Every election cycle is a referendum on the performance of the governing party. 2024 saw a vote of no confidence in the Democratic party, which lost the House, the Senate, and the presidency. Current voter dissatisfaction is largely due to the state of the economy, particularly the deleterious effects of inflation. In 2024, millions of disaffected voters chose not to vote.
The most interesting hip-hop artist of our times is Kendrick Lamar. It was evident he was a rap star from his sophomore album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012), which told of the crime and violence he witnessed in his neighborhood during his upbringing in Compton, California. He next spoke on his struggles growing up a black man in America in To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). Then in DAMN. (2017), he took his own ego to task, an ego we see him try to conquer through family life a la Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (2022), and sublimate through the creative process a la GNX (2024). Both these recent albums speak to the most challenging question an artist must face: whether he or she is first a person or an artist. In GNX, Kendrick lays down his cards. He loves his family, he loves his friends, but he's an artist first.
Kendrick's declaration that he is devoted to his art above all else comes with the final track on GNX. The track title "Gloria," short for "Gloria in excelsis Deo" (Glory to God in the highest), is also Kendrick's nickname for his pen. It's a complicated relationship, he says.
In school, this old boy taught himself musical composition by taking traditional compositions, decomposing them, and studying their components.
Here's biographer Christoph Wolff (Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, 2000) describing Bach's process. "One of his study methods consisted of taking a given model and turning it into a new work, not by arranging it but by appropriating the thematic material, subjects, and countersubjects and rewriting the score to create a different piece—a new solution to what he took to be a musical question. And in the process of recomposing, he discovered new thematic connections or contrapuntal combinations as well as new harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic features" (p. 93).
Examples of exercises include a decomposition of Dutch composer Johann Adam Reincken's Hortus Musicus, which runs over an hour and is available HERE. Compare this to the fruits of Bach's study, the five-minute Fugue in B-Flat Major (BWV 954), his Sonata nach Reinken [sic] in A Minor (BWV 965/2), and his Sonata in C Major (BWV 966/2).
It stands to reason. Bach learned to compose by decomposing other music and studying how that was composed. Then he made his own early music from recombination.
