Music and the lost future

Courtesy of Pedro Ribeiro Simoes

By David A. Tizzard

No one is really bored anymore. We always have a phone. We are connected at all times. A digital world of our choosing at our fingertips. Now even 90 seconds waiting in a line has most people reaching for their pocket rather than suffer the crippling anxiety of existing next to someone. No one is bored, but everything is boring. Content is content-less. A 10 second TikTok. An Insta story. YouTube short. Facebook moments. Disposable ideas. Enough to pass the time but never enough to actually stop and think about what you are doing and whether any of it actually means anything.

A news article tells you that the latest K-pop video has another 50 million views as if it matters and isn't just paid promotion. It doesn't tell you the exponentially growing views are because a select group of people are streaming the video on 9 different devices 24 hours a day just to try and keep the thing relevant. If you want to think for a second about the energy use that these 'like' farms and view factories use, it makes the whole thing even more depressing. But 1 billion people have not played that video: that's post-truth truth we just kind of ignore and pretend it's all real so as not to get in trouble. Of course if the song were actually any good, people wouldn't need to stream like that. The art would survive by itself. The passion of the fans, which is as admirable as it's undeniable, can instead be seen as a demonstration of the inadequacy of the content. Value is taken in numbers. And here we have hours and years of unpaid fan labor for large multimillion dollar corporations that would make Marx scream.

Imagine actually creating a culture in which the merit of art and music was not determined by views alone. Music as a portal into a particular set of cultural values. To the punk community of the 70s. To the hip-hop of the 80s. To the jungle of the 90s. Music and art that willingly excludes others in order to better reveal itself. To tell a truth. To communicate something. To comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Instead we inhabit a world of late 20th century culture on 21st century devices. Hundreds of millions, even billions of views on songs that would not sound out of place in the 1990s. You could play most of the mainstream pop releases designed for international success to people 20 years ago and it wouldn't sound weird. And I don't think that's something we should be happy about. It doesn't point to something being timeless: it points to stagnation and a lack of imagination. More than that, it points to a fear of failure. A fear of trying to do something actually new just in case people don't like it and it doesn't make money.

In that sense neoliberalism is not only destroying our art, it's destroying our future. We might have wireless headphones, 5G connections, and phones that fold; we might be able to upload stuff and talk to the other side of the world instantaneously; the technology has certainly developed, but the content hasn't. There's nothing genuinely new that's commercially successful these days. And you can tell that because if it was new, you probably wouldn't like it.

The late Mark Fisher (who the piece is heavily indebted to) gave the following example: If you got music from 70s following the invention of the wah pedal and various distortions and took them back in a time machine to the 1940s or 1950s, it would blow people's minds. They simply wouldn't have heard that sound before. They would probably hate it. Or at least not understand it. Similarly, if you took the introduction of decks, sampling, and synthesizers from the 80s back to the 60s, it would be another earth-shattering revelation of how music, technology, art, creation and everything else had progressed. It sounds cliche today, but at the time Jimi's fuzz, Run-DMC's scratching, and A-ha's synth sound was like nothing the previous generation had ever heard before.

What is there today that's commercially popular that would make people of the past lose their shit? You would just be taking them back Coldplay, Elton John, and pale Nile Rogers imitations done by some lads dancing to a song they didn't write but with fewer real instruments. We have auto-tune, trap beats, and the triplet rap delivery but these are mere changes in existing form rather than anything radically different. Again, says Fisher, everyday life has sped up but culture has slowed down. Neoliberalization has produced a capitalist cyberspace that promotes old ideas as something genuinely revolutionary. Removing the future. Kicking over the ladders of progress. Erasing.

Just because something is contemporary doesn't mean it's new. The more I have the recent music and television shoved at me in algorithmic spoonfuls demanding I be both excited and satisfied, the more I come to realize that I've seen, heard, and eaten this all before. Will I no longer have my mind blown? Is it just me? Or has it always been like this? Is this attitude one that comes with age and a sense of jadedness: A middle-aged ennui to be endured quietly so as not to disturb the youth?

I don't think so. It's not just about subjective taste or the lack of it. Like Mark Fisher, I think it's more systemic than that. I think we're still waiting for a cultural future that is being held back by a capitalist system that won't allow it to arrive because it won't immediately be profitable. And we're mindlessly accepting it just for solace in our screens.

Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.