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I finished up John McWhorter's new book Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care on the Metro this morning. It was decent enough, but not exactly a "I-couldn't-put-it-down" kind of book.
The main thrust of his book is that the English language in America has declined precipitously ever since the mid-60's when rebellion against the Establishment took over the popular culture. He offers a good bit of evidence and arguments to support his position, and does so somewhat compellingly. There's a bit of Boomer navel gazing (particularly in how much impact his generation has had on culture and the usage of English in America), but that is to be expected. I am sympathetic to his point, even if I think he overstates it a bit.
Only after the change in the mid-sixties would this become possible, when the black sound became less a fetish than the cross-racial bedrock of the American musical sensibility.
For most Americans under stixty, one of the hardest things to adjust to in 1936's mainstream America would be that the music would be too sweet, the rhythms too tame, the singers too arch and soppy. Counselors would have to work with applicants for weeks preparing them for "funk cravings" in a mainstream America that didn't know such music yet."
Doing Our Own Thing (pp213-214, 1st edition)
One of the more interesting segments of the book discussed the rise of "keeping it real" to it's present place of prominence. I can easily see the validity of his observation: I know that when I see musicians perform, the passion and emotion they invest in their playing tends to be more important than the mechanics and technique of the performance.
Posted by Casper at December 22, 2003 10:47 AM