• Furbag@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The only thing I could think of with the whole “1000 Mozarts” comment is that there’s a very real chance that if the world Musk and Bezos envision came true, those Mozart level geniuses would be working in an Amazon fulfillment center or a Tesla assembly line, wasting their talents as a slave to capitalism.

      • phorq@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        I was wondering what happened to the drone delivery Amazon promised… It all makes sense now…

  • BluesF@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The idea that population numbers are all it takes is so stupid. Mozart is not just one guy who was really good at writing music. I mean, obviously, he literally was, but he only existed and wrote what he did in the way he did because of not only his own “genius” but also the circumstances he was raised in, his education, the musical traditions that he drew from, the fact that he was wealthy and had time… Etc etc.

    Adding more people living in poverty, with poor education, no connection to musical or artistic tradition, and no time… Will not add more Mozarts.

    • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops”

      • Stephen Jay Gould
    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Most of the super famous classical composers were born with in 90 years of each other. On one hand thay were brilliant musicians, on the other hand It was also this thing that was happening right then.

      I’m fairly certain if the circumstances were different we still have a bunch of people doing the same work.

      • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        Those composers are famous because they were pioneers in the development of music and their work has been used to educate musicians in virtually all countries during the last century. There are composers creating similarly valuable music today, sometimes working in cinema or video games, and composers doing pioneering work, usually in experimental music. They aren’t as famous because their work isn’t being used worldwide to educate musicians, but they might be by 2123, provided society hasn’t collapsed.

      • BluesF@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        That’s part of what I’m getting at. The musical culture at the time arose through the work of many, many composers, and through the listeners who talked about it etc. Cultural development is complex and requires much more than just a handful of geniuses.

    • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Mozart wasn’t wealthy, his customers (patrons) were. His father trained him in the family trade from birth and put him to work at a young age.

      He had a lot in common with Michael Jackson in that way, but Michael got insanely rich and Mozart didn’t.

    • Dojan@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      There’s probably quite a few that are really only known to their immediate friends, families, and communities.

      There are a lot of really talented people out there, who will remain mostly anonymous. It’s probably nicer for most to not be in the limelight, though it sucks for the rest of us who will never know.

      • Igotz80HDnImWinning@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        I bet there are a ton of Mozarts who have to work shitty jobs just to exist and will never fully develop their skills due to economic inequality. If we give everyone UBI, at least some of them would develop fully.

        • Taleya@aussie.zone
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          11 months ago

          “You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?.. It’s all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they’re really good at. It’s all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It’s all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad ploughmen instead. It’s all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when its even possible to find out. It’s all the people who never get to know what it is they can really be. Its all the wasted chances.”

        • Dojan@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Yeah I can see this. I also think there’d be quite a few that just aren’t interested in the fame, or maybe want to keep their stuff private.

          I know a person who writes her own songs every so often. They’re usually made as a way of dealing with something going on in her life. I had no idea about this until after like five years of knowing her she shared one. It was beautiful, she has a great voice, and she plays the guitar really well. Since the pieces are so personal it’s just not something she’ll share with most of the world.

          Is she a Mozart? I don’t know, maybe. To me at least the experience was really profound.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOPM
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        11 months ago

        There are exceptions, but in general, in the modern music world, beauty trumps talent. You could be a great musician, but if you don’t look pretty on YouTube, the A&R people think no one wants to hear you.

        • Dojan@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I think modern media can offset that a little. There’s been plenty of people making use of virtual avatars to represent themselves in the past few years and still achieve decent success. Though obviously you’re quite limited in what you can do if you remain anonymous.

          I recall a few years ago a singer rather like that, REOL, made her first music video which she herself starred in and it kind of did accelerate her popularity. It’s hard to remain anonymous if you’re also looking to tour and be on stage. As an aside; it’s delightful how her “face debut” song is about how she’s unsure how she wants to do her debut.

        • Igotz80HDnImWinning@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          Oh for sure! I can’t help but wonder if a straightforward upvote-downvote system without the bias of algorithms aimed at clicks and profit would allow more folks who didn’t look canonically sexy to have careers. I know there are biases in general, and it may turn out to be a small percent overall, but getting a few percent more of a spotlight would still increase the Mozart count.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOPM
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        11 months ago

        I would say that Zappa didn’t really fit criterion 3 like Al does.

        Not to take anything away from his genius. But not every musical genius needs to be a Mozart.

        • VubDapple@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I think he does fit. Consider the genre spanning records he did in the 80s like Joe’s Garage with every song from a different style. Consider how he found talent in unusual places and incorporated it, for instance Ruth playing the marimba in Inca Roads. But point also taken. No one mocks like All mocks

            • VubDapple@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              He’s not everyone’s cup of tea but he was one for the ages. I think it a quite reasonable comparison to speak of Zapps in the same breath as Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, etc.

    • Beardsley@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. dun. dun. dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dundundun dun dun dun dun dun dun.

      A.I.D.S.

    • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      He popped to my mind very quickly as well. Let’s go down the list:

      • Significant talent, dedication and skill

      Would say, though I’d say he especially shines in composition and getting the right people to shine.

      • Write music across a bunch of different contemporary genres

      Basing yourself on prog metal is kind of cheating in that respect xD

      Seriously though, the genres within albums, or sometimes single songs, of his can be a bit of a rollercoaster. If another reader is still drawing a blank, The Day That The World Breaks Down

      • Draws from the work of others

      Isn’t that basically the standard for most musicians? And also, in the aforementioned track’s clip, he specifically refers to a few inspirations. And moments when he let his collaborators do their thing and shine. “Hey Mike, here are your lyrics: 01110100 01110010 01110101 01110011 01110100 01010100 01001000 00110001, go nuts!”

      • Shitposting and odd outfits

      Have you been at Live Beneath The Waves? His girlfriend got an applause, his brother was heckled & booed, and his keyboard guy was called a LUL by the entire audience. All at his request.

      Arjen checks the boxes pretty well.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOPM
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      11 months ago

      Really, the only way he doesn’t fit is that he doesn’t have the massive ego Mozart had. That, and I guess he’s not quite as dirty. Mozart once wrote of piece of music called “Lick My Ass.

      • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        He actually wrote 2 of those. For the sake of education, let’s provide the complete text of one (via deepl.com):

        spoiler

        Lick my a… right already,

        lick it nice and clean,

        lick it clean, lick my a…

        That’s a greasy desire,

        only well lubricated with butter,

        the licking of the roast my daily do.

        Three lick more than two,

        go ahead, take the test

        and lick, lick, lick.

        Everyone licks his own a…

        The phrase, aka the Swabian Salute, had been popularized a few years earlier in Goethe’s quite successful play Götz von Berlichingen. It is the knight’s reply to a demand for surrender. Götz may be more famous for his “iron fist/iron hand”, a prosthetic hand (at least, I saw a post about it trending on reddit a few years back). Two prosthetics that are thought to have belonged to him, may be seen in a museum. He lived ~1480-1562 and lost his hand, according to his autobiography, in 1504 to a field artillery shell when he besieged a Bavarian town.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOPM
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      11 months ago

      The video is fun too. Not the best Al video, but an entertaining compilation of 1950s civil defense footage.

  • BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I feel Damon Albarn might fit this as well, specifically with Gorillaz. They don’t have a style because it always changes on each album, hell their shit post song if the full version of Do Ya Thang where Andre 3000 just says “I’m the shit” for over 7 minutes.