New wave and authenticity.

I was thinking the other day about musical virtuosity/showmanship and how it goes in and out of favor on a fairly regular basis. One minute people are oohing and ahhing over the epic guitar solo in ‘Hotel California’ (1976), and the next minute a whole genre based on the idea of the anti-virtuoso bursts from the underground  into the mainstream (1977).  The pendulum has been swinging back and forth since the idea of ‘pop music’ came into existence, with debates about authenticity raging the whole way.

New wave is often defined by its use of technology–namely the synthesizer, but also drum machines, samplers, etc–in a way that rock music has not been. To a lot of rock purists, new wave’s reliance on these technologies has made it seem somehow less ‘authentic’ than traditional drum-bass-guitar setups. In contrast with punk’s sound (which has been described as something like a pure ‘line of noise’), all that noodling on synths can come across as pretentious, over-complicated, and, dare I say it…inauthentic. It’s the same line of thought that calls overt displays of virtuosity as inauthentic. When punk was king, virtuosity was out. Three chords and a dream, man, anything else is just a waste of time!

What’s ironic, though, is that the very synths and machines that got (and still get) new wave accused of in-authenticity were the same machines that allowed the most un-virtuosic people to become musicians. While I don’t have the exact quote on-hand, Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode has pointed out that they played synthesizers because they were easier to learn than guitars–and considering that most of Fletch’s act consists of two-fingered playing and enthusiastic clapping, I think it’s safe to say that the man is no virtuoso. Synthesizers were cheap, they were easy to learn and you could build entire songs out of them with just a few interesting sounds. Now, before I get to broad in my brush strokes here I will point out that this is in no way indicative of every new wave artist; Alan Wilder is a classically trained musician, and Annie Lennox went to the Royal Academy of Music, to name just two examples.  Still, one of the exciting things about new wave, and about synthesizers becoming affordable for the first time, is that amateur musicians who might not be able to afford lessons, guitars or any of the standard trappings of pop music had the chance to make music and experiment with new sounds, pushing pop music into unexpected and exciting new territory. In my view, new wave is one of the best examples of the democratization of music through technology. Music for anyone who has a mind to make it. What could be more authentic than that?