Ah, apologies.
Roger
@PW42 you are right, what an amazing career for Anna Lapwood.
@Ebor I’ve never considered that:
The internet makes music more accessible to people, but the quality hasn’t really improved. Surely having streaming services like Qobuz and Tidal helped me a lot to find very interesting artists, but browsing around this very forum helped me even more.
I guess you are referring to this. It’s very nice seeing performers having fun during their show.
@Innocent_Bystander I think I got my first system when I was 14 - 15 yo, it was a little all-in-one Technics system (also cheaper than the trendy ones for teenagers at the time). That’s how my love for music started. Friends just got some systems to make lots of noise at parties but not really to enjoy music. Indeed their interest in music never really took off (on the other hand I saved to improve my system over a long period of time, I just wanted to enhance the experience even more).
A Hi-Fi system is far from being essential to love music (it’s just a way to reproduce it, one might only use headphones of course), however it surely helps to get deeper into it and appreciate details and nuances. Unluckily some genres/recordings need a decent system to really shine. Funny enough most young people I see walking around don’t wear in-ear headphones, just sometimes. I wonder if podcasts are trendy here, but I have no idea.
Today one might find some little Hi-Fi systems at a very reasonable price, however as everything is getting more expensive, priorities have to be different of course. One could still use a phone and in-ear headphones if there’s interest in music.
@TOBYJUG I totally agree on this:
If you are moved by music, you are likely to phisically react to it moving your head, clapping your hands, snapping your fingers, etc.
A good Hi-Fi is indeed important to render some recordings at their best.
1 Like
That Art Pepper film is probably ‘Notes From A Jazz Survivor’ put out by Rhapsody Films, featuring that fine quartet with Milcho Leviev, Bob Magnusson and Carl Burnett. Can be found on the internet these days.
As well as her organ playing and performances with the college choirs, Lapwood is heavily involved in encouraging young people’s enjoyment and participation in music, both locally in Cambridge, nationally and in Zambia.
But that reminds me of another extraordinary Pembroke musician, of an earlier era: David Murrow. His brilliant and still-remembered series on BBC Radio 3, Pied Piper was a model of how to communicate the love of music to a younger audience.
I don’t believe young people today are any less interested in music than I was at the same age even if they consume it in a different way and I hope evangelists like these two will nurture that “interest in music” that concerns the OP.
Roger
Not sure who I’m replying to but that Bonobo / Lapwood video is excellent. For me, it also demonstrates how Bonobo isn’t a “popular disc jockey” but an amazing composer and music producer and also that modern music does indeed have soul. Black Sands is a good intro to his music; The Keeper is brimming with soul.
I recently had the joy of being introduced to a new artist (that I liked) for the first time by my ten year old daughter. Olivia Rodrigo. If you haven’t hear her, please do. Don’t dismiss modern music and don’t dismiss pop. After all, the Beatles were pop once upon a time.
And I didn’t like them when they were at their popiest!
Nope, music is only important and special if you have a good HIFI system. 
1 Like
School Of Rock?
Now Hear This (Old Navy Term)
I listen to music all day long. The crafting of songs and lyrics is mind boggling. Many times when i revist an artist i discover something new in the piece. I stream and it allows me to go deep in to an artist library to hear their early work up to the present. When I’m not listening to music I listen to radio / blog shows that are also entertaining. Last, Google on its opening page has a button that allows you to press and you can identify music from a movie, program or commercial. Armed with that info its time to stream a new group of musicians.
Goodluck
The young people I work with are all very heavily into music one travelled from Brighton to Dublin recently for a gig whilst others go to Dance Music festivals and Raves regularly some go to Ibiza every year a holiday entirely rooted in music.
My nieces and nephews who are all under 30 are all into music one is into hifi and buys records the others though listen to Spotify on phones, car stereos of bluetooth speakers but all go to gigs regularly.
1 Like
But there is a diff. Some composers even created their own opera house to get the right sound. Many, many musicians care a lot of different makes/models of instruments. I have been in soundart for a long time and there is an incredible amount of discussions between creators in that area about the qualities of different oscillators and filters. One of the best drone-type composers, Eliane Radigue, used the same ARP 2500 system for over twenty years and managed to get som amazingly deep, varying and interesting stuff out of it in a type of music full of uninteresting wannabes but you must have a system able to present this performance. But this need not be an expensive system.
But money is no guarantee in music playback, in fact some of the most musically awful performances I have heard have come from very expensive “hi-end” systems. I dont know what you listen to but there are a lot of music (and I am not just discussing snobbish western art-music) that require the playback system be able to make sense of dense musical structures and so on. And, of course, with a bit of care and knowledge, you dont need an expensive Naim-system and “hi-res” files to make this happen.
2 Likes
@PeakMan I’m glad that Lapwood wants to involve young people in music, however she’s an exception. On average I don’t see so many young people really interested in music, at least where I am. I do hope your conclusion is right.
@thebadyogi Bonobo is a great artist indeed, he’s quite unique. I don’t dismiss neither modern nor pop music (indeed I listen to pop as well as electronic music for instance). I have nothing against The Beatles, but I don’t really listen to them despite appreciating what they’ve done.
@Bobthebuilder so nice to hear so many young people engaged with music, I guess it’s just less common where I am.
@jan this happened to me as well, the most expensive system I’ve listened to was awful (McIntosh + Sonus Faber):
I can only agree, care and knowledge can make huge differences!
I work for a large company and I always ask people what they are listening to on their headphones when entering the lifts and the answer 90% of the time is “I don’t know, it’s just a playlist!”
Yikes, that suggests it is just background noise to them, uninvolving and throwaway. I always assumed people wearing earbuds/phones were listening to music they specifically liked (and knew), or radio which would tell them what was playing. With this and HH’s suggestion that a high proportion my be listening to podcasts my image of music loving youth/sub-middle-age adults would seem to be highly questionable.
@Farthings-cat I believe that’s exactly what happens here as well. Those people aren’t really interested in music, what’s worse is that they don’t seem to be moved by music at all.
@Innocent_Bystander how bad and sad to confine music only to a background noise.
Maybe podcasts are trendy in some countries, however I’ve never heard of anybody listening to them (only few adults, surely not young people).
By the way I’m very glad to hear that many here know teenagers and young adults interested in music, however I suspect it’s not that common.
Yes agree, blacknote, we are a smallish community these days but when you do meet a fellow music enthusiast it’s always a good conversation!
Gary
2 Likes
3 Likes
This could also be that people are less friendly and less inclined to talk about something as personal as their choice of music.
I’m not sure you or anyone else here are in a position to say who gets what and why. To make a blanket statement that young folk just aren’t into music is rubbish, they may not be into your music but that’s a different question altogether.
Kids are queuing up in their 100,000s to buy tickets to Taylor Swift, I’m pretty sure that’s music. All my daughters and granddaughters love music however they just don’t (generally) like mine and I didn’t like my parents music either. It’s just a generational thing. Music will always be there.
9 Likes
I have to disagree because in almost every area of my life I come across young people are interested in music apart from those at work and in my own family who are when we go tour flat in Spain their are numerous fiestas and celebrations throughout the year with each there is a full marching band consisting of mainly young people, teenagers and twenty somethings and this happens right across Europe.
As has been described young people consume music differently and like much else today some of it is throw away and a bit lazy so a Playlist tailored for them by Spotify or Apple may contain one or two tracks that they might explore later or not.
Have a look at Drake , The Weekend, Post Malone or Chris Brown’s latest sell out tours and see how many young people are in the audiences.
Also to say that serious music lovers like us who sit around discussing music are a dying breed just isn’t true imo I think we always where in the minority lots of people listened to middle of the road music or the radio (the playlist of yesterday) and didn’t care if John Martyn was drinking himself to death or if the members of Pink Floyd had fallen out again.
2 Likes