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| Forget stopping factory farms, factory musicians should stop |
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As the 25th anniversary Farm Aid concert approaches, expect to hear the refrain “Stop Factory Farmers.” Farm Aid tells us corporate agriculture drives small farmers from the land, ruins food and harms the environment. Ohio Farm Bureau communicator and music fan Joe Cornely, with tongue firmly in cheek, applies the same criticisms to the music industry.
Stop factory musicians!
The soul of American music has been sold out. Gone are the small, independent musical acts that authored the soundtrack of Americana. They’ve been shoved from their stages and studios by a corporately driven scourge of mass-produced, mass-marketed factory musicians.
Music, for generations, was a family affair. Mom, pop and the youngsters toiled tirelessly in obscurity for little payment or praise, content to nurture their notes and lyrics into a wholesome bounty of auditory delights. It was an idyllic existence. It was doomed by progress.
With the advent of phonographs and radios, families no longer needed to be musically self-sufficient. Freed from the drudgery of singing and songwriting, many happily left behind the family band for more lucrative endeavors. Quickly, a nation of music producers became a nation of music consumers. And the capitalists pounced.
There was money to be made from feeding America’s hunger for music. The corporate model would be simple: Profit by turning an art form into a commodity.
As executives replaced artists, technology replaced talent. Synthesizers eliminated string sections.
Computers banged out the percussion. Even deficient vocals could be processed, overdubbed and multi-tracked into a palatable product. Inevitably, music is no longer crafted. It’s manufactured.
As with any industrial takeover, the little guy gets hurt. Our last protectors of America’s musical heritage can no longer compete. There’s no room on the big-box retail shelf for raggedy garage bands; radio station playlists will not accommodate struggling lounge acts. The last vestige of homegrown entertainment has been crowded out of the marketplace by the onslaught of industrial audio.
As consumers, we pay the costs of this national shame. Our lives are made less full by the forced consumption of bland melodies and tasteless lyrics. We are undernourished by the empty content of techno-tunes. We’ve lost our connection to real music, the healthful, natural sounds that exist only when produced locally and organically.
Worse, our ravenous diet of mega-music has sickened Mother Earth. Fans flocking to concerts and music festivals burn billions of gallons of fossil fuels. Their residual beer cups strain landfills. And the collective flatulence of 25,000 nacho-fueled concert-goers is a leading cause of global warming.
It is time to fight back. It is time to stand up to the immoral corporate profiteers who have engineered an end to auditory enjoyment. The battle begins at a day-long spectacle to celebrate the small, independent family-like musician. The event, likely to be held on the Yasgur farm in upstate New York, is tentatively entitled “Band Aid.”
The casts of Green Acres, Little House on the Prairie and other famous farmers, who despite limited experience in the music industry have great passion for the cause, will headline the massive field day. The world will be changed. We will stop the factory musicians.
OK ... enough with the satire. Factory musicians are a fabrication, a ploy designed to raise fears about a nonexistent evil. It’s the same trick employed by Farm Aid and other critics of modern agriculture with their call to stop factory farmers.
Factory musicians/farmers are not contemptible. They’re not even factory. They’re regular folks who fill a large-scale need for high quality, affordably priced music/food. They use modern technology to enhance their talent and hard work.
They are successful for a simple reason: They make the music/food people want. It’s also hype to suggest big acts/farms make it impossible for small bands/farmers to prosper. Thousands of entrepreneurial performers/farmers have developed profitable markets for their specialized contributions to a diverse musical/culinary marketplace.
The world craves music, be it electric or acoustic, turntable or iPod, rock or country. It’s an appetite that can be fed only by embracing all artists, from chart-busting super groups to obscure street singers. Ditto for food.
A hungry world demands conventional and organic, processed and fresh, growers of every size and type using the latest technologies or ancient traditions. We don’t need to stop factory musicians or factory farmers; we need to stop the name-calling.
Joe Cornely
Ohio Farm Bureau |
| 9/30/2010 |
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