We boomer seniors are a tremendously lucky group when it comes to our musical heritage. Because, we came of age in the golden years of all genres of music and musical performance and today we have a plethora of (still) live and recorded music to enjoy. We can tune our streaming musics to a dozen channels and not capture it all. It is such a part of our lives that it is the background for every day, for everything we do. So when it comes to having a party or inviting guests over for a wine tasting or dinner, musical choices abound. You can become the musical curator to shape the mood of every bit of the party.
The Culture of Self Expression
The late sixties and seventies were it. And the so called “me generation” – us boomers – thrived in a culture of self-expression and individual achievement, which helped make music so diverse. Thousands of us flocked to lawns at colleges and festivals to spend hours listening. As we get further away from that era, I suspect historians will find it the true golden age of music in America, when so many styles and genres and tastes all blurred together to create what we listened to every day.
Think of it, all flowering simultaneously:
- The Golden Age of Rock, from The Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin and Queen.
- The Golden Age (or one of the Golden ages) of country music, the Dolly Parton decade.
- The Golden Age of Love Songs. Think Billy Joel and “Just the Way you Are.”
- The Golden Age of folk, from Dylan to Judy to Peter, Paul, and Mary, to coffee house favorites.
- The Golden Age of Classical, with great symphony orchestras starting to really flourish in every large city and music festivals populating the summer landscape coast to coast.
- The Golden Age of Dance Music.
- The Golden Age of Funk, linking soul to African American styles.
- The Golden Age of Broadway Musicals, from Grease to Fidler on the Roof, Cabaret to Hair.
What led to this Vast Assortment of Great Music?
My sense is that Boomer individuality and self-expression led to this vast diversity of fabulous music. It was a culmination, and it remains a glass ceiling for today’s music and musicians. It was a time when it seemed everyone was in love with all types of music, and you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing it. In the era before earphones, we heard everyone’s choices as we walked down the street.
It was a time when being a musician was finally considered a justifiable career, and musicians became a part of our cultural leadership in ways few had before. The international recording industry became mammoth. We wrote about music after every performance: many newspapers had two or even three music reviewers to capture the sounds of everything from folk to classical.
Fabulous Musical Legacy
This fabulous musical legacy is our boomer-senior backdrop. Enjoying it then, we can relish in the extent and diversity of it now. We can theme our entertainment around it. And we can load enough diversity of it to stream our self-curated 70s throughout a lengthy overseas flight.
- I confess to missing those days of boom boxes and sound pouring from every building. I miss people talking about music – the whole of it, the diversity of it – as serious discussion. We debated and listened and debated again, and loved every minute of it. Maybe that’s what we are missing today – a lively Golden Age II of music and musical genres that capture and consume our thinking, shape our identity, and give focus to our debates and discussions. It sure was fun, and at least we boomer seniors get to replay our favorites whenever we want, and shape our parties and social events around it. We’ll never give it up!
- Morningmountainview
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