Out of Touch

Out of Touch

This is months, *months* too late to even begin to bring up and talk about but I really don't give a shit.

"Umbrella." Yeah, that song. You know it, know doubt. Even if you somehow can't associate the name of the song with its singer Rihanna, you've probably heard it several times on the radio, in a club, on the telly, usually without knowing its name.

Here's a link to the video to refresh your memory:



This column is not about that song however.

It's about the state of music overall. This particular track (dats the industee lingo y'all) was a huge megahit with people all over the world. It was Rihanna's breakthrough after a string of smaller hit singles that generally ripped off from Soft Cell and New Order, among other acts. Umbrella got Grammy nominations, almost universal critical applause (it was Entertainment Weekly's track of the year, and #3 on RollingStone's list) and it generated extraordinary buzz in an era when, frankly, it's virtually impossible to establish common cultural touchstones.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The way I see it, North American culture is deeply fractured. Everyone is divided into neat, marketable categories that makes it easy for giant media conglomerates to sell things to. Subcultures and genres define so much of who you are, what you do and what others think of you that it seems almost impossible to not be lumped into one of these categories.

Let me illustrate this for you. Imagine your typical city bus. It's around 3:30 in the afternoon, school's out, the bus is loaded with kids going home or to their friends' houses. All good so far? Look closer.

Here on this bus, you got emo kids listening to Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and Saves The Day who have absolutely no connection culturally with the new rave kids sitting next to them who are kicking "D.A.N.C.E." by Justice. Neither of them give two f*cks about the long-haired stoner digging "Sweet Leaf" by Black Sabbath, circa 1971. His slightly less metal-loving buddy, also a long-haired stoner is kicking it progressive and busting Alan Parsons Project.

In the back of the bus, you got the black kids listening to Jay-Z and T-Pain. In the front, you've got the tweens singing along in unison to Britney and Gwen. The one Muslim chick in the front stares blankly ahead, not listening to anything.

Nobody on the bus is listening to the Bruce Springsteen album that hit #1 on the Billboard charts. Nobody on the bus even knows who Bruce Springsteen is.

What's the point I'm trying to make with this overlong analogy? It's not that everyone is listening to different things. That's fine. I think it'd would be creepy and fascist to hope that all these kids with all their different backgrounds would be listening to the same music.

My problem is that all those bands and songs that I listed are not just different genres; for these kids, they may as well be different planets.

A kid who listens to rap has no clue about the sorts of things that go through the head a kid who listens to classic rock who has no relation or commonality with another kid who listens to indie rock.

It's a glaring fissure in the bedrock of what makes us in the West a society, rather than just a bunch of people who happen to be stuck in the same city. Back in the days, when an artist like Nirvana, or Michael Jackson or The Beatles released a new song, it was an event that transcended age, preference and cultural boundaries. People of all backgrounds and demographics gathered around television sets to watch them. Kids talked about them to each other at school and joined the fan club. Co-workers mentioned them at lunch and everyone would nod. They were known. It was common knowledge. It was just, y'know, it.

Now, we have a hundred radio stations, a thousand satellite channels, and trillions of websites, and no-one knows what anyone else is talking about. You have a nation of cliques and circles. Suddenly, everything is an in-joke. Patterns of speech and vocabulary are limited to whatever you and your six other friends talk like. When one has to, usually under work or school-related circumsutances, actually try and communicate with others, what happens is a total breakdown. The 42 year-old white supervisor or the 62 year-old Pakistani professor is not going to have one clue what the 19 year-old punk or hip-hopper is saying when they tries to talk to them. What ends up happening is either, misinterpretation, offense taken from one of the two parties or a sort of broken, pared-down version of language. The kind you use when you're talking to someone from Japan or Sudan.

This goes beyond just communicating. Slang and common reference points are esoteric enough as it is. A few awkward conversations are tolerable in our land of multiculturalism.

The problem is thus.

Culture ends up having no centre, no meeting point, no town square where people can come together. Without this necessary social utility, people have no place to discuss, to interact nor to share in the experience and reality of being neighbours, schoolmates, citizens, humans.

And I'll take this concern one step further and call it what it is.

Cultural segregation.

It's cultural segregation that is going to have effects and repercussions that we as a culture will face in the future. You're talking about trying to bring people together and trying to make them connect when they have absolutely nothing to even begin to talk about. You have relationships between people from the same cultural category and no exposure or interaction to other ways of living.

Understand the offense I take from this situation is because there is in fact, a reason that this phenomenon has occurred. The populace is being deliberately carved up and classified for one reason, and one reason only: to be marketed to.

It's easier to tailor your ads hocking shoes and accessories to a specific stereotypical category than it is to a broad demographic that is educated, informed and technologically savvy. You will buy more from ads with people who look like you, talk like you and with bands that you listen to.

Furthermore, you end up with heavily restricted social mobility. Sorry to get all Marx on you but, the poor end up staying poor because that's all they know. The rich stay rich, because they don't care about the poor. The middle doesn't know what's what, except whatever their telly says it is.

Pretty much, from the age of 10, you're being pressured into making a choice. Indie? Arty? Freak? Geek? Emo? Punk? Stoner? Jock? Prep? Hip-hopper? F.O.B.? Take your pick. They're all the same as the other ones.

All it's going to change is whether you're going to buy the pair of Dickies work pants or the environmentaly-friendly organic bamboo skirt...all at the same mall.

The illusion of choice.

Well, that and your friends, your school, your career paths, cultural preferences and a whole host of other things are all decided by a simple thing like what you choose to associate with. Or what you listen to.

Pointe finale: Fuck Umbrella.

Rihanna and Jay-z should both die.

=//Turnquest