“I am characterizing it as a spectacle, an entertainment that masquerades as a music talent show when in fact it’s something a lot bigger and weirder.

“it’s a caricature.”

      It is and so is the music industry $$ since Frank Zappa criticised the 'suits' for having misguided opinions in the late 60s. Two weeks ago I was listening to a friend speaking on another person, a musician who had 'networked' his way into John Zorn's orbit through sheer sycophancy (not hard  ...I could not help but feel a parallel between this and the way contestants on AI...suck up to Paula for instance. Then I imagined John Zorn and Paula in a boxing ring and I really had to giggle.

My comment is a tangent and in no way detracts from artists like S Vasandani to do their thing. I do hope that folks like him and Karsh Kale can form the future of a music industry built on emotion and skill.

Well part of the answer is that I disagree with your premise that American Idol is “fairly indicative of the music industry at large.” Of course it depends on what we mean by music industry. If it’s about economic heft — sales volumes, and the amount of investment put into different projects — then yes, you could say that AI represents a driving force in the industry that in one guise or another has always been there. But even then, it’s a caricature. As a form of spectacle AI is about much more than just music: it’s a form of theater too, as well as a public exercise, from the voting aspect to the constant resort to humiliation. So when I refer to AI as a freakshow, I’m not referring to the role it plays in the music biz, as much as I am characterizing it as a spectacle, an entertainment that masquerades as a music talent show when in fact it’s something a lot bigger and weirder.

One day I might derive satisfaction from listening to Art Tatum, the next day George Michael and the The Killers on the third.

Well, absolutely, and same for me. The fact that many/most of us have tastes that happily travel up and down the spectrum from high-brow to low-brow, “art” music to pop, etc. etc., doesn’t change anything to what I’m saying about AI versus the small-club circuit as ways to break into the game. And I’m certainly not making any statements about what “skill level” is required for music to be music.

In fact many musicians themselves operate at multiple points of this spectrum at any given time. That’s what it takes to make a living. I know a woman in Los Angeles who is a very brilliant alternative-soul singer who works as a back-up singer for American Idol precisely to earn the money so that she can make her own music on an indie basis. She also does voiceover work, songs for video games, all kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with her own artistic vision, so that she can fund her own work doing what she wants to do under her own name. American Idol is very much part of her life — it’s her most reliable income source — but when it comes to making her own music, putting her own name behind it, there’s no way she’d enter that kind of mass-produced and highly-staged competition.

So getting back to your original question, I have no trouble saying that AI is part of the music industry at large; clearly it is. To call it “indicative” of the industry is a reduction I can’t join you in making.

If interested his video (the Iron and Wine song) is up on youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RLTLDaKJDro

Also, you can buy his album on Amazon, itunes and i think most Borders (in the Jazz section).

Show some love!

Siddhartha this line of yours bounced around in my head for a bit. I find the politics and posturing within the jazz world to be quite simmilar to that in American Idol; the crucial difference being exponential skill level. But is skill level music. Yes, maybe, no? One day I might derive satisfaction from listening to Art Tatum, the next day George Michael and the The Killers on the third. Why label American Idol a freakshow when it is fairly indicative of the music industry at large?

“respect the lyric,”

…how can you disagree with that?

Le sigh. Both for Sachal and for your piece.

Hehe, I agree Ismat.