For New Canon
Why year end lists suck (for now)
December has come and with it two things; advent and year end lists. I am fan one of those things even though I have quite a bit of problems with Catholic Church. There are very few things on this world more boring than “Best of X” music lists. 99% of them are exactly the same, especially those done by big publications such as Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, etc. They are mostly filled by music released in UK and USA with maybe few albums from France and Germany and one token album from Japan or South Korea.
You are telling me there was no good music to come out in Eastern Europe, or Africa or Southeast Asia, etc? You are telling me that out of million of album released in those areas you did not even try find a few which were worth a mention? So many of these publications are capable of digging up most obscure and boring ass indie rock album that will be forgotten tomorrow but are no capable of even considering some of the most popular acts outside of anglophone world. Hell, more people remember Dragostae Din Tei than fucking Echoes by The Rapture which was #1 on Pitchfork’s best of 2003 list.
This is not just problem of music publications, big music labels have a say here too. They have become so risk averse it’s wild, there are so many milqouetoast artists floating around anglophone world doing just fine. Why can’t artists outside of that world be as mediocre and be doing as fine? I know the answer and I am sure you know it too. I am yet again pointing at the example of Dragostae Din Tei and other Romanian/Moldovan artists who were immensely popular in 2000s. It’s possible.
As I am writing this I’m listening to latest Aleksandra Prijović album, an album which has had huge success in ex Yugoslavia, it was so big it culminated into huge tour with 5 sold out nights in Zagreb, 3 sold out nights in Belgrade, 2 sold out nights in Sarajevo and hunders of thousands of tickets sold. And yet, absolutely no mention of it outside of it’s area of origin. This shit makes me mad, Pitchfork can dig up most boring and cliche indie album from fucking Midwest but can't even mention one of biggest albums from Balkans.
Let me be perfectly clear, I am not blaming music listeners nor smaller indie publications, mostly because they have nowhere near resources to do this properly. We all know how pipeline here works, we all know that most people don’t go out there and hunt for new music and even those who do have hard time keeping up with everything. Most people just don’t have time to dedicate themselves to everything. Some are passionate about music, some are passionate about movies, but rarely are people passionate enough about art in general to do the hunting for new stuff in everything.
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But, Pitchfork and others absolutely have more than enough money to hire a writer from different areas of the world(*cough* I could cover ex Yugoslavia *cough*). Pitchfork and Rolling Stone absolutely have money to employ people who can cover different areas. Hell, Rolling stone used to have imprint in ex Yugoslavia on BCS.
One of reasons why I have started In The Hall Of The Kings podcast with my friend Langdon is to expose more people to music from my area that pretty much never get’s even a mention in the west. For now we have only done Kiss but, at the time of this writing we have recorded whole discography of Bijelo Dugme and more stuff is in works.
I get that film has a bit of an advantage because language barrier is not a problem but in 2000s you have had ton of hits in Europe which were on fucking Romanian so it’s not that much of a problem. I can not also ignore ways Western labels used to break through non-western acts. They were trying to market the artist as “exotic” by using some of most racist shit ever accompanied with whole “World music” thing. Why do they have to employ local traditions to be even considered? Why can’t they just be great *insert genre* artist to be considered? We all know answers to these questions
At the time of this writing it has been two days since Mark Grondin of Spectrum Pulse has published his video essay on Bro Country and it’s domination of Country as a genre and music industry. Few times in the video he juxtoposes indie country scene and its uphill battle for time in the spotlight. This is essentially the gist of this essay.
This essay was mostly inspired by my experience within music circles. I have tried for years to push artists outside of the western canon but with little to no success. I don’t know will this change and what would take for playing field to be leveled but I have mentioned few starting steps that I think could be implemented tomorrow. Will that happen? I don’t know, I am quite pessimistic. It took Kpop decades and billions of dollars to get to this point and other scenes just don’t have that kind of money nor institutional backing.
And as Prijović herself has once sung: “Logično, tebi je logično, a meni toksično”(eng.Logical, logical to you, toxic to me).
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