folktale - noun - a story originating in popular culture, passed on by word of mouth (Google).
One of my favorite didactic folktales is "The Emperor's New Clothes" written by the iconic, great Dane Hans Christian Andersen in 1837 (Google). Just in case you don't remember hearing it in elementary school, the plot involves a vain emperor who encounters thieves posing as weavers who create for him expensive, new clothing that only the most intelligent can see. As the emperor doesn't want to be labeled as stupid, he pretends to see garments that do not exist. And he actually pays for them. When he winds up parading sans any clothing at all before the plebeians, all are afraid to admit he is nude as none wants to be considered obtuse. A young, observant child, sans any degree of pride or deception, standing on the sidelines outs the Emperor by revealing the naked truth. Of course, there is a moral: Don't let yourself get in the path of veracity.
I have been thinking a lot about this story lately, especially as it pertains to the music industry. Since I, one of the thousands of singer-songwriters out there, have original tunes circulating on social media and on every other platform you can think of, I have to spend time promoting my compositions daily; otherwise, they would simply get lost in the vastness, the some twenty to sixty thousand other songs released per day. Which is an exorbitant, mind-numbing amount. Yet it has been noted that numbers don't matter because ultimately the inspired compositions rise to the top. Yet do they?
From my perspective, the "original" melodies are left at the bottom of the colander after the others sift through myriad holes and get washed down the drain. Yet is different considered quality? Are we adults on the sidelines of the parade imagining fine silk on performers who are actually stark naked? Given defined, accepted standards of theory, how many of these flash-in-the-pan artists are actually gifted musically? Virtually none. And it doesn't matter because ignorance is bliss. Most of us are willing to sacrifice what we may know to be exceptional for groundbreaking. And groundbreaking can very well be garbage. Yet we blindly embrace the territory, the entire dump, even the vocalists, the singer-songwriters whose voices crack off pitch or who can barely hit the notes at all even if there are only three of them. We forgo the nakedness of our celebrity emperors musically and reach into the lyrics, finding something to relate to, and come to the conclusion that the entire experience is relatable: the singer sounds no better than we do when we struggle to sing a tune in the shower, her/his words are the same that we spoke to a lover who had one foot out of the door five years ago. Because of the uncanny commonalities, we start to see ourselves on the float next to the disrobed Emperor, as celebrated as he, waving at the children who brazenly stuff their fingers into their ears when they hear the Emperor lip sync his hit pop release to enhance the visual.
On the flip side, it's all good. It's all good because it is where we are right now: in a very strange place that is lightyears away from my favorite musical time period, the 1960s, when musical prowess and uniqueness went hand in hand, and one didn't have to be sacrificed for the other. I'm hoping that someday, we will stand among the children, and unbiased, educated clarity will once again be ours. The pop music that we prize will be sung on pitch by vocalists with three-octave ranges, and the sheet music will include more than three chords.
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