It’s rhythm they’re after

It pops up constantly. It never truly goes away. This week, it came at me again in an email from my friend Ken Corsbie, living in North Carolina, as he relayed a collection of complaints from folks in his generation; their problem was dissatisfaction with the state of popular music today, and the language was on the strong side. “Musicians today have become lazy; they’re producing garbage.” “Hip hop is not music; it’s just noise.” “Melody has disappeared; today we have four or five words repeated over and over; how could that be a song?”

Vehemently as it is expressed, the subject really does not engage musicians because they know what is going on, and what is going on is simply the process