The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality)

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. 

@whart ,

Snarky Puppy is from my neck of the woods.

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

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.

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.