556 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II
composers, musicians in the popular sphere can take the long view of history,
knowing that posterity has often judged artists more truly than their own con-
temporaries and that present-day indifference may not be fatal to the life of one’s
work. At the same time, as the present chapter has argued, musicians in the clas-
sical sphere, raised in America’s consumer culture and unashamed to call it their
own, have explored new ways to create music that seeks to close the gap separat-
ing them from the general public not in some indeterminate future but now.
Although it is still too early to say, we might hazard a guess that the history
of America’s music in the twenty-fi rst century will be one of the narrowing and
ultimate closing of “The Gap”—not just the gap between classical composers and
their audiences but also the gap between the classical, popular, and traditional
spheres. Maybe that January 2009 concert at the Lincoln Memorial described
in this book’s introduction had it right after all: despite the fragmenting of
audiences in a time when broadcasting seems more like “narrowcasting,” and
despite the huge variety of music available to anyone with an Internet connec-
tion, Americans really do share one enormous, interconnected musical culture.
We are one.QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REVIEW
- What arguments could be made to support the concept of a “women’s music”
that connects musicians as diverse as Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, and Gillian
Welch, and what arguments could be made against it? - What is the “authenticity” that seems so important to so many popular music
movements of the past half century or more, from the urban folk revival to
punk, alternative rock, and alt.country?
K The gap narrows:
hip-hop’s DJ Spooky and
composer Steve Reich,
photographed by a blogger
who describes them as
“my-fav-musicians.”172028_22_531-558_r3_sd.indd 556 23/01/13 11:21 AM