Music High, Music Low, Music Good, Music Bad
January 04 2009

One of my favourite quotes- meaning I pull it out regularly to tint the plain shapes of being's colouring book -comes from the late Northrop Frye (pictured, right), the towering literary and social critic, and almighty thinker: Every mind is a primitive mind.

Meaning: whatever our sophistication, however refined we may be, we all laugh at Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, feel the tug to calm a crying baby, and savour shortbread and french fries. We are, every one of us, equally open to virtue and prey to vice.

Back in the 70's and before, there was Music and there was music. The former, ennobled by the upper case as though it signified the upper class, usually meant Classical, i.e. European music of the 16th to the mid-20th centuries. The other 'music' was, y'know, like, well, pop and, like, jazz and stuff. Like, low class stuff.

It's trite these days to spell out the fall of music's iron curtains. Whether the fall was due to greater openness (good), to the catholicity of mixtapes and iTunes (partly good), or to music's newfound fungibility (not good at all), most ears and fewer mouths rebel against the desegregation that allows Bach to be followed by Indonesian Gamelan music, and preceded by K. D. Lang. (A brilliant pioneer in synthesizing all styles of music is Art Levine, whose 1990's radio show 'This is Art' was a broadcasting gem: artlevine.com.)

To the advent of music, or rather Music, without borders we should all say: Amen. Hallelujah. Huzzah. There is no longer any stigma attached to playing Brahms, Lenny Breau, Take 6, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Erykah Badu in one sitting.

I've heard attributions to Bach, to Duke Ellington, and to others of the bromide 'There are only two kinds of music: good and bad.' A bromide perhaps, but it's true. The only classifications of music that count are good and bad. All others are factitious.

Yet it has taken forever for this truth to prevail. And still there are dead-enders. They don't know the war is over. Their side lost. But, hiding out in the blinkered caves of antique times, they take potshots at the new reality. They want to close what's been opened.

Just look at what happened when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio 2 network went from a mostly classical format, to a mix of pop, jazz, world and classical. To a small but vocal minority this was gross treason. A provocation on the scale of Archduke Ferdinand's assassination in 1914.

Problem is, the audience for the old Radio 2 format (which included me) was aging and diminishing. Now Radio 2 has pioneered a rich, eclectic way of programming. It is attracting younger ears. New audiences. And my bet is many of these new ears will hear Music (in the old sense) for the first time, and they'll learn to love it.

I'm not an interested party here. I don't really like the new format. I like my classical. So when I'm not listening to CBC Radio 1, I get my music elsewhere.

But the point is the new Radio 2 recognizes the new reality of music. Out with the high and low, in with the good or bad.

All of this goes to show every mind is a primitive mind. In the varieties of music we now hear, there is the unquestionably simple, primitive even, mixed in with the obviously sophisticated. There is blues music mixed in with Schoenberg. But the fact we can appreciate the latter does not negate the pleasure of the former. And vice versa. The "refined" Schoenbergian mind is the same as the "primitive" blues mind.

Ultimately this boils down to is guilt and honesty. We need never feel guilt for our tastes (as long as they are legal and moral); and as long as we are honest, we are free to accept or reject music based on our reactions to it.

As a jazz player, I am thrilled by this shift in attitudes to music. In days of yore, my being labeled as a jazzman (I did not, and would not, give myself the classification, but it's not an unreasonable one) would have marginalized me instantly. I would have been relegated to the backwood badlands of the music industry. Now, I have a better chance of winning over minds and ears, because they are more open.

We're still a long way from bringing the margins at which jazz stands into the centre. But the process has begun. The primitive minds are evolving.

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