The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality)

Interesting article, thanks.  As for the quality of music that he wrote about...I remember realizing that intuitively at the age of 14 when I started hearing that abomination called "new wave", some of the coldest, most artificial music ever recorded.  When I turned 18 I couldn't even walk into bar full of attractive young ladies if that music was playing, so disturbing was my visceral reaction.  My threshold for today's popular music is about 10 seconds.  

I’m paraphrasing here, but Russ Kunkel, one of the best drummers of our time (James Taylor, Stevie Nicks and a million other hit records) was asked if he could read music and his answer was "Not well enough to hurt my playing." An interesting answer, but I think many trained musicians will understand what this means. The position that music is in decline has been around forever and I won’t be drawn into that argument. What I do think is that listening to music as a solo activity, the way audiophiles do and the way many more used to do it, is on the decline. Now, people are listening to music constantly on their headphones, but mostly as a backdrop to other activities or to occupy their brains while on the subway or whatever. Personally, I do think musical literacy has declined, but I’m old so nobody is marketing music to me. I’m ok with that. Time marches on. Live life the way you want and don't expect others to conform to your views.  

. In the Western world music music was on the up for centuries . 
  ALL aspects of society are in decline , History is the most important element in a liberal education and in the US  95% of the population
is totally ignorant of it . Not entirely their fault , in all high schools
and most colleges every word they tell you is a complete lie .

Music has been in decline forever, or at least since about 1800. There is always great music being created by artists who do it for the love of music, but pop music is where the decline really shows.

It’s hard to see Elvis or Chuck Berry as anything but a big musical step down from Duke Ellington or Glenn Miller.

What’s happening now in pop music is computers. They analyze hit songs and come up with a formula for making more hit songs. You don’t need a great artist to make songs following the formula, being good looking and a decent dancer helps though. Actually, great artists are a pain in the rear for record companies. Ask anyone who has dealt with Van Morrison.

So we have computers making ever more formulaic pablum for people who aren’t really interested in music. I have hope that there will be another musical revolution one day though.

wharf- Bingo! We have a winner!

Its always been crap, crap, and more crap. Best we can do is hold our noses as we wade up to our necks scanning around searching in vain for the rare find floating in the bilge.