After a long day at work, you sit on your bed and turn on the television. As you flip through the channels, between the monotone narrator on  Discovery Channel and the screeching voice of a talking sponge on Nickelodeon, you hear music.

You hear the strumming of a guitar, a single chord steadily pulsing. You hear an airy voice spinning out two notes through a whole song.

You might be disappointed that we have no Mozart or Bach in the 21st century to make “real” music. You might think music is dead. But this classics of previous centuries are not the only style of music we can hear today. In fact, in terms of creativity, innovative music is more alive than ever.

For those who cling to the notion that creativity has gone out the door, they need to look no further than today’s contemporary composers. Modern compositions explore the margins of polyphony, building uniquely beautiful music using multiple layers of sound. Admittedly it is not everyone’s cup of tea when they first hear it, but once they pay attention a few times the listener can discern delicate harmonies built through discord. Although composers such as Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler created new, revolutionary polyphony a century ago, contemporary musicians from the classicist David Glass to the pop songwriter Bjork continue to explore its frontiers. In fact, today’s musical styles have many interconnections.  The divide between classical music and the pop arena lessens. The intellectual approach to music is more open to the ideas of the street.

If you are looking for further signs that music has not just curled up and died under the repressive rule of a money-grabbing music industry, then just walk into any jazz club during a jam session. The sudden rise of the New York-based Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a family jazz band that struts its horns on the streets, provides a reassuring example of how improvisation still draws in the crowds.

The UK’s Daily Telegraph described the band as a “refreshing mix of new tones layered over a traditional base”. By its very nature, improvisation sucks the individual soul out of any player and into the music, and don’t tell me that any two individual souls are the same! The spirit of every age, with its socially and politically influenced filters, bubbles into and colors every musical stream creatively flowing from the improviser. As in any age, the 21st century is spewing out its own waves of innovative talent. You just have to keep your eyes and ears open, not only to jazz but to all music genres.

With time, our favorite music genres and styles might mellow, fuse or even disappear and our favorite singers fade into the night. Yet, as with any other form of art, music will continue to metamorphose as eager young creators seek their own identities. We may witness periodic lulls in the current of inventiveness, but these are only backwaters of conservative rejection, masking submerged potential.

As a lizard regenerates itself, so does music, borne on the irrepressible tide of musical vision. There are cascades of exciting, exhilarating new music flourishing; all you have to do is – listen.

Vicky Ahn
Grade 11 - Jakarta International School