{"id":3772,"date":"2013-01-25T09:13:36","date_gmt":"2013-01-25T09:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=3772"},"modified":"2013-01-25T09:13:36","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T09:13:36","slug":"pimping-the-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=3772","title":{"rendered":"Pimping the culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>by Ilana Mercer<\/p>\n

The marketplace doesn\u2019t adjudicate the quality of art or pop culture \u2013 it does no more than offer an aggregate snapshot of the trillions of subjective preferences acted upon by consumers. That snapshot, in 2013, tells us that when it comes to \u201cBread and Circuses,\u201d Rome and its provinces wallow in the same lowbrow popular culture.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, to\u00a0judge<\/em>\u00a0the quality of a cultural product is not to\u00a0begrudge<\/em>\u00a0the preferences of the people who purchase it. It is simply to apply timeless, objective standards in assessing these products.<\/p>\n

In its salient features, the Commander In Chief\u2019s Ball resembles the annual White House Correspondents\u2019 Association Dinner. There, some of the most pretentious, worthless people in the country \u2013 in politics, journalism and entertainment \u2013 convene to revel in their ability to petition and curry favor with one another, usually to the detriment of the people, whether the latter know it or not.<\/p>\n

By and large, when it comes to entertainment, the people and the elites are on the same empty page \u2013 most of the musicians whose products they patronize, or with whom they fraternize, can\u2019t read music, much less play it.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrammy and Academy Award winner\u201d Jennifer Hudson, to whose primal screams the president and first lady attempted to dance, doesn\u2019t sing; she screams. Voice coaches once considered the Hudson brand of \u201cvocal wobble\u201d a deficiency in technique and talent. But then, \u201cWhy be a musician, when you can be a success?\u201d Such cacophony currently plays to full houses. It is to their credit that the First Couple smoothed the noise over with some smooth moves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know Beyonc\u00e9 can sing,\u201d came the response from inaugural organizers to the rumors that the singing sensation lip-synched to \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d Beyonc\u00e9 is another performer who distinguishes herself with an obscene bump-and-grind routine and a din of discordant, jarring yelps.<\/p>\n

Order lIana Mercer\u2019s brilliant polemical work, \u201cInto the Cannibal\u2019s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

We know not definitively whether Beyonc\u00e9 moved her mouth to a prerecorded version of the national anthem, but much like babies banging on a play-play piano, the nation is preoccupied with the matter.<\/p>\n

We do know this: As a\u00a0studio musician<\/a>\u00a0close to home has explained to me, the T&A line-up at the Inaugural and Commander In Chief\u2019s Balls would be reduced to embarrassing grunts, out-of-tune yelling and bedroom whispers, if not for the magic of\u00a0Auto-Tune<\/a>, which is the \u201choly grail of recording.\u201d Auto-Tune \u201ccorrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments, in real time, without distortion or artifacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auto-Tune technology is what makes a cast of vain ventriloquists like Katy Perry and Glee what it is.<\/p>\n

More sounds that curdled the air were those of Alicia Keys pounding on the piano keys.<\/p>\n

\u201cObama\u2019s on Fire. Obama\u2019s on Fire,\u201d the smirking Ms. Keys chanted tunelessly over and over again. The tradition of a praise singer or a tribal poet laureate still flourishes in Africa. But the tribal poet, unlike Keys, is a splendid performing artist. I know. I\u2019ve seen him in my native South Africa convey the glory of the African savanna \u2013 even bring to life moribund leaders \u2013 with mesmerizing words and movement.<\/p>\n

To sing well, you need a finely tuned instrument and musicality. An example of such an instrument is Carly Simon\u2019s voice in this live performance of\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be \u2013 1972.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Hers is an evocative and nuanced voice. As to the lyrics, you\u2019d have to be both literate and complex to write as evocatively.<\/p>\n

To counter the assault on the ears popularized even further by the current White House, do lend an ear to\u00a0the opera group \u201cSeven,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0singing the National Anthem at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 30, 2012.<\/p>\n

However, the National Anthem \u2013 the words to which were written in the aftermath of the Battle against the British,\u00a0at Fort McHenry,<\/a>\u00a0Sept. 14, 1814 \u2013 is not much of an antidote to the ugliness of the Inaugural soiree.<\/p>\n

So here are the sounds of \u201cSeven\u201d\u00a0singing \u201cJoyful, Joyful We Adore Thee,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0set to Ludwig van Beethoven\u2019s \u201cOde to Joy.\u201d Enjoy! (This rendition has garnered only 173 YouTube views.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019d rather listen to the dodecaphony of 12-tone music than sit through the guttural battle cries emitted by today\u2019s performers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ilana Mercer The marketplace doesn\u2019t adjudicate the quality of art or pop culture \u2013 it does no more than offer an aggregate snapshot of the trillions of subjective preferences acted upon by consumers. That snapshot, in 2013, tells us that when it comes to \u201cBread and Circuses,\u201d Rome and its provinces wallow in the … Continue reading “Pimping the culture”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,80],"tags":[2439,764,12254,2457,90],"class_list":["post-3772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-ilana-mercer","tag-beyonce","tag-culture","tag-ilana-mercer","tag-inauguration","tag-obama"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/ilana_mercer_and_book.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3772"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3774,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3772\/revisions\/3774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}