Kanye West and Taste

I ran across a fascinating post over at Ann Althouse about Kanye West and taste. The title is too long for a link, but here is the important quote:

"It was something that God put in my heart back in 2015. A few days before the MTV awards it hit me in the shower. When I first thought of it, I just started laughing to myself and all this joy came over my body, through my soul. I felt that energy and spirit. Two days later, I accepted the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Awards. Instead of performing my array of hit songs, I gave just my perspective on awards shows.... It even took heart to say it in that context and people were just like: Oh! Their minds were blown.... I had different friends -- some people in the music industry, some tech elites -- and they took it as a joke.... I'm completely confident that I will figure out how to get America out of debt, that I have the ability, once I see everything. I never make the wrong decision when I'm given all the information. That's my skill set. Anything I go into — producing, rap, homes, clothing, anything — once I'm given the right information, I apply my taste. And I have the best taste on the planet. Could you imagine Quincy Jones as a president? Walt Disney? Steve Jobs? For America to be as warming and inviting as Disney World. There used to be this dream. People still have this dream of coming to America.... I know that me as president would be the best thing that would ever happen for America's foreign policy. I've traveled more than any president already, and I bring people together. I put rivals on songs together to create masterpieces.... I'm definitely 100% winning in 2024...."

And here is the video:

Now, of course, his 2020 campaign went nowhere, but what interests me is the assertion of the validity of the judgement of taste. In my numerous posts on aesthetics, I have often talked about taste:

https://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2015/01/taste-and-creativity.html

https://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2012/09/aesthetics-some-hints-from-david-hume.html

https://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-evolution-of-taste.html

And there are lots of others. I think what Kanye is saying is that he has an intuitive grasp of what is good and what is not good and the exercise of this is what we call "taste" --or used to! The whole notion of taste was formidably disparaged by modernist artists as you can read in the first of my posts linked to above. Picasso hated the idea of "taste." The notion of taste is tied up with that other heterodox notion of "quality." We have no problem with the idea of poor quality or high quality when it comes to fruit and vegetables, technology, automobiles or fabric. But we have been taught to shy away from any kind of hierarchy of quality when it comes to the arts. TASTE IS SUBJECTIVE we cry! I think what this comes from is the way things like beauty and ugliness are received. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder because that is where it is received. But this does not mean that beauty is subjective, just that its reception is.

What do I mean by that? Well, it is obvious that there are vast differences in quality between different artworks. The sketch I did the other day has value only to myself, but the sketches of Leonardo da Vinci are of immense value. And not just "in the eye of the beholder." They can be auctioned for vast sums of money because they have objective aesthetic value even though different people may perceive them differently. You might perceive a painting differently on different days and at different times of your life, but that does not change the painting itself. The subjectivity is only in yourself.

But somehow, out of this, the general consensus is that aesthetics is relative. That everyone's judgement is equally valid. Obviously not. Some people have high levels of intuitive judgement of taste and others do not. Kanye creates very popular music and designs very popular running shoes. In certain areas, he has a great capacity for aesthetic judgement.

I'm not sure it would be safe to trust him with the economy, though...

A Little Kanye

After I put up "Every Hour," a cut from the new album Jesus is King from Kanye West, a commentator asks "what is Kanye actually doing on that song?" which was gospel choir plus piano. Here is a live performance of another song from the album, "Closed on Sunday" which gives a pretty good idea of how this music is working. Kanye is singing and there are three percussionists, three keyboard players, six brass players and a whole bunch of other folks singing backup.

We're Eclectic!

But only on Saturdays, so don't get used to it. The big news of the day is:

• Today is Domenico Scarlatti's birthday, October 26, 1685 which makes him the same age as J. S. Bach, three hundred and thirty four years old.
• And Kanye West has a new album out--Christian hip-hop. Hmm, the 21st century is not turning out as I expected.

So let's have a couple of pieces. First, one of my favorite Scarlatti sonatas, K. 544, played by Leo Brouwer on guitar:

And a song from the new Kanye West album, Jesus is King, "Closed on Sunday":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp0q1wWe6XI&list=PLPRWtKgY2MOsLn_JUJyzEczn5T7xoDvzt&index=4

And what if you made a song out of the ding you get when you leave your car door open with the keys in the ignition?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yQVcGkbpAc&list=PLPRWtKgY2MOsLn_JUJyzEczn5T7xoDvzt&index=10

Keeping with the religious theme, here is Exsultate Jubilate by Mozart with Regula Mühlemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada:

I've always wondered, did Mozart write stuff like that because he loved sopranos? Or because he hated sopranos?

Scott Adams Agrees With Me

A while back I put up a couple of posts on Kanye West because he did something that I thought was good and fascinating. I was told I probably needed an intervention! Lately I have been watching some clips from Scott Adams, who seems to have a refreshing take on a lot of stuff and, guess what, he commented on Kanye West's new album Ye. Yes, I know this clip is an hour long, but trust me, you only have to watch the first couple of minutes:

That was certainly a surprise. Yes, I've listened to some cuts from the new album, but the song that I am liking right now is from the older album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Here is "Lost in the World" which I find quite interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofaRvNOV4SI

That really doesn't sound like anyone else, does it?

We now return to our regular scheduled programming.

Aesthetic Refugee

It used to be that the term "refugee" was limited to those persons fleeing an actual war-zone. Then it was extended to those escaping religious persecution. Other kinds of persecution, such as for being homosexual, were added. Now we seem to be including economic refugees. I want to make the claim of being an aesthetic refugee. Yes, it's true, I am fleeing the horrid cacophony of bad music, which pursues me wherever I go in public. For years I have railed against bad music and have even found entire genres, like "grindcore," to be completely devoid of any aesthetic value. I have said a lot of bad things about rap and hip-hop as well and found the accompanying videos to be an aesthetic horror. But the corollary of the claim that 90% of everything is crap, is that 10% might be good. Well, it has finally happened, I have come across a piece of hip-hop that is really interesting aesthetically! Believe me, no-one is more surprised than me. But I think that part of that whole aesthetic evaluation thing I keep talking about, is that you do need to be objective.

So here we go, I present to you a piece by Kanye West. In the past I have not had anything good to say about his music and that was based on just a few, haphazard listenings so I hasten to apologize. The other day I stumbled across something that made me completely re-evaluate his work. The piece, from his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, is titled "Runaway" and I want to present three different versions of it. First of all, the one with the cleaned up lyrics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7_jYl8A73g&list=RDL7_jYl8A73g&start_radio=1

In some ways I like the mix the best in this version. Next the "explicit" version so you can hear what he is actually singing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqpwDJpI3Rc

The odd thing about that version is that the ambient sounds of footsteps are muted, but you can hear the words blurred out in the other version. The best version is the segment found in the full length film, thirty-four minutes long, that has an extended ending with more solos of the dancers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5wkZ-dJXA&t=1402s

There are a lot of things I find both remarkable and aesthetically compelling about this work (I mean the song "Runaway," not the whole film, which has lots of CGI). It is refreshingly minimal in that it uses no special effects, no computer generated imagery and no jump-cuts. All the shots are long and have much more weight because of it. The setting is as natural as could be: an empty warehouse with a plain cement floor, just the kind of place this sort of thing would be rehearsed in. All the emphasis is on the music and the dance. Honestly, how many hip-hop videos do you know that feature twenty or so Russian ballerinas? And nothing else except Kanye? The music itself I find particularly compelling. The stark piano at the beginning unites the whole piece. The long end with what sounds like sampled cellos reminds me very strongly of a Baroque passacaglia in its remorseful inevitability. As for the lyrics themselves, I find them particularly striking, not the least for the sarcasm of "Let's have a toast for the douchebags, let's have a toast for the assholes..." and so on. Yes, let's for there are lots of them around.

Remarkable guy, Kanye West. I'm afraid I was completely mislead by his celebrity status and the random hearing of one or two songs that did not impress me. But "Runaway" is a whole other ball game. This is a very impressive piece and I hope you come to enjoy it as well.

But I still hate EDM!