thoughts on metamodern music

asked by simon grant in the life itself research group:

I'd like to float this question (again?) about cultural change and historical paradigm shifts.

The "Hanzi Freinacht" authors pointed out that paradigm change comes first in art, then philosophy, etc. and finally societal norms. But unlike fine art, music has many faces. Could we measure out the musical metre of metamodernism? Is something musically metamodern already showing up at least at the fringes of popular music?

Hanzi doesn't go into music, and I'd love to share perspectives with people interested in folk, early, renaissance, classical, baroque, romantic, avant-garde, pop, and the huge diversity of what can be heard on YouTube or even Spotify...

my response (august 26th, 2024):

i'm part of a community in brazil called música do círculo (https://musicadocirculo.com), which btw i'm starting this week a 2-year-long training to learn how to conduct. it's a practice that creates - in my description - "magic circles", i.e. a 1h-1h30 practice proposing games that promote human connection/development through collaborative musical experimentation/improvisation, only using the body (no instruments) and several facilitation elements/artifacts. anyone, with any level of experience/musicality can participate, have fun, learn and create music together.

beyond the musical references, it has a sound methodology informed by folks like eisenstein, NVC, pedagogy of cooperation (a local approach for collaborative learning that's been developed over the past 20 years here). it's a very intimate form of relating/collaborative music-making from the heart. though i can't say it's based on a metamodern framework, i find the practice itself and the way they have been developing it over time (past 13 years), based on real-life connection and experience, very empowering, inclusive and post-tragic. so i see it as a metamodern practice.

there's a few people conducting it in europe/US too (and doing the leading training as well), or doing somewhat-similar things in adjacent groups like the body music/vocal improvisation communities (though with not as much inclusivity/decoloniality, i find).

a few refs:
vocal improvisation communities: bobby mcferrin (omega institute), rhiannon (mostly US), the well vocal (US/europe). i've heard there's an especially active community in france.
for body music, see: barbatuques and the international body music festival.
i also see some traces of it in the beatbox community. see MB14's showcase at la cup worldwide 2018, for example.

i find the whole world of "world music" very related as well, which often isn't on spotify. i'm looking for references on that myself. particularly, i love a ukrainian "ethno-chaos" band called dakhabrakha and a brazilian collective of women researching world/indigenous music and re-creating it as their own renditions called mawaca (these two specifically are on spotify/youtube). another ref i know being: https://ethno.world/

ah, last comment on why i consider MdC metamodern: i find this way of relating/doing music incredibly ancestral (in a circle, no instruments, mainly non-verbal) AND modern (including: beatbox, newly developed body music alphabets/styles such as proposed by barbatuques' founder fernando barba and keith terry, and sourcing from all imaginable styles/influences that we've internalized from a globalized world. as long as the participants want to create it - from rap to metal to classic to folk to sound healing/atmospheric to theatrical... - everything's possible)