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I try not to do the "kids today" thing unironically very often, because, honestly, the next couple of generations are pretty amazing. But youth does mean that they've not had a lot of time to acquire as much knowledge as older folk have (whether older folk *do* or not is another story).
Lindy hop tends to be a "young folk" scene. I'm often surprised by how many 1940s jazz songs and artists they know, but that's the music that gets played for lindy hop, so they have exposure to it.
Then, I get accustomed to them knowing some of these classic songs, and I forget that they haven't had as much time to learn like all the rest of music history. They know 1940s jazz because that's what gets played every week at their dances, but most of them did not spend the last 30 years taking music lessons and music theory and playing instruments and studying the intersection of music and fashion throughout history. Mainly because many of them haven't even *seen* 30 years yet.
So I was talking with some 20-something lindy hoppers about hosting themed dance events. Some of them turned their noses up at '50s Rock N Roll, saying they didn't like "rockabilly" and it's too hard to swing dance to it.
...
::blinkblink::
0.o
Oh sweet summer child.
I don't even know where to start. Do I explain the difference between Rock N Roll and rockabilly, or do I talk about the evolution of jazz to R&B to Rock N Roll, or do I start right out with the cultural appropriation and how you can draw a direct line from the origins of lindy hop in Harlem to the creation of Rock N Roll a generation later, or or do I pull out my rant on how interrelated musical genres are so that it's not even that easy to see a delineation between jazz and Rock N Roll, or perhaps I can talk about the ground-breaking socoipolitical impact of Rock N Roll that, again, is on a direct line from the sociopolitical impact of jazz, or maybe I should just bombard them with video clips of lindy hoppers dancing to Rock N Roll to show them how that genre was literally created for swing dancing without even needing a verbal lecture on all the intersections of the subject?
#SuchABigTopic #SoManyConnectingLines #ItRemindsMeOfTryingToExplainToAnAuthorOfAltHistoryFictionTheImportanceOfFashionOnPoliticsAndWhyItIsRelevantToTheirStory
Lindy hop tends to be a "young folk" scene. I'm often surprised by how many 1940s jazz songs and artists they know, but that's the music that gets played for lindy hop, so they have exposure to it.
Then, I get accustomed to them knowing some of these classic songs, and I forget that they haven't had as much time to learn like all the rest of music history. They know 1940s jazz because that's what gets played every week at their dances, but most of them did not spend the last 30 years taking music lessons and music theory and playing instruments and studying the intersection of music and fashion throughout history. Mainly because many of them haven't even *seen* 30 years yet.
So I was talking with some 20-something lindy hoppers about hosting themed dance events. Some of them turned their noses up at '50s Rock N Roll, saying they didn't like "rockabilly" and it's too hard to swing dance to it.
...
::blinkblink::
0.o
Oh sweet summer child.
I don't even know where to start. Do I explain the difference between Rock N Roll and rockabilly, or do I talk about the evolution of jazz to R&B to Rock N Roll, or do I start right out with the cultural appropriation and how you can draw a direct line from the origins of lindy hop in Harlem to the creation of Rock N Roll a generation later, or or do I pull out my rant on how interrelated musical genres are so that it's not even that easy to see a delineation between jazz and Rock N Roll, or perhaps I can talk about the ground-breaking socoipolitical impact of Rock N Roll that, again, is on a direct line from the sociopolitical impact of jazz, or maybe I should just bombard them with video clips of lindy hoppers dancing to Rock N Roll to show them how that genre was literally created for swing dancing without even needing a verbal lecture on all the intersections of the subject?
#SuchABigTopic #SoManyConnectingLines #ItRemindsMeOfTryingToExplainToAnAuthorOfAltHistoryFictionTheImportanceOfFashionOnPoliticsAndWhyItIsRelevantToTheirStory
