C. Tangana and Simon Reynolds: The nice debate on the way forward for music in the home on | Culture | EUROtoday

There is an obsession with being novel in music and, as a consequence, a disappointment when that doesn’t occur. The music critic Simon Reynolds compares it to like: “It’s like an energy you have and then end … Then you wait for it to happen again.” When it occurs, it is not going to be a brand new feeling. However, the English journalist didn’t arrive on the home on Madrid to speak about romanticism, however for an encounter with somebody who can perceive it: the multifaceted Madrid artist Antón Álvarez, higher referred to as C. Tangana. Both replicate on the way forward for music and the way it’s within the roots of traditions past the invention of recent sounds. It was The imagined sounda chat of the second version of the Ideas Festival.

Reynolds (62 years), at present some of the influential cultural critics, described what he calls “positive originality“, Positive originality:” When a new sound appears, a field of action is opened and other musicians feel inspired to explore. ” within the latter the place the true “authenticity.”

“Changes in music do not have to be great,” Reynolds stated; The little ones are sufficient. And he listed some genres that, though not new, embody totally different sounds to remain related, similar to blues or folks rock. Something that works, in response to Álvarez, as a result of “people cling more and more to nostalgia.” C. Tangana, for instance, started as an city rapper however on his final album, The Madridexplored folklore and flamenco: “It is completely opposite to everything I have already done what I was supposed to do.” The dialog additionally addressed the obsession with the long run in well-liked music. Reynolds defined that cultural historical past has a “bipolar rhythm”: “moments of creative euphoria followed by stagnation phases.”

The transformation of the present musician’s profile additionally occupied a part of the dialogue. Reynolds stated that the up to date determine is multidisciplinary: “It is no longer enough to sing or compose; now it is necessary to take care of the image, the live show, fashion and even parallel businesses, such as clothing or perfume lines.” He recalled that from Bowie to Madonna, pop music was at all times audiovisual, however at this time that demand has intensified. C. Tangana agreed, though he clarified that, past diversification, the important continues to be the “aura”, being “cool”That inexplicable magnetism, he said, is the only thing about pop that is still mysterious and fascinating:“ Why does someone cool? We do not know, but it is what hooks. ”Pop, he concluded, remains linked to seduction, sexual, to that attraction that cannot be pretended.

Political positioning could not be missing in conversation. The recent mobilizations of artists around the world opened the debate about whether the musician must take sides in social causes. C. Tangana reflected on the political role of music today and pointed out that the protest song “has misplaced its means to seduction.” According to the artist, the controversial messages are now usually limited to minority groups that live at the ends, and the possibility of politically impacting through music has been reduced. In addition, he emphasizes that the public “has the proper to demand from artists” whatever they want, while they decide if they accept their demands. Reynolds stressed how the fame of certain artists allows them to influence public opinion and support political causes: “The political affect may be extra within the artist’s voice than within the content material of his songs.”

The question that was open is whether this obsession can be sustained indefinitely or if, as folklore reappropriations suggest, a deeper return towards memory can be enriching. C. Tangana admitted that every time “we’re extra nostalgic than ourselves. I do not give extra new issues, give me one thing to cling to me.” And he apostilled that he dreams of the idea of ​​an “equal tomorrow” and not a different one; in seeing his mother and his sister: “I do not know if that type of factor is feasible.”