STEPHEN FRY

I like to take long walks to get air, exercise and space to breath and think. Often, I bring along Stephen and his numerous podcasts or other publications on my walks. I can't remember exactly in what context he made this comment, but somewhen, Stephen was asked what he thought the difference was between music from the older days and music of today. I can't remember the exact answer, but his idea was that what it really boiled down to was dancing. I'm paraphrasing here, but what I remember him saying was that older classical music was wonderful to just sit quietly and listen to whilst modern music is annoyingly urging people to dance.

I thought about the subject and has concluded that I think the ultimate difference between the music now and the music then is not the way you listen to it, but rather the reason why you would either sit and listen to it, or dance to it. It is the way it conveys it's message.

Before, when music was often played without accompanying vocals the only way of expressing a message through the music was to let the music speak to the audience and this was done by make people feel the music. Today, the music that is produced often has two parts, melody and vocals. I think we've gone away from expressing emotions through the melody because most artists express themselves through the lyrics and let the melody be some empty danceable background noise that people can jump around to in the clubs.

Having said that, I would still make the claim that there are still some bands that produce music that speaks to the heart and not just to our dancing reflexes. Personally, I like to sit down and relax to Vamp, which is a Norwegian band. They have amazing music. "Våken drøm" and "Tir N'a Noir" can be found on youtube and are worth a listen

- Helene