellent symphony orchestra. When forming there were no try outs because there was a list of superb regional musicians ready to step in. This essentially meant a hand picked symphony by request only.

We have neighbors who are in local bands.

From where I'm sitting things are booming.

Snarky Puppy - "Lingus" on youtube
Cool groove and pocket movement with a keyboard solo up there with Chick Corea.

Dynamo is another good group in the same genre.

Contemporary composers, typically defy repeated harmonic patterns with exception to John Williams (minor 3rd's) and the Minimalists. Even listening to three hours of Stockhausen would, I'd think, be better than making a diet of listening to the popular trends. But to say that music has been in a decline since J.S.Bach, dismisses hundreds of years of great music. Composers today receive little attention for a multitude of reasons but it's rarely because their writing is lacking in substance.

I think some are from U. of North Texas (my alma mahler) and some are east coast.  Guitarist Chris McQueen is originally from Westlake High, near you.

Huh, @slaw, I thought they came from a school in North Texas, no?

@whart ,

Snarky Puppy is from my neck of the woods.

Wolf_garcia is right: there're so many contemporary jazz, folk, rap, and rock artists out there beneath the mass produced glaze of compressed and hook-obsessed club hits. You just have to shift your vision. 

I think the premise of this thread is flawed and a victim of the blinders of relative cultural and age perspective. I mean, by the OP premise, music has been in decline since Bach stopped writing music. 

Idk. Saying contemporary pop is in serious decline...based on what? Musical structure superficiality? Compression? Whatever. People were saying the same schitt in the 80's and just about every decade. 

We we grow older. Music changes and doesn't fit into our established impression of what defines good music, and thus we dismiss it or grudgingly accept it if it's close enough to some schema we recognize. 

wolf-garcia, I wouldn't disagree with that but I'd say that about all serious contemporary music. I suppose it's inherently confusing since the thread is partially about music education and partly about music appreciation.

Because the jazz world today is packed with astonishing musicians making great recordings.

wolf-garcia, why do you say that?

If you think music is in decline you're likely not a jazz fan. Too bad.

By the way, most conservatories have prep programs offered to kids and adults. As for typical college departments, it could vary.

sejodiren,

I agree completely with you!
I played guitar many years ago. But it was by ear only. 
I never could go far.
So, I decided to stop.
My best guitarist is Baden Powell. Genius.

sejodiren,

I agree completely with you!
I played guitar many years ago. But it was by ear only. 
I never could go far.
So, I decided to stop.

Part of the information was also used to fuel the Thoughty2 youtube video posted elsewhere here. Also, the first part gives no reference to what survey it is referring to and the chart is quite amateurish with a low sample rate and from where?

The AI from Spain (same as video mentioned.)
"Besides the decline of music literacy and participation, there has also been a decline in the quality of music which has been proven scientifically by Joan Serra, a postdoctoral scholar at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona. Joan and his colleagues looked at 500,000 pieces of music between 1955-2010, running songs through a complex set of algorithms examining three aspects of those songs.."etc

I think people need to be aware of sites that just aggregate data and redress it for some relabeling. It is also "written" by a guy that provides financial services? Weird.

Fortunately I live near the College Conservatory of Music which offers opportunities I never would have experienced otherwise. Especially the new composers series that took place for three weeks during several summers. I met Steve Reich, Moritz Eggert and Kaija Saariaho as well as other contemporary composers and performers. And the school has had legendary professors such as Henry Meyer and Karin Dayas.
The Cincinnati College of Music and the Conservatory of Music merged in 1955, given that it’s faculty members taught at both schools. My grandparents graduated from the College of Music in the 1920’s, my grandmother a soprano and my grandfather a cellist. They played professionally i.e. my grandmother a soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
We also have a good orchestra in Cincinnati and a beautiful Music Hall which was just renovated not to long ago. However given all of this, it still fails to compete with European cities. I’ve lived in Paris and Cologne and can say that there isn’t a city in the US who can compare to the cultural advantages of either of these cities. Especially Germany and the reason comes down to money. Germany spends more money on financially supporting orchestras and other musical organizations more than anywhere else in the world. Musicians who play for the Berlin are better off than anyone else anywhere else. This being the reason for the New York Philharmonic losing its first chair cellist to the Berlin.
Additionally, most European children receive musical preparation on the piano and it is not uncommon for people to have a piano in their homes. I am probably a minority for having a console piano in my house.

Millercarbon, every thing in the USA is in decline since 1960: I visited Detroit in 1965, and it was the most elegant city I have ever been to; it seems everyone drove a new car, and dressed in the latest quality fashions.

The first time I experienced "valet parking" was when we went to a nightclub to see Aretha Franklin; they also had hat check girls (just like in the movies), all new to me. I was taken around to visit some of the friends of my host, who lived in swell homes with "rathskellers", that was the term used for playrooms with bars.

Since I listen to what I consider the highest quality music available any time I'm woke, I consider this conversation quite valid in regard to the music; however, just citing the music would make one guilty of tunnel vision.

Auto-Tune is, to date, the biggest single symptom of the decline of Western civilization.