Rock & roll will never die...

Rock is anything but dead.  As Dean's graph pointed out, it's still popular in the mainstream, and even though it has become stale in its most popular form, there are still myriads of great rock bands that haven't made it big.  Young musicians (and old musicians!) are still forming bands, making creative and unique music, performing, and putting albums up on bandcamp.  You just have to be willing to dig a little deeper.  Just come to St. Louis to witness our thriving local music scene, complete with all genres of music, rock coexisting with classical, jazz, indie, and electronic acts.  Rock and roll might have to share it's spotlight with other genres, but it's still very much alive and well.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Just come to St. Louis to witness our thriving local music scene, complete with all genres of music, rock coexisting with classical, jazz, indie, and electronic acts.  Rock and roll might have to share it's spotlight with other genres, but it's still very much alive and well.

Edited by jude111 - May 22 2013 at 13:17

jude111 wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Just come to St. Louis to witness our thriving local music scene, complete with all genres of music, rock coexisting with classical, jazz, indie, and electronic acts.  Rock and roll might have to share it's spotlight with other genres, but it's still very much alive and well. Some places are bastions of certain kinds of music. There will always ('always' in this case being a relative term) be classical music in Vienna and Salzburg; Chicago will always have the blues, New Orleans will have jazz, Nashville will have country, and St Louis will have a bit of blues and jazz and r&r. In the article that Dean posted, the author writes that "the performance of particular genres of music that are more popular in some larger markets, such as the US and Japan, will also be reflected on a global level because of the high share of retail sales in those markets." Music bought in much of the world remains pirated, so the true share of the global population that listens to r&r is, I suspect, much smaller than on the graph. (In China, it's all pirated. However, Chinese love pop and they love rock, so I think if it gets sorted, rock may be secure for quite a while...) I don't know about India... Is the music mainly pirated there? India's the second most populated country in the world, yet their music isn't really reflected in the polls...? I'm willing to bet that not a lot of people in Africa listen to r&r - whether it's the north African Arabic countries, the music hotbeds of Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Kenya, etc. or South America, much of Asia, India...

It's not just St Louis, though; I used it as an example because that's where I live and I can name bands in the local music scene.  You find rock bands in any city, though.  The point being that every city has plenty of people who love rock music, and plenty of rock bands, and that the fact that this music isn't in the mainstream doesn't mean it's dead; similarly to prog, which is no longer a mainstream genre like it was in the early 70's (although there are still popular prog bands like Radiohead and DT) but, if anything, is thriving artistically more than ever.

jude111 wrote: CPicard wrote: ...and having in mind the Touareg Blues/Rock acts such as Tinariwen or Tanakrift, one can bet that Rock music will find its way on a new international audience - only flavoured with local "perfumes". The music I've heard by Tinariwen, I'm not sure I'd classify that as rock. Dimi Mint Abba and Ali Farka Toure added electric instrumentation that might appeal to rock audiences, as did Baaba Maal & Mansour Seck, but I'm not sure it's music that one would classify as rock... maybe I'm wrong though...

Etran Finatawa is adds a blues/rock to traditional Wodaabe and Tuareg music, from what I've heard (one album), it's classifiable as rock.

Another thing to keep in mind is Rock, much like Hip-hop, is an entirely doable form of music, which is to say unlike Jazz, classical or Pop, it can be learned and played by those who are untrained or young.   This maintains a certain level of both product and interest in these, if you will, folk musics.   Kids will always play and be able to play rock, punk, rap, etc.

rogerthat wrote: ^^^  I think with a melodic (but rather annoying imo) artist like Bruno Mars topping the charts (or Adele), we can see that pop is 'back'.  But this seems to be more about reaching a point of stagnation and with no particularly gripping new developments on the mainstream, the industry is falling back on the tried and tested genres of rock and pop.  I think the game is now about listening to 'genres' and the most typical, stereotyped sound of that genre rather than artists per se.

King Crimson776 wrote: You get this far, and yet can't see the logical conclusion: Music has stagnated. It's not 'the industry'. It's even more apparent in the mainstream because it has to be conservative there, but the problem is necessarily going to be there overall too. Music is more formulaic and typical everywhere, mainstream or not.

Edited by jude111 - May 22 2013 at 20:12

I hesitate to make what might seem to be a logical conclusion because I haven't nearly heard all the Western music of today, let alone all the MUSIC.  So I don't want to comment on what I don't know.  But even in the mainstream, artists like Fiona Apple or Everything Everything are quite original.  It's just that generally speaking, the mainstream is pretty stagnant and staid these days.  

Edited by rogerthat - May 22 2013 at 20:40

Uuuhh... By the way, who the hell is James Blake?

Dean wrote: in album sales even Metal out-sells Rap.