Friday, June 01, 2007

Pop is dead, Long live pop

So in my researching of festivals for our next big excursion, I came across information on a thing called "International Pop Overthrow." Now, I'm a pretty shameless defender of pop music, but this festival sounded interesting to me. That's because I was assuming "overthrow" meant to get rid of some established power structure, and that in terms of music, no power structure is more pervasive than pop. I mean, no matter how we define it, at least we can agree that "pop" is "popular," right?

Not so. I am informed by the good people at the IPO that the purpose of the festival is in part "to bring pop music the attention it so richly deserves." Huh? Does that mean they're assuming that pop music isn't popular, and that their mission is to make it popular? Or does it mean they already know it's popular, and they want to keep it that way, thank you very much? And in the latter case, where does the word "overthrow" come in?

signed,
Confused in Portland

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