| academic |
- Licensed, protected aesthetics with pedigree. Theoretically free to develop unencumbered by style, taste, or market trends. Often held hostage by historical guilt or ambition. In cultural politics: innoculated. In concert: stiff presentation, lots of yawns, slow to shed dead ideas, obsessively interested in anything with a little life left in it. Yet home to the occasional genius even today.
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| adventurous |
- Seeking the edge in any context, up to and (secretly?!) including the dangerous.
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| alternative |
- Defanged art-world and lifestyle adjective still useful for politically correct final reports and press releases. In rock: "originally synonymous with good, true, and beautiful - more individualistic, less compromising and somethimes more obscure than mainstream rock - filled with integrity and street-level authority. But now that Nirvana has topped the sales charts and sold four million copies of an album, alternative often means casually dressed yet eager to cash in." (JP)
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| audio art |
- Anything from radio plays to conceptual works addressed exclusively to the ear except, of course, music. Music itself would only be an element in the larger context of audio art.
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| avant-garde |
- All-time, award-winning, kiss-of-death signifier which has not entirely succumbed to use and abuse by pretenders, wannabees, and Time Magazine. In cultural politics: never invited to the party. In concert: hint... a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
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| club |
- Serves drinks, people talk during the concert. To the masterpiece set, the most unsuitable environment for music. To the rest of us, a challenging testing ground for a wide range of work.
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| college rock |
- The stuff the kids are into, like rock that is alternative but relatively accessible, as in "If Madonna did covers of Lemonheads songs at the Court Tavern (see PRESENTERS, New Brunswick, NJ), would she be considered college rock?" (SK)
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| computer music |
- Anachronistic term carries echo of the days when a computer the size of a house churned for several days to generate a piece of music structured like Ferrat's Last Theorem and sounding like a Mr. Softee truck.
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| conservative |
- In taste: waiting for approval from experts. In experts: waiting for approval from neophytes.
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| contemporary |
- The perpetual "now" in any genre and, since around 1970, replacing "modern" as America's official indigenous look or sound. To some, anything that is recent; to others, anything with a "still up-to-date" sound. Its use as in "contemporary classical" and "contemporary music" seeks to emphasize the "living artist" factor. In rock: a term only used by your dad or a "light-FM" radio Music Director. (DW/SK)
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| cutting edge |
- High yield, high-risk position in cultural affairs; currently vernacular en vogue for "avant-garde."
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| dive |
- An unwashed club.
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| downtown |
- A creative method marked by an accelerated, risk-taking, take-no-prisoners style. Psychological comfort zone to beatniks, hippies, punks, anarchists. Also: an actual geographic area of New York City where behavioral norms are allegedly negotiable. This attracts all kinds and provides an easy target for conservatives.
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| experimental music |
- Music in which the composer extends method, materials, structure, or form into unfamiliar territory. According to John Cage, music in which the composer cannot predict the outcome. These days it seems more like music in which the composer cannot predict the income. In cultural politics: its innovations are regularly plundered, leaving true explorers fighting for scraps amongst themselves. In concert: more accessible and entertaining than people think, and often full of real ideas.
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| experimental rock |
- Anything rock-oriented that breaks the boundaries completely and does something really out of the ordinary. Also, any experimental music with a hard edge or pop roots, especially if guitars or drums are involved. (SK)
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| free improvisation |
- No rules or a few democratic ones only. Basically, the composer is disallowed. The performer must rely on a totality of personal experience and preparation to act in the live moment. Listening to players out on the edge like that can be exhilarating and profound. It can also be wimpy diddlybleep.
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| free jazz |
- Same as above but in a jazz shell. Often raucous, high-end passion.
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| fringe |
- The edge of the edge of something, about to be disqualified from the category it modifies.
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| fringe indie rock |
- the most daring and adventurous of indie rock, touching on experimental. (SK)
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| gig |
- the basic performance unit.
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| hall |
- An un-upholstered plush-seat auditorium.
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| hardcore |
- Purist with attitude.
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| hip |
- In the know.
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| independent |
- Un-aligned people or companies. Outside the university, government, or entertainment conglomerates. From JP: "Has been used to suggest quality, originality, and a non-conformist frame of mind. Now, however, major labels mimic "indie" style from artwork to marketing plans and sometimes bypass their own distribution arms to get the image of credibility from an independent distributor."
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| indie rock |
- Rock spawned from the independent label scene, ranging from hard to light, weird to relatively straight, but with some kind of edge that would make you think that the major labels would never go for that kind of thing, although nowadays they often do, as in "If Madonna released an album of Dinosaur Jr. covers on Matador Records would she be considered indie rock?" (SK)
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| jazz |
- On the outside, a codified, annotated official form with bishops, ministers, and disinformation officers protecting its shiny surface from pollution. On the inside, renegades, insurrections, and young blood nibbling at the motherlode.
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| Lincolncentric |
- A "keep your eyes on the prize" careerist attitude where the name going down in history is always in the back of the mind; often accompanied by masterpiece disease.
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| loft concert |
- Scrappy, love-driven production.
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| mainstream |
- The profit center. Anything that sounds like it is designed to or actually does make the Billboard Top 10 or an analagous showing in its field. Anything - good or bad - that has a very accessible sound. (DW/SK)
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| majors |
- Refers to record companies that are part of one of the six large entertainment conglomerates.
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| masterpiece |
- The unattainable perfect piece that can always be used as a metaphorical yardstick to discourage, distract, and wound oneself or others. The big bill in aesthetic currency printed by self-appointed cultural caretakers and paid out posthumously.
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| MD |
- Music Director at a radio station decides what DJs to hire and/or what music to broadcast.
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| minimalism |
- A fairy tale that actually happened between East and West, visual arts and music, popular and serious forms.
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| modern |
- Once a hard-earned term (like an "R" rating) it's now an easy term for music that sounds (for reasons of lyrics, beat, technology, vocabulary) like it could only have been created recently. Oddly, its kitschy overtones are a comfort to both reactionaries and the ornery intelligentsia.
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| multi-cultural |
- The soup made by God that could nourish us all has now been canned, codified, and copyrighted. Also: Quota.
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| music |
- Originally, anything that came under the jurisdiction of the Muses. Or, according to our friend Irving Stone, "anything that you use in the same way that you use music."
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| NAAO |
- National Association of Artists' Organizations (see SUPPORT).
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| neo |
- In the image of the new.
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| New Age |
- Music with no conflicts or sharp edges. Associated with the lifestyle of the same name, it often wears its political correctness on its sleeve. New old-fashioned beauty without arguments. Still, their is some suspicion that this is actually the music of killers.
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| new music |
- Wide open term, too weak to take hold, too enigmatic to ignore. Has appeared in music promotions from the conservatories to Hollywood. But think, just the basic idea of "new" music scares people. The classic tale: the art-literate upper middle-class home of the 50's with its book of Diane Arbus photos on the coffee-table, a Henry Moore sculpture in the garden, a Jackson Pollock painting over the fireplace - AND VIVALDI ON THE PHONOGRAPH!!!
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| NJSO |
- National Jazz Service Organization (see SUPPORT).
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| NPN |
- National Performance Network (see SUPPORT).
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| performance art |
- The theater with its skin peeled back.
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| performing arts |
- The umbrella under which the live event can network with other live events guided by the watchful hand of benevolent arts administrators who raise money and become a Center in a town near you.
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| plush-seat |
- The right kind of seat for listening to masterpieces.
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| post-modern |
- Appropriation. In your face.
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| progressive |
- The word you use to compliment a forward-looking person who doesn't understand hard words.
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| progressive rock |
- A term that is a relic of the 70's, where it used to mean big, overblown, over-ambitious rock. The current use would refer more to "modern rock".
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| rider |
- The piece of paper attached to the contract that demands red and only red M&Ms; backstage.
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| retro |
- Nostalgia in motion.
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| scene |
- Mumbo jumbo for community.
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| space |
- What everybody wants.
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| straight |
- orthodox.
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| straight experimental |
- An oxymoron (like jumbo shrimp) which denotes strict and often stubborn individualism. As a programming philosophy it indicates zero interest in anything from mainstream jazz, rock, or classical music. Iconoclastic.
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| theater |
- Defined here only as a physical plant. Provides possiblities for higher prduction values. When a theatre meets plush seats you have opera, which, according to experts, is the highest form in the secular Western world.
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| totalism |
- It's in there.
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| 20th Century classical |
- Another oxymoron as one of our central targets! Primarily a matter of outward appearances, this music tends to gravitate toward traditional instrumentation and presentation style. Often has a multi-page pedigree with opportunistic cross-references and name droppings. Practices reverence toward the great composers of this century especially serialists, minimalists (one or the other), John Cage, one of the Americans who studied in the Paris of lore, and so on. When the plush seats allow a living composer on their concert programs, they choose from this category right after the multi-cultural one. While they wait foolishly for the new Schubert, there is a lot of good work being done under this banner.
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| underground |
- Seriously alternative. You've gotta dig to find it.
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| uptown |
- New York location of the plush-seat halls, and arguably the world center of cultural imperialism. Big money, big power. Uptown is easy to pigeonhole but actually a dichotomy just like downtown (where we mix Wall Street, SoHo, and Loisaida); uptown boasts Lincoln Center, Rockefeller Center, and Harlem.
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| venue |
- Where you play, stripped of all signs of personality.
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| work |
- The artist's oeuvre, the work. The whole magilla. The commodity.
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| world, world music, world beat |
- assuming one is coming from a perspective where anyplace beyond N. America and Europe is "the world" (read: "the rest of the world"), any music with that sort of orientation. Actually, it technically means "Third World" music, and world beat is danceable.
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By David Weinstein with Susan Kruglinski attending and selected borrowings from Jon Pareles, Irving Stone, Julie Nichols. |
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read other sections for the einstein guide: presenter, radio, retail & the glossary |
