Avante-garde

[dylanshmai]

A friend went up to me and told me my music was "avante-garde" so I looked it up and started researching it. Instantly it felt familiar to what I had become and put the order of things in my life right on my door step...I don't know, maybe this belongs in the Philosophy section. Nihilism, Agonism, Futurism, and Decadence. really good stuff.

[dylanshmai]

Wow...no replies yet? I would think this kind of thing would be important in the dreaming community. Or is that you've debated this topic to death?

[eppy]

ha. They say "Avante-garde" in Interview with the Vampire.

[dylanshmai]

great. any thoughts on avant-gardism?

[Oneironaut Zero]

Avant garde is (more or less) a fancy way of saying something is "cutting edge" or "new" - that it "pushes the boundaries" and just so far out there that there hardly seems to be precedence for it. As far as "any thoughts on it," I think it's a good thing. More art forms should be portrayed in an avant garde fashion than are being done that way today. Nowadays, everything is rehash, rehash, rehash.

[dylanshmai]

yeah, I just happened to stumble upon things that made up the roots for Avant-garde things. Its like going down the rabbits hole.

[ThePhobiaViewed]

I really like avant-garde music. I always make a distinction between what differenct types of music are meant to fulfill. It's like when people complain about how bad the music on the radio is. I agree with them but the main purpose of listening to the radio is usually to listen to while driving or casually in the background whether at work, at a pool, etc. The music on the radio has to be simple and catchy because for those situations that's what is needed. If you sit in a dark room and close your eyes and really focus on the music then the pop on the radio probably won't sound very complex or fulfilling. Noise music would be a good choice though. So would ambience, etc and all those styles which would never get played on the radio. There are prob hundreds of genres and subgenres of weird music that the average person has never heard of. Many times I have just gone to Discogs.com and then researched some of the many genres I had never even heard of. I guess the point I'm making is that many forms of avant-garde music may seem pointless or unlistenable but one has to analyze what purpose they serve. They aren't going to play John Cage's 4'33" on the radio (its a piece where the performer(s) just sit quiet for four and a half minutes making the focus on the sounds of the audience and hall rather than a musical performance). John Cage was always more focused on sounds rather than music. I have some books of Cage's writings and speeches and if you can get past the crazy formatting there are some clever ideas. An interviewer once asked cage what purposes his music served and he replied "No purposes. Sounds." I feel that sums avant-garde up pretty well. It isn't about creating something that everyone will want to listen to as the next hit on the radio. It's about exploring and creating new ideas. Music is controlling sounds. The avant-garde-ists are the mad scientists warping everything trying to make the discoveries that the less gutsy never would. Music isn't about three chords and a hook, music is about sounds and that is what avant-garde dares to explore.

[dylanshmai]

I've heard plenty of avant garde music that is based on 3 chords and a good hook and is still kept fresh and interesting, inventive, and experimental.

[guitarboy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...-garde_artists

[ThePhobiaViewed]

I've heard plenty of avant garde music that is based on 3 chords and a good hook and is still kept fresh and interesting, inventive, and experimental. I'll agree with that. I find it a shame that most people don't realize how much music is really out there. It seems like for every band on the radio that most people have heard of there are 50 unknown bands who do the same style but do it much better. One style I really like is breakcore but i only discovered it relatively recently because it just doesn't get exposure in small town America. Most people probably dont even know what an amen break is yet whole genres are based upon it. The avant-garde explores, yet most people never get to hear those explorations unless they go digging for them. The list that guitarboy linked to is pretty interesting because there are alot of well-known names like Louis Armstrong who usually wouldn't be thought of as avant-garde.

[dylanshmai]

Yeah, I would think most true avan't gardists would be very familiar with jazz.