“the buying and selling of music, what they’ve done to it, is a disaster on the scale of cutting down the rainforest.”
Says the "owner of one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of ethnic music 78s." :rolleyes:
If no one had gone out and recorded regional or indigenous music and then sold it - commercially - no one would have ever heard it. I think his point, that modern, over-commercialization has somehow killed regional music, is incorrect. Radio "killed" regional music a long time ago, but again, without commercial radio, no one would have heard that music anyway, so...you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Is he suggesting The Beatles should have stayed in Liverpool, or that Bob Dylan lost all his "authenticity" once he left Hibbing? Woodie Guthrie and New Orleans jazz musicians should have been kept away from recording equipment and trains?
Sounds like in his perfect world hillbillies would remain isolated and ignorant so he could make a trip once or twice a year to stare at them while they play "authentic" music. No wonder he moved to Europe, he's a colonialist at heart.
