Challenger

What is pop music today? In the past it was jazz, country, blues, R&B, and rock music. Now, however, pop music seems to drift between hip-hop, rock and R&B, mixing and scrambling and dropping into sterile packages. Rock and Hip-Hop are now inseparable and there is practically no way to determine the difference between the genres that make up the persistent drone of generic pop sounds; everything is mixed by the neptunes, can’t you tell?

Pop music has stopped searching for the unique and talented and has apparently decided to stick to a proven formula. Which seems to me a little ironic considering that now musicians have more influences to draw upon than any other time in history, and believe it or not there are quite a few musicians that are putting them to good work.
Independent music; the phrase conjures up images of smoky clubs with whiny music, pretentious cafes, and bored bookstore faces with black rimmed glasses. Lets not pigeon hole this poor genre. Independent musicians and record labels may be our last hope. In recent years, independent record labels have caught some extraordinary original talents and allowed them to record and flourish. This has allowed a few, interesting, musical movements to carry on quietly tucked away from the blinding light of popular success.

As popular country music moves further and further into some hardly definable abstraction of the original concept, alternative country has been growing as a link to the past. Louisville’s Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy) records country music using old melodies and abstract words. The songs are definitely country, however, they carry a heady weight that adds strangeness to the music. One of his recent albums, “The Master and Every One” an all acoustic folk albums sounds like it was recorded eighty years ago. You get the sense that if this was made eighty years ago it may have been a popular success, and people would have written that they had never heard anything like it.

Bluegrass; eastern Kentucky mountain music that actually has it’s roots in Scottish and Irish folk music, has been experiencing a small rebirth among a slightly unexpected group of people.

Old Crow Medicine Show, a punk rock band from New York City, moved to South Carolina absorbed a little culture and cut a nearly perfect bluegrass album complete with a cover of the traditional “C.C. Rider.” Now instead of hearing the music played by some elderly phonograph it’s being played to thousands of screaming freaks at the Bonnaroo music festival; a three day long, heady, outdoor festival.

If you have about 200 dollars and three sweaty June days in a field with some of the best musicians in the country you should make your way down to Manchester Tennesee June 10-12 for the Bonnaroo music festival.