Saturday, September 6, 2008

Singing about Dancing and the like...

Ok, so as a Latinophile, I love dance music insanely. I noticed that a lot of dance songs are about dancing itself (e.g. Music of the Sun, Pon de Replay, etc..). Now how much artistic value do these songs have. Essentially, does attempting to explain the inexplicable count as artistic or is it just a cop out?

1 comment:

Old Fashioned Liberal said...

Don Pedro, congratulations on your first post ever! I don't think that these things are an artistic cop-out at all. All the artists ought to know that they can't explaion it. But why should this prevent them from trying? We can still gain small pieces of wisdom from their musings. We can't explain the Trinity either, but great Saints haven't found it a theological cop-out to try.
There is a cop out related to what you're saying, though. It is the device of saying that the thing being described is indescribable (think the magic carpet song in Aladdin). Anyone can do that. While it may have artistic merit insofar as it is true and evocative, it reflects very unfavorably on the talent of the artist.