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Andrew Nemr's avatar

Your premise here hits close to home as a performing artist. Specifically as a tap dancer, the only dancing that survived the 20th century was whatever was filmed, photographed, or remembered in stories. Too many amazing dancers never made it into film and so their craftwork, body of work, and personalities are lost to history. Those who witnessed them kept memories alive, but often didn't have a place to put them, either. Some of the stories made it to print (as documented oral histories), but reading about dancing isn't the same as bearing witness to the dancing in real life. For years I've worked on trying to solve for this challenge: how do you support an oral tradition in a culture that isn't organized around oral traditions? Still working...in the meantime, thanks for the reminder that the good stuff lasts, precisely because people care about it, and to be an encourager of what is good, not just an identifier of what is bad. That's something I can do right now.

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Beach Hippie's avatar

About twenty five years back I thought the low brow direction country and rap was heading wouldn't last, but it got much worse. So did just about every other genre overall. Since there has been a thing called the music industry things have never been close to as bad as they are now.

The masses are in a low state and resonating with music in a low state. Sure, good music will come back someday, but that day doesn't seem like it's anytime soon. Until the emotional intelligence of audiences improves the music and art overall will suffer. This is what a cultural gutter feels like. Tunes for Biff world brought to the real.

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