A note from the past

There are many objects that can last for ever (or so it seems): houses, cars, cooking utensils or furniture typically have a usable lifetime in the order of decades, which means that they do not get replaced very often. For this kind of objects (aptly called durable goods) fashion is slow as a glacier: even if a new trend comes about, it will have to coexist for years or decades before the old pre-fashion items get phased out. On the other end of the spectrum are the consumables, objects with a short (or even ephemeral) lifespan, where buying a trendy can never cause too much trouble because they will be replaces anyway within a couple of seasons. This is the case not only for clothes or shoes (which typically take forward leaps about twice per year, regardless of how big or small they are) but also for hairstyles (I need to get haircut at least every two months) or even make-up (where even if you put it on every day, it will be some weeks before you deplete your stock and go for a different style). The good aspect of this volatility is that even the most frightful fashion is bound to disappear eventually. The sad part is that, along with the mullets of the 90s or the low-waist jeans in the late 2000s, also your favorite fashion will be superseded.

For as long as I can remember, I have never been moved very strongly by fashion. My family has always been rather conservative in terms of clothing so as a child I almost always wore slacks instead of jeans and collared shirts or, at most, polo shirts, but rarely T-shirts. But as I grew up and started to forge my own style, rather than looking that the fashion of the time and simply chose whatever I fancied regardless of how fashionable it was. That is how I ended up having a pocket watch or an ankle-length trench coat in the 90s, when they were not on fashion at all. 

Photo: Heinrich Klaffs

Even if they are not strictly consumable, some cultural goods are also strongly influenced by fashion. That is clearly not the case of paintings, which can hang on your wall for ever, but music, theater and movies are somehow immediately consumed the moment they are played, so even if they do not disappear and you can replay them years later, the instantaneous nature of their use intrinsically requires at least certain amount of tuning to the sensibilities of the moment. The most fortunate pieces will end up as timeless classics and they will continue to be played even if their style has long gone out of fashion but the rest will forever be tainted as old school and history will relegated them to the bottom of its drawers among the mothballs, from where they might be occasionally rescued by the nostalgic to be played with a mixture of yearning and condescension.

The same eclecticism in my tastes for clothing (or even more) is in prominent display in my musical preferences. I enjoy many of the current female vocalists of pop-rock and even some flavors of country and folk music, but my long-time favorites are heavy-metal, jazz and, above all bossa nova. The contrast between the highly distorted metal guitars and the deep tones of the saxophone cannot be starker but I can only say that I enjoy them both. As it is the case with some of my beloved pieces of clothing they are not a current trend anymore, but it does not bother me because, fortunately, I am not a devoted fan of live performances and records/CDs/MP3s are perfectly fine for me.

It is hard to explain the primal feelings that jazz and its Brazilian cousin, the bossa nova, awake in me. The combination of deep bass notes (both from the sax and from the contra-bass), the obsessive  syncopated rhythms at the piano or the drums, the almost supernatural combination of major and minor tones makes for a warm, thick atmosphere that almost transports me next to a bonfire on the beach in front of the South Atlantic. Notably Antônio Carlos Jobim, the godfather of bossa nova, had his heyday in the 60s of the last century, almost a decade before I was born, and died more than 25 years ago. The same fate befell many of the other masters of the genre, such as Vinicius de Moraes (in 1980), Elis Regina (in 1982), Stan Getz (in 1991), Dorival Caymmi (in 2008). From all the "founders" of the movement only Astrud Gilberto survives, while her husband at the time, João Gilberto, passed away just a couple of years ago after long years of mental and physical decline. Luckily for me, the voices and instruments of all these artists are preserved for the eternity in their recordings, so even if they have not been on fashion for many years they are still easy enough to retrieve. In fact, even Spotify has a stream of bossa nova classics that I enjoy with certain regularity. 

There is no saying how the music or the culture in general is going to evolve in the near future. With the demise of the USA as a cultural power house and Europe not being too much of a counterpart, the chances that the metaphorical center of the world will drift to the Eastern hemisphere are fairly high. Perhaps we will all soon be watching more sumo bouts instead of baseball, or listening to the guzheng instead of electric guitars. I cannot promise to like whatever might come, but I will certainly give it a serious consideration. But for better or worse, these cultural artifact can be enjoyed in the privacy or my home, so even if I have to stick with my current tastes I am very unlikely to ever become bored. Have a nice evening.