No. of Recommendations: 4
One of the things I've noticed is that some younger folk don't understand the influence of the styles of flow of music over time. It's most noticeable in guitarists. If you ask me who's the most influential guitarist, to me, it's Jimi Hendrix. Inevitably they choose someone who came after him, who was heavily influenced by him, and just say they're much better than Jimi. Trying to explain to them their guitarist is heavily influenced by Jimi doesn't seem to work ever. I remember talking with one woman who insisted SRV (Stevie Ray Vaughn)was much better than Jimi.I wonder if that's because those are two different questions. Who's the most influential guitarist vs. who's the better guitarist. It put me in mind of this observation from a different context:
Whoever does something first isn't likely to do it best, simply because those who follow after have the benefits of time and experience. So it shouldn't be surprising that viewers who see the new idea after other hands have shaped and polished it are not going to be impressed by the way it looked when it first came out of the ground.https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Seinfe...So it's not surprising that young folks interested in, say, electronic music might think that current artists are "better" than Kraftwerk, even though electronic music wouldn't exist (or wouldn't exist like it does today) if it weren't for Kraftwerk.
Plus, you have to take into account the generational effect that you alluded to in your post, as well as genre preferences. The best music in the world will generally be the music that you encountered between the ages of 13 and 26 (or so). That's the best music - other music is less good. It doesn't matter whether that's
really the best music. That's going to be when the best musicians were:
https://thegenxmanager.com/2018/04/13/why-your-gen...Someone who went through adolescence in the sixties will may think Hendrix is the best; someone who went through adolescence in the eighties may think it's SRV.
As for genre, Henrdix and Vaughn produced different types of music. Someone more partial to blues might lean towards SRV, while someone who favors rock would say Hendrix:
https://www.guitarworld.com/features/the-100-great...https://www.guitarworld.com/features/the-100-great...
