Keen resolutionists might say it’s regressive or somehow blasphemous to start a new year preoccupied with the past. It’s almost (not yet) 10 years since my first day of university and so I’m learning that the past proves more important, more tangible and heavy, as we get older. In the eternally future-positive bubble of adolescence we learn about cycles of political and economic and social upheaval as part of an unfortunate past, but as blocks of time go by and we begin to feel the discomforting ripples of these shifts, those cycles go from textbook theory to understanding. We’ve learned the past repeats itself; we haven’t learned how to learn from our mistakes.
Nostalgia’s been top of mind lately for two reasons: Kurt Andersen’s suggestion, in Vanity Fair, that the “nostalgic gaze” is a prime indicator of our cultural devolution; and the revived, continued discussion (featuring Toronto’s own Carl Wilson) of music critic Simon Reynolds’ Retromania, a book that charges current pop music with unoriginality due to its dependence on the past.
Paraphrasing Carl, I’ll say that being called out on a recycling culture is good if it means people will stop obsessing over Girl Talk (mash-ups are for boring people) or conflating revivalism with presumed authenticity. And while there’s some validity to the contention that easy access to and preoccupation with cultural relics — whether blatant misappropriation a la Gaga or esoteric curatorial surface-scraping — can consign art to be created in a Groundhog Day-style vacuum, I can’t help but feel like past-baiting is an easy out.
I just don’t think nostalgic musical excavation is chained up by universal intention. It delivers moments of heart-stopping, world-shattering newness for the uninitiated and helps channel ingenuity. Re-reading history provides clarity: Ellen Willis’ experiences with virile, male-driven rock music in the ’60s and ’70s helped reconcile and strengthen what it means for me to be a female hip-hop fan. The Economist recently explored the trickle-down reach of the Amen Break, a short drum break that became the iconic backbone of a genre. Recycling basically made hip-hop. And the past also has massive capitalist value, which enables many things, such as the sales of Retromania, the seemingly endless (often terrible) reunion tour circuit, and career stagnancy masked as ingenious tribute resurrections, like the re-pairing of Brandy and Monica.
Beyond the cyclical confines of Top 40 pop, there is so much wonder being built out of the mounting piles of refuse. Producers like Madlib, a California-based genius who plays Toronto next week, consume so much of everything — and not just the past — and distill frequencies we can’t hear into compositions that inspire a cult following. I recently interviewed soul jazz progenitor Roy Ayers, who talked about feeling partially indebted to hip-hop producers; he can quantify and identify a legion of new, younger fans. After decades, Chicagoan gospel singer Mavis Staples (in Toronto January 29), continues to pique consumer curiosity through musical partnerships with young, contemporaneously relevant admirers like Prince and Jeff Tweedy. And just the other day Toronto’s Airick Woodhead, who creates scuzzy, collaged audio-visual pieces as Doldrums, told me we can’t separate faded relics from their historical inferences – but we can use them to start all over again.
Anupa Mistry writes regularly about music for Toronto Standard. Follow her on Twitter at @_anupa.
