Are You Concerned Your 4 Year Old Isn’t in a Cool Band?
priceonomics.com
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This seems like a great way to cultivate a life-long creative understanding of music - "if you can make interesting noise to a beat, that's music, and the rest is just details and practice".
At the same time it felt very weird to be seeing rock-n'-roll packaged, codified and commodified the way it was. At pick-up time you see a bunch of youngsters mirroring the clothes and attitude of rock culture - while being loaded into their parents' minivans. I couldn't help feeling a bit uneasy about the whole thing to be honest.
Back In My Day™ rock was a much more organically rebellious activity.
That's not a reason for kids not to play at it. And the story telling part of this idea sounds great.
Ironically, it's probably more creative than the rock and pop industries are now.
I love it!
Seems like a really well thought-out program, albeit - in my eyes - let down somewhat by an advert that implies it'll have much less depth than it actually has.
No, that's not what I'm saying, nor what I believe the program is saying either.
To my mind, everyone likes fun with distortion, and colouring the relevant guitars pink helps break down the "pink is for girls" gender norm, nothing more, nothing less.
Actually, being perfectly honest, I'd never even heard of "boys like distortion" as a gender norm; is that a thing?
What if boys prefer different colors then pink ? Dat oppresion.
It obviously IS a thing. Check out the predominantly buyers of distortion pedals, or the near absolute majority of workshippers of "shredding" guitarists and heavy players. Also check any magazine about those kind of things, incudings any advertisments of heavy guitar gear, amps and distortion pedals. You will of course find 2-3 counter-examples. You'd be hard-pressed to find 10, much less 50.
[1] Especially considering that women are the most sought after group by advertisers/marketeers, even more so than men.
My son is highly involved in his high school band (concert and marching), and the gender breakdown is very instrument specific. A lot more girls play flute and clarinet while a lot more boys play sousaphone, trombone, and percussion.
Part of it is physical - not that many girls can march around with a heavy sousaphone. But I do think there is a bias that pushes girls and boys at a young age when starting out towards certain instruments.
- I played in a jazz band in college: across all of the department jazz bands, probably 95% male participants.
- Attending the local symphony: approximately half and half, and I do seem to find the male/female ratio in classical music performances tends to be more balanced.
- Perusing musical instrument stores across the country: predominantly male shoppers.
- Listening to recorded music: I don't consciously (or, I think, even unconsciously) select music based on the sex of the artist. Most music I've listened to has been produced either mostly or entirely by male participants. More specifically, I listen to a lot of jazz and jazz-related genres of music; it's rare that I even encounter a female performer in those genres. (Rare, as in, maybe 5-10% of the time.)
- Playing music in local bands: most other participants have been male.
I personally suspect that high school band participation is, at least in some cases, driven by external motivators besides intrinsic musical interest. In my (again anecdotal) observations, many people who were actively involved in high school bands put their instruments away more or less permanently after high school.
Anyway, again, I have no concrete statistical data, and I certainly agree that high school participation is more balanced.
By giving the children a choice of not only sound but color, they're sticking with some good punk traditions, IMHO.
I somehow doubt that you play guitar, so I should also point out that playing a heavily distorted guitar is tremendously fun for anyone. Guitar is the toughest instrument I've ever played badly and I still think it's great fun.
> I somehow doubt that you play guitar, so I should also point out that playing a heavily distorted guitar is tremendously fun for anyone.
Wait, what? How the hell you concluded that from my simple assumption (which might be correct or not) that there's a boys-like-distortion gender norm?
I suppose we have a different understanding of what a gender norm is.
My friend Shawn introduced me to an Acid King cd the last time he was in town and I have been a fan since. I'm always glad to hear someone mention them as they're on my 'must see live' list. There's a really neat doomy stoner band called Black Moth that has come out with some good stuff. They're sort of like Sabbath with female vocals.
I'll check Black Moth, thanks for the recommendation.
And it's not just breaking "pink is for girls", but also "pink is not for boys"; something that children enforce pretty strictly.
It's a fact. Play a copy of "Sleep's Holy Mountain" for someone, then show them some Kenny Rogers. Note the results.
Citation needed.
Let's compare girl bands with heavy distortion compared to male bands as such.
Search for butt-dumb on this page as a bit of background: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/i-love...
Most don't.
Are we making observations from the majority or from abstract principles?
Thorrs Hammer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ57PS-5bhM)
Kylesa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFRirdsEDHo)
Ephel Duath (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX9cgbNMMEo)
Arch Enemy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBDnU382y7U)
Sigh (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAFIuE-qm9E)
Electric Wizard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzem_-At6F4)
These ladies can out-heavy their male counterparts any day of the week.
E.g. one could also give 20,000 all-male metal bands...
20,000 all-male bands who don't kill as hard as Kylesa or Thorrs Hammer maybe.
It's starting to sound like you've got a pre-existing conclusion, that girls can't rock, and you're trying to find something to support that conclusion regardless of what other evidence is presented.
I say that in the Metal scene it's widely acknowledged that women can rock just as hard as their male peers. We stamped out a lot of that sexist shit a while ago.
Who said anything about "killing it"? That's about quality (not to mention subjective). Of course women can rock -- there are several example (and it would only take one anyway to prove such a thing).
We're talking about quantity -- whether women rock generally more than men, or actually, as this started, whether men like loud music and distortion more.
Shame on me!
I'm thinking of acts like Despise You, Gasp, Agoraphobic Nosebleed. Worth checking out.
The first time I saw Nashville Pussy, Corey Parks was still playing bass for them. Her brother, Cherokee was an NBA player at the time and from my place in the pit, Corey Parks looked about seven feet tall. The combination of the very tall and imposing Corey Parks playing bass on one side, combined with Ruyter Sighs playing guitar on the other was very powerful. Nashville Pussy's lead singer and drummer were both men, but Ruyter Sighs' flat out amazing guitar playing really drove the sound. Are they a girl band or a male band?
Or, what about Sonic Youth? Are they are a girl band or a male band? Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore decided they wanted to start making music, so they recruited Lee Ranaldo and eventually found a drummer. Kim Gordon was just as much a creative force as any of the men she played with and when she finally put her bass down, lo and behold, she was a damned good guitar player.
Or, how about Bikini Kill? Are they a girl band or a male band? They're most heavily associated with riot grrl and are mostly considered Kathleen Hanna's band, but Billy Karren was a straight up incredible guitar player. If there was any justice, he would be recognized as one of the truly great musicians to come out of that soon to be famous Washington scene.
Or, in a different genre, are the Cocteau Twins a girl band or a male band? I simply can't imagine that band without Elizabeth Fraser nor would I want to.
Debbie Googe and Bilinda Butcher have been members of My Bloody Valentine since the late 1980s and I simply can't imagine what MBV would sound like without those two amazing women. Their other two members are male. Are they a girl band or a male band?
Or, Slowdive? Rachel Goswell formed the band in the late 80s with a guy she knew since she was a kid. Are they a girl band or a male band?
More personally, my sister is in a thrash metal band. A woman I dated several years back used to play drums in a weird shoegaze/electronic fusion band.
A band with girls in it is a girl band, and a band with males in it is a male band. The Bangles vs the Led Zeppelin.
Mixed bands are quite fewer -- which obliterates the whole mixed counterexamples thing.
Citation needed.
[1] http://musicmachinery.com/2014/02/10/gender-specific-listeni...
There's a similar idea at Pixar - it's called 'plussing'. You accept someone else's point and use it as a starting point to build something amazing. There's a really worthwhile Randy Nelson talk about it on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhXJe8ANws8
On Earth we only need that many rock stars, and there is already an intense competition over the only few places available. I know many musicians that didn't get enough success and have hard time earning food money.
I suspect that a kid whose fate is to become a musician will find a way to become one. This do not need to be encouraged even only a little. I find it more responsible to give kids the most "normal" (classic) education, while keeping doors open for later. It is easier to pivot from postman to writer (Bukowski) than from pretend rock star to bank teller.
Being able / confident enough to pick up a guitar and sing at a campfire is a very realistic and rewarding goal.
If you understand that point and still balk at a program like this because it doesn't 'keep enough doors open' (???), I strongly encourage you to readjust this mindset before you have children. And, if you do have children, I am even more vehement that you need to change your tune.
Small children deserve to use their imaginations and dream the wildest dreams imaginable. They deserve this not only because they are little kids and childhood is brutally short, but also because their brains are highly plastic and they are rapidly developing cognitive skills that adults take for granted.
Children who are interested in the arts absolutely deserve encouragement because every single child on earth deserves to be encouraged. Children deserve to be encouraged to be the best versions of themselves that they can be.
A good friend of mine has his preteen daughter embarqued into writing a book, and this is ridiculous. Kids do not have to be creative, nobody has to be creative. Being creative is a gift (or a curse) that only a few have, and when it is strong enough to be a vocation, it will find its way, even against a classic (boring) education.
Also, I hate the star system where a few crasy people are given as examples to the populace, while in fact they have most often a miserable life.
I will be blunt. The way that you are talking has me feeling serious concern about your children. Being creative is not 'a gift that only a few have' - every child has an imagination and I have never met a person who cannot come up with a new idea.
I happen to live in China, and there encouraging some creativity in children is quite required, because the education system is very strict and allow only few expression of the self, if any. But in the West, we went too far, and kids and their parents feel easily frustrated if the offspring is no Mozart, that's why I would not encourage more in this context, and certainly would not push my kids (who are doing well, thanks) to Rock Star Schools of any kind (I certainly do encourage drawing the things they want the way they want, but I usually do not post their drawings to my social medias in the hope of showing who genious they are).
This doesn't seem to be pushy parents giving their five your old children pushup bras and entering them into pageants, or yelling insults from the bleachers.
Classical education was created to produce worker drones for the industry. There is nothing in classical education that would help you become a rock star, except perhaps the pent up anger and frustration.
There are also plenty of example of people who are famous in their job of having started really young. It's probably not the only way, but it helps - and in some areas it might be the only way.
Finally, the point is not that the kids should become actual rock stars later on, but that they learn to lose inhibition, be creative, and have fun (at least that's what I would hope for when signing up my kids).
When I was a kid my folks paid for me to attend summer/day camp one year (some of the summer was day camp and some was overnight camp). We mostly just played outdoor sports and games, did arts and crafts, and more often than not, just sorta screwed around because we were kids and it was fun to screw around and play with stuff. I never pursued a career in any of the things I played with back then but I did learn to interact with other kids and participate in some fun activities. If anything, the part that sucked was that the activities were more things that we weren't always interested in. If I had the choice between dodge ball or learning to play basic rock drums, I'd have picked drums in a second.
I think in the end, these camps and groups exist because people want their kids to be occupied and engaged. There are plenty of parents who have to work and don't have the skills or aptitudes to spend weeks playing soccer or music with their kids. If someone starts a summer camp or a rock band camp as a way to make a living while providing this service to people eager to pay for it, I can't see too much wrong with it.
It's certainly a shame that not every kid has the opportunity to spend their free time having fun and trying out new activities but that's a whole other issue. In general, I think I'm a bit jealous that even as an adult I don't have the opportunity to have someone "coach" a group of other music enthusiasts past the pitfalls of trying to write and perform music.