Displaying
A third form of Generativity Three involves not just preserving something; it is about also allowing other people to see the preserved object. The observation might be visual in nature, such as appreciating a work of art or beautiful photography. It might also be an aural form of observation. Music is usually about something that has already been created. Generativity Three is particularly in operation when the music being played comes from the distant past. Classical music comes immediately to mind, but we can also turn to popular music of the early and mid-20th Century. One of us lives in the State of Maine, which has the oldest average population in the United States. Many of its residents “remember the good old days” when popular music was steeped in such pre-rock-and-roll genres as swing music, sweet music, and bebop. Broadway musicals were also flourishing during the 1930s, 40s and 50s, producing standards written by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and music teams like Kern and Hammerstein, Rogers and Hart, Rogers and Hammerstein, and Lerner and Lowe.
In Maine, recordings of this kind of music are begin cared for and displayed (broadcast) by two independent radio stations that offer no commercials. One of these stations is privately owned by Bob Ventner, who plays music of the 1940s through the 1960s. He asks for donations once a year to cover the costs of operating the station but takes no salary himself (exemplifying the enactment of Generativity Three). A second station (WYAR) is a nonprofit that is run by volunteers and plays music from the first half of the Twentieth Century, the 1920’s through the 1950’s. As the announcers indicate: it is the only station to play music by Tex Beneke, Harry Belafonte, Bix Beiderbecke, Helen Morgan, Ethel Waters, and Fanny Brice.
Visual displays are particularly important for those of us who appreciate art and historical artifacts. The most obvious examples are the many museums that populate communities throughout the world. One of us recently visited an extraordinary collection of artifacts from the history of slavery in the United States. Located in New Orleans, this museum displays the slave-market manifests and shipping records for the African men, women and children who were dispatched to New Orleans from ports on the Atlantic seaboard.
Download Article 1K Club
