I’ve been thinking lately on how Barth employs the term curare to explicate the doctrine of providence (in CD III/3). Specifically, I’m thinking of how ethics may be construed as a type of “curation,” as a gallery curator works with the givenness of the objet d’art, taking care of it in such a way as to help it be what it already is.

In terms of music, this translates into the musician being not so much a creator of music, but a curator who takes the already-given medium of sound and presents it in a peculiar manner. So I’m wondering, in terms of the R&T project: how does the rock musician “curate” sound?

In the first analysis, one must recognize that rock music does not stand alone in some ideal world. The rock fan does not (typically) close his or her eyes and contemplate the tones and rhythm in and of themselves as romantic depictions of the classical concertgoer tend to illustrate. The rock musician almost always sets his or her music within a larger cultural context—be it punk culture, metal culture, indie culture, et al. Such cultures are intertwined with socio-political contexts, including gender-related and generationally-related modes of discourse. Thus the rock fan is invited to fully participate in a multi-faceted and multivalent ethos.

In addition to the cultural aspect, the rock musician “curates” sound—more often than not—boldly. I would offer such boldness as perhaps the characterizing aspect of what constitutes “rock” music (if indeed we wish to essentialize the genre…but perhaps we don’t?). Such boldness is often what muddies the waters of gender in the rock world—“authentic” rock somehow becomes a matter of machismo, while the feminine is the other that the rocker must attract to the front row.

But boldness need not only become the vice of hubris. It may also become the virtue of courage, i.e. witnessing truthfully to the evils of injustice in a world that despises such truthfulness. Of course not all courageous rock must be so serious. In addition to the socio-political prophetic types (e.g. Rage Against the Machine, Enter Shikari), there are also the clown-figures who are boldly crazy for the mere sake of standing out (e.g. Les Claypool, Bootsy Collins).

In addition to the personality of the “frontman,” the instrumental soloist often bears the weight of communicating such boldness. In this respect, I think of the differences between the solo styles of Eric Johnson—who typically concentrates more on his performance than the attention of the crowd—and Steve Vai—who knows how well he plays and so plays as if we should worship him. (I’m particularly fond of the movie Spinal Tap for presenting the hubris of rock musicians with hyperbolic hilarity.)

I know I’ve presented a bunch of issues here, but my most basic point following the methodological approach of “curation” is perhaps that the boldness of rock may be “curated” in a multitude of ways. So although I hesitate to “essentialize” rock music, I am curious as to how a basic attribute (i.e. boldness) may be broad enough to include the spectrum that we know as rock. Questions from this: Are basic attributes permissible in rock music? And may “boldness” qualify as such an attribute?

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