Elevator Music

Often I’ve read reviews written by some music critics,and let me tell you I find it a thouroghly amusing  experience to actually try and decipher   what they’ve written.and what they have actually understood.  I think understanding different genre’s of music takes a lot of study and  one needs to hear a variety of music genre’s to actually feel responsible about writing and criticizing about some artist’s work.

What are the qualifications of all the critics,I would like to ask? Have they spent at least 20 years studying music or have they trained in Hindustani or carnatac or have they learnt western classical,that they write with such authority. Well,in the end its  only ONE persons view. good or bad,shouldn’t really matter to the musician,because only he would truly know where he stands and whether he or she was able to do justice to his work.

Well,I guess all the newspapers and publications need to compete with each other and hire the services of certain individuals who seem to have heard or seem to have a little knowledge about different gennre’s of music. So it’s more a rat race amongst all the critics. Film critics are no less. Well a film maker makes a film with great difficulity and over a period of more than a year sometimes and when the film releases it gets thrashed by certain critics so badly ,that they destroy it and make a mockery out of all the effort.
Well,agreed it’s a democratic country ,and your free to voice your opinion but they can at least have a little courtesy and be polite looking at all the efforts that were put in by all the people behind the film.

What is “ Elevator music”? , this old lady once asked me. I told her you know how many elevators are there in the world,and so many people stand in those elevators and you need certain music playing in the elevator so that you mood is good,maybe before your going to work or before your going to sign an important contract or meeting. She said,”oh so it’s really important in setting your mood right,yes,I said.
Well,a very famous international musician who has  sold millions of cd’s  and his music get’s classified as “Elevator music” by some critics. Well,they may think the right place for it is the elevator and in that way they term it as very boring and background music. Well,now most elevators play his music and he’s not complaining at all,maybe all those people who listen to his music in the elevator step out and go to the nearest cd store and pick his cd’s up.

Well, honestly it would be awesome to have all the music critics together on stage and all the musicians seated in the audience. the musicians  question the respected critics on stage one by one and figure out the capability of each critic seated on stage.maybe ask them what inspired them to become critics or maybe ask them for advice as to how they tcan improve crtain albums,which the critics thought were really bad,. .now has something like this happened before? Well, anything is possible.and maybe something like this should be planned in the future.
Well,after all it’s a democratic country and  we are all free to voice our concerns.

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