Sunday 27 November 2011

The Listener.

I've just been wondering about this tonight and thought it'd be a good idea to write it down. The listener these days in my opinion is so easily influenced by 3 mains things, they either check out what people they respect tell them to look into, listen to something that's familiar from when they were younger or associated with a certain memory, or even to go against both these and try and avoid what they've heard before and ignore their friends' recommendations.

I would categorise myself as the avant garde listener, as I usually avoid what people are checking during a musical phase, but also with a lot of the qualities of the nostalgic listener. In many circles of friends I have seen people getting into different movements of music. Very often some get very heavily into styles of music which contradict their backgrounds, of course there's nothing wrong with this, but a very interesting thing. The thing I usually find with music that people check out, name has a lot to do with it. Is it because the listener feels secure with names and usually get so involved with feeling safe listening to the same artist.

With these assumptions in mind I often wonder why I got into jazz and improvised music and what I would make of a completely unknown artist that's exactly to my taste who makes this music and listen to it with a completely unbiased view. 
Just a thought.