Phaedrus » Is Prog Alive and Well (Part 2) Looking into the future.

The first version, or first part of this article, published in issue # 8 of the magazine, was subject to strong criticism and even insults from some readers. The mere fact of considering the possibility that progressive music is not really “rock”, was considered a heresy by some.

It is true that perhaps some of my arguments were not expressed clearly enough since some of the critical remarks stemmed from an interpretation that did not correspond with what I intended to say. A reader of the forum “Progressive Ears” who came out in my defense, wrote a clarification that is useful to summarize some of the main ideas in my first article. Its author, John Hagelbarger, who writes under the pseudonym of “baribrotzer,” explained:

“You meant that prog is a type of high art music, in the way that classical music is. Even if not all of it might have been originally intended as such. But you didn’t mean that it is, or ever was, or ever became quite the same thing as classical music – the two types of music are still distinct and different, even if the differences can be subtle in some cases.”

Indeed, if someone understood that I was stating that, for example, “Close to the Edge” is classical music, then my writing was not sufficiently clear… What I meant, and reaffirm, is that “Close to the Edge” has more in common with a classical music piece than with a rock song. Not only due to its structure, but because this work, as well as many that belong to the classical music genre, is located in the sphere of high artistic music.

You may remember that the first version of this article had its origin in the comments that I made about an article by Kelefa Sanneh published by the magazine The New Yorker in June 2017. My article revolved around the current state of our cherised genre, and brought forth the idea, previously developed in my article “Progressive Rock – a Misleading Tag”, that the term “rock” was not adequate to label this genre. I proposed an alternative: “Neo-Baroque Music”.

In the first version of the article I spoke about the past and present of the genre. In this second version (or rather, second part) I want to talk about the future. As a starting point, I will use a paper written by our collaborator Carlos Romeo Puolakka (author of the excellent article “About Starless” published in issue 5 of the magazine – March 2017). Carlos wrote the article that I’m about to quote from, in issue #7 of a magazine called “Mellotron”. I want to highlight the fact that these lines were written in 1999! I will mark in bold some of the ideas that I will use to develop my argument:

“Very recently I read a very cruel review of the latest album from the Chicago Art Ensemble. The core of the criticism was based on the idea that the time of the Chicago Art Ensemble was over and that the group now belonged to the jazz tradition, as is Duke Ellington’s Big Band. This comment is very similar to certain critics against progressive rock. It is considered a type of music done by and for nostalgic people. But, even if that were the case, the notion that there exists a concrete period of time for each artistic expression is an aberration. If we take this idea to the extreme, then for example we would never listen to baroque music and would only listen to contemporary pieces. Fortunately, this is not what happens. Fripp states that King Crimson during the 80’s was not progressive because that period was not “progressive” anymore. This would be true if we considered that progressive rock was a fashion trend, instead of being a new music genre with its own distinctive characteristics.

Philosophically speaking, the fundamental characteristic of progressive rock is the spirit of musical adventure, its audacity. This is absolutely obvious when we listen to the recordings of the first progressive groups. Is progressive rock the only adventurous or audacious music? Of course not, because this characteristic is shared by all forms of creative music.

For some time, I have been listening or reading that arrangements are what is most essential in progressive rock. If by arrangements we mean orchestrations, then this is evidently not true. What really differentiates progressive rock from apparently similar products is the way that the music is written, much closer to classical music than to rock. This is easy to understand. Almost all of rock is structured according to a Verse-Chorus sequence, often with a bridge, an opening and a closing section. In progressive music what you usually find is a wide variety of construction forms, unique to each composition. We must not confuse ourselves, conventional is simple, but progressive is much richer.

On the other hand, I was reading an article about “Star Wars” when the author grabbed my attention, through a footnote, towards some concepts exposed by the Italian semiologist Omar Calabrese. He defines our era as “Neo-Baroque.” According to him, the “Neo-Baroque” movement is characterized by the articulation of a series of forms and figures. Among them, he includes the concepts of limit and excess; the detail and the fragment. These concepts must not be taken in the negative sense, but just descriptive. For example, the limit explains the tendency towards the accumulation of an infinite number of genres; or the ability to express ideas to the limit of its consequences. Excess is just another graphic way to express this same notion. In music we can state that progressive rock – which is actually not rock anymore – tends to an accumulation of genres. There is no other genre where an artist can apply, in a natural way, all the knowledge of his art: classical influences, medieval, jazzy, ethnic, rock, contemporary-classic, etc. And this is so, not only in the way that the music is built, but in its arrangements and even the interpretation styles. Attention to detail is evident in all progressive music; and there is an obvious tendency to fragmentation in the discourse of contemporary aesthetics. This is applied to the constant changes in rhythm, character and texture in current progressive music. What many wrongly interpret as complexity.

In summary: progressive rock is “neo-baroque” music, obvious fruit of its time and thus, absolutely current. This is the music of nowadays. Is progressive rock the only musical manifestation that corresponds to our current times? No, because there are works from artists outside the progressive world that abide by the criteria I have just described. To give some examples, I can mention some contemporary classical music composers like Terry Riley – listen to his string quartets -, performers like The Kronos Quartet, the music of groups like Dead Can Dance, or the techno of Future Sounds of London.

All art is cause and consequence of its time. Against the accusation of fostering an old or nostalgic aesthetic, we can affirm the absolute contemporaneity of the music that we love.”

I want to highlight this idea from Carlos Romeo: Progressive rock is not rock anymore. This is a very interesting idea that is in contrast with my thesis. I support the idea that progressive rock was never rock, even though those who started the genre (safe exceptions like Robert Fripp) were not aware of it. Carlos believes that, if progressive rock was ever rock, or emerged from rock, it currently does not form part of it.

However, Carlos’ orientation is particularly useful when we look into the future. What is important here is not to debate whether progressive was ever rock; now, what we need is to understand the essence of this genre nowadays and try to understand where it can lead to in the future.

But before we talk about the future of our precious genre, I want to gain momentum by making a last incursion into the past. One of the main sources that I used for the analysis of “Karn Evil 9” was the excellent and extended book by Edward Macan “Endless Enigma.” In this book, there is a very interesting section in chapter 10 (“Welcome back my Friends…): “A Critique of the Blues Orthodoxy Ideology.” (Macan, 2006, pp. 336–49).

According to Macan, the critics Lester Bangs and Robert Christgaus, who wrote for the North-American magazines “Creem” and “Rolling Stone,” led a radical orthodox movement that, towards the late 70’s, was able to establish a hegemonic thought trend about what is and what is not rock, that persists today. In essence, they support an argument based in the idea of Rousseau’s “noble savage.” Citing Macan:

“The basic premise of all of the many manifestations of primitivism since Rousseau’s time is that contemporary European (and from the late nineteenth century, white) society, with its over reliance on technology and complex bureaucracies, has entered a state of terminal spiritual and cultural sterility.” (Macan, 2006, p. 337)

This idea, taken to its extreme, implies that, for an artistic manifestation to be honest and legitimate, it must be primitive, natural and spontaneous.

They support the idea that rock must remain pure, spontaneous, and simple. As a logical consequence, for them progressive rock was some sort of tumor that threatened the fundamentals of the genre and was to be removed without mercy.

Here’s how Macan explains it:

“According to the blues orthodoxists, rock’s magic lay in its simplicity; there was no room for musical development beyond the modest expansion of harmonic, rhythmic, and structural resources achieved by late-sixties psychedelia. Furthermore, any rock music that assayed to tackle philosophical or metaphysical subject matter was guilty of pretensions of the worst kind. As Dave Marsh said, listeners who wish to grapple with such topics are “better off listening to classical (or anyway, ‘serious’) music”. Rock should know its place, and aspire to functionality – in other words, rock as a consumable, as background music for dancing, was to be commended over rock as Art (with its notion of transcendence), as a foreground music for listening.” (Macan, 2006, pp. 339-340)

In my opinion, the mistake that Macan makes is that he tries to dismantle the arguments of the “blues orthodoxists” by demonstrating that progressive music did not betray the basic precepts of rock, but contributed elements of all kinds (melodic, harmonic, timbre, rhythmic, technological, etc.) that enriched it. His argument is very weak:

“The idea that rock music should not get too big for its britches, and should somehow be shielded from undergoing musical or topical development, would be almost laughable if it had not become so pervasive.”

Macan cites some examples:

“Works like George Gershwin’s ‘Porgy and Bess’, with its obvious aspirations to European operatic conventions, was seen by Broadway critics as a threat to the “simplicity” and “purity” of the American musical theatre tradition. Today, historians recognize that a musical like Porgy didn’t threaten the characteristically American nature of music theatre at all; what it did was to expose Broadway to a new range of expressive possibilities.
Likewise, in the early phase of the bop revolution, bop’s critics saw Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and their peers as threatening the “simplicity” and “purity” of American jazz with their complex substitute chords of an obviously European classical provenance; today, however, they are credited with fundamentally expanding jazz’s harmonic (and thus its expressive) vocabulary.” (Macan, 2006, p. 340)

Why didn’t this happen with progressive rock? In other words, why is it that today, more than half a century after the creation of the genre, progressive is not considered to have enriched the language of rock? Macan’s argument, I insist, is extremely weak:

“The blues orthodoxists [critics] have been singularly unwilling to admit this painfully obvious fact, because it would expose the fundamental flaw of their notion that prog was an effete, evolutionary dead end, and would instead require that progressive be viewed as a mainstream (and watershed) style in the stylistic evolution of rock.” (Macan, 2006, p. 340)

His argumentation is weak because one thing is to accept or not influences of any type based on how they affect the genre, and something very different is to reject an influence because it implies a transformation of the recipient genre; in other words, it implies a destructive influence.

Let me explain myself: if Gershwin had tried to modify the American music theater by incorporating prolonged fragments of silence instead of a different harmonic language, surely the assessment of his work would now be very different and its effect on the American music theater would have been nil.

If, when incorporating elements to something, that something is no longer essentially what it was, then we are not talking about a modification or an evolution, but rather the creation of something new. A transformation.

Actually, progressive music did not incorporate elements to rock; what happened was exactly the opposite: during the birth of progressive music as a new genre, it took elements from rock as one of its main references.

This Copernican Shift is the essence of the message that I want to convey in this article. Since I have been misinterpreted in the past, I want to explain this concept again using a different wording:

Progressive music is a genre that feeds from many sources including, among them, rock. Progressive music cannot be defined as a subset of rock because it has characteristics that are not part of this genre.

If we accept this as a fundamental premise, then from that perspective we can analyze why progressive music is still a marginal genre.

Viewed from this angle, we can easily see why this genre was, is, and will always be attacked by supporters of “pure rock”. It provides a perfectly understandable explanation. The error has been, for many years, the attempt to fit a square into a circle.

Progressive music, in line with its “Neo-baroque” character that tends to incorporate all sorts of styles and music genres, has generated throughout all these years a vast compendium of music that has been the subject of different classification attempts. There are progressive bands that come very close to rock, to the point of becoming “almost” an expression of rock, but with some elements of progressive as for example the development of thematic material. Others come close to folk, others to classical contemporary music, others to jazz. And, naturally, progressive music lovers approach bands whose aesthetics are akin to their tastes and see progressive music from that perspective. Therefore, my reasoning can be better understood by followers of bands like Aranis or Univers Zero, and be seen as an aberration for those who love Marillion or Dream Theatre. Then we have the more eclectic listeners, that enjoy King Crimson, Magma, IQ, Soft Machine, etc. They, who are essentially “neo-baroque”, are omnivorous; their music taste goes beyond the limits of progressive and include other genres like classical music, jazz, traditional rock, among others. I’m curious to see how these fans would respond to my argument.

Perhaps it could be argued that progressive music, being so extremely eclectic, should not be considered a genre in itself. We could fragment it and include its pieces in the existing genres where they best fit. So, for example, we could place Aranis under contemporary classical music, Soft Machine as jazz with rock influences, IQ as some sort of “sophisticated rock”. In other words, we could slice up this thing that we call progressive, let each genre take its share, and end of story. Fortunately, there are many works that would not fit into any other genre and are, in my opinion, excellent examples that justify the need to consider progressive music as a full-fledged genre, at the same level as rock, classical music or jazz.

Let’s take for example, “Close to the Edge.” What do we do with this album? It is difficult to refute the argument that this work is closer to classical music than rock. But, would it ever be considered by musicologists as an expression of contemporary classical music? I don’t think so. And how about rock? If, after 45 years, it continues to be reviled by the most purist critics of rock, and is still considered an aberration, I doubt that this situation will change in the future.

The same could be said about an enormous quantity of works published since the late 60’s until our current days. Those works are, in my opinion, the most representative of the progressive genre and the ones that justify the existence of a specific genre. Therefore, to analyze the situation of this genre and try to elucidate its future, I ask that we focus on these types of work. In other words, let’s not use as point of reference those bands that, while still being considered progressive, situate themselves in the outer limits of the genre and are strongly attracted by the gravitational pull of other genres. So, let’s take as a reference for this discussion bands that we can consider at the “center” of progressive and reasonably equidistant to other genres. To clarify what we are talking about, let’s put some examples: King Crimson, Magma, albums from the classic period of bands like Yes, ELP, and Genesis, or Gentle Giant. I’m choosing examples that we are all familiar with; there are many others bands which are probably even more fitting. But the general idea is understood: these music projects feed from different sources but have their own identity and do not fit into any of the traditional genres.

Having reached this point, let’s see if we are capable of understanding what the future holds for this genre. The first problem that we need to confront is the effect of bands located in the perimeter that, in spite of still being progressive, distort our understanding of the nature of this genre. Lovers of bands close to the orbit of rock, adopt and expect behaviors typical of this genre. So, it is expected that these bands will compete with rock bands, are played in rock radio stations, earn a living thanks to effective merchandising strategies (not by selling their music), dress and behave like rock stars, and have a relevant presence in the specialized media. Of course, none of this happens (because what they play, in essence, is not rock) and this produces a permanent frustration: “nobody understands us, no one supports us, we will never be but a marginal sub-genre of rock.” I have chosen this group very deliberately, because it represents a huge amount of what fits into the progressive: not only fans, but bands themselves. As I have stated in previous articles, progressive music is the perfect vehicle for musicians that feel limited within rock and pop. It offers them the possibility of developing their potential as musicians because they can improve their skills as performers, play long and elaborate solos, and rely on public willing to run the extra mile to understand and enjoy their work. The result is that supply and demand are wildly uncompensated: too many bands for such a reduced number of fans. Although I have addressed this situation in previous articles, I want to insist: this leads to an unsustainable model, where a handful of fans are spread across a great number of bands, making each band economically unviable.

The biggest challenge to get our genre out of this stale situation is to change the way in which all of us, musicians and fans, interact with the rest of the world. The first and most difficult thing is to project a clear and coherent idea of what this genre is, and what it is not. This is why it is so crucial to be able to explain this phenomenon to ourselves first. Because if within the genre we are not capable of understanding its vital nature, and to reach a consensus, it will be impossible to light the spark of change.

If we were able to go beyond the first stage, which is understanding, and reach the second one which is assimilation, then we would start to see behavioral changes that will affect our relationship with the environment. And we will be able to analyze and take advantage of what is done in other genres to face problems similar to the ones that we have (and which rock doesn’t have). For example, in classical music and in jazz, there is the challenge of attracting young audiences; to nurture future generations of followers. How do they do that? Instead of using strategies that are adequate for rock and commercial music, we should study the strategies used within these genres, that have been assimilating for many years the technological changes that have so profoundly affected the way in which humans interact with music. It is true that both genres have been impacted by piracy, but I suspect that probably the impact has been less than the one suffered by progressive bands. Since rock is a popular expression that is still marketable, it has found other resources like merchandising in order to fight piracy. But these strategies are not valid for progressive music because it is not a marketable genre.

One of the important sources used by classical music and jazz to “renovate their blood,” is the academic world. Conservatories are incubators where a lot of young people are trained in the complex art of understanding and appreciating artistic music. The same applies to universities and that is why it is so frequent to find programs specialized in these genres in university radios. Another important difference is the radically different approach when promoting concerts and festivals. Many are held in theaters, but there are also open-air festivals or in venues similar to those used in rock festivals. But there is a key difference: rock festivals promote themselves as entertainment events in which, for example, alcohol becomes an indispensable complement. Jazz and classical music festivals are promoted as cultural events. The way in which progressive music approaches festivals is another good example of its lack of identity. A few festivals are promoted as cultural events, but the majority just copy the approach of rock festivals.

Making an exhaustive development of the actions needed to transform the current state of progressive music would turn this article into a book and it is not the purpose of this paper. I have barely scratched the surface in terms of possible initiatives to give a new and definitive impulse that leads progressive music to levels of recognition and diffusion consistent with the excellent quality of its works. My contribution at this moment is to help understand the true nature of the genre, because only then can we intelligently address the different obstacles that we have to overcome.

If I have been able to convince you that:

progressive music is not a sub-genre of rock (or any other genre)
is an expression closer to “high” art than to popular art
requires intellectual effort in order to be appreciated and, in that sense, has more in common with artistic music than with popular music

then I will have reached the objective of this article.

Perhaps this is why, intuitively, terms like “Art Rock” or “Art Music” to describe this genre have become increasingly popular.

It would be enormously gratifying for me that others would take this reflection as a starting point to promote a change of attitude among fans of this genre. This could constitute a Copernican Shift that, once started, may generate a spontaneous movement that could expand well beyond us and produce multiple initiatives and ideas for the benefit of the progressive genre.

Credits

I have used multiple quotes taken from the excellent book “Endless Enigma” written by Edward Macan – Open Court Publishing Company, 2006. The book features an exhaustive analysis of Emerson Lake & Palmer from many points of view, including the historical framework, which I have found very useful for the development of this article. It can be purchased here.

Prog collage image taken from a ProgArchives Forum thread, related to a survey of the top 5 concept albums. Here’s the link:

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=89336&PN=2

Progressive Rock Portal

Is Prog Alive and Well (Part 2) Looking into the future.

Credits

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