Artistry and Sincerity

Donald Glover on LCD Soundsystem, who played a farewell show last night at Madison Square Garden:

The sincerity is what made LCD Soundsystem really dope to me. There's no half-ass. No one's "cool." They like stuff. They're really particular and hardworking. Everyone's always talking about how they hate shit. Cause if you say you like something, it makes you a little weaker cause people can attack that. So, as I look at it, LCD Soundsystem are super brave. One of the braver bands ever, especially since they were around when irony and sadness about the state of the world is pretty high.

Truer words were never written. This taps into why I like musicians like Robert Glasper, The Bad Plus, Jason Moran, and Esperanza Spalding, among others. They like what they like, and they've found an interpretive framework (jazz) which allows them to work it all into their art. And their polyglot tastes often end up turning me on to hosts of new music that I may not have found on my own.

The great thing about art in the 21st century is that music nerds can carve out these wonderful little corners of the universe to create their own monuments to whatever they like, and thanks to the technological revolutions that brought us Twitter, Facebook, etc., they often find that their own combinations of tastes are shared by more people than you might suspect. Further proof that we are living in a golden age of music (though not necessarily a golden age for musicians, but that's another issue for another day).