Before discussing the history of music, we need to find a meaningful way to compare history with something tangible in our lives. Perhaps a garden serves as a good analogy, as it requires fundamental elements to produce fruit: soil, seeds, water, sunlight, and a gardener to nurture it.
To get an overview of the current situation, it becomes easier to understand and explain the countless roots, styles, and movements in music over the past 50 years. Ultimately, this helps us answer an important question: why has contemporary music lost its social visibility?
Continuing with the garden analogy, we make a major mistake when we replace actual musical production with a hypothetical or idealized one. In other words, we must recognize today's composers as the real protagonists of music history. We cannot rely solely on an archetype predetermined by the intellectual elite—one that promotes a purified, idealistic form of art centered around university composers. These composers often write more academic papers than actual music, and they attempt to dictate the "correct" path for music history. Instead, we must acknowledge and cultivate the fruits that already exist.
If we compare soil to land, seeds to artists, water and sunlight to investments, and the gardener to cultural policies, we gain a clearer understanding of what is necessary to establish a new vision of music history.
Can we "make history"? This is a delicate question because, for some, true history cannot be deliberately created. Yes, we can make history, but we cannot predict which kinds of music will endure over time or how long any new musical trend will last. The most important thing is to avoid an academic, selective, elitist, and bourgeois approach to determining what should be preserved.
Today, new sponsorship trends are problematic because they prioritize profitability. Returning to the garden analogy, sponsors choose seeds that grow as quickly as possible and plant large quantities of the same type to maximize sales.
At first glance, this might seem normal, and younger generations may assume it has always been this way. However, this shift only occurred after liberalism imposed a fusion of culture, sports, and entertainment—a problematic crossover. This created a domino effect, culminating in the commercialization of culture. The consequences include the gradual disappearance of independent artists and a reliance on repetition and remakes to fill the creative void left by this new cultural paradigm.
But wait! We cannot treat art and culture like clothing or cars. While art involves sensitivity, emotion, and cultural identity, consumer goods exist primarily to signal social status and comfort. These are two fundamentally different things.
Regarding musical styles and trends, they have become increasingly dependent on technology to align with consumer expectations. As a result, music has been reduced to a utility, like water or electricity. We are no longer owners of music; we are merely consumers. Today, we rent our music from the 60,000 new songs uploaded to the internet daily.
All these issues justify a new approach to understanding the composition process and its various ramifications.
Let's keep it simple.