Rosario DiMarco: seductive strummer

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"The symbol of my project, the United World Music Projekt [sic] is an imaginary island called Mardesar. On this island, people live in peace together and express themselves in freedom." DeMarco launched the project several years ago at an international youth festival in Milan. He is continuing it in Melbourne, co-producing with SBS Radio and 3ZZZ an album featuring some of the best local world and fusion musicians.

"I want to give hope to people through music," Rosario muses. "I'd like to reach as many people as possible, all over the world. I want to go deeper into the creation of music, to stimulate the audience with ideas, to create the atmosphere and opportunity for all kinds of people to share this music, which is not political or religious."

DeMarco loved music from childhood, studying flute and piano before teaching himself to play guitar, which he later studied at some of the foremost music schools in Italy. He performed traditional Neapolitan music and played in a rock band with its own show on RAI TV (the national broadcaster). "I fused all these things and more into my current style - I have the perfect guitar now, which I will play for the rest of my life."

Rosario DeMarco features on the new album Intuition available at Sanity. Check out his website at www.rosariodemarco.com.

Listen to a sample of Rosario DiMarco.

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Do you really know what you like?

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Never before have people had so many opportunities to listen to music. The amount of choice that the consumer can exercise, however, varies enormously with their listening situation.

In some situations the listener has no choice and encounters the music in the process of normal daily activities. Examples of this type of situation would be lift and supermarket "muzak", the ringtones on other peoples' mobile phones, and even well-meaning friends who insist that you absolutely must listen to the CD that has just superseded last week's CD as their all-time favourite.

Other situations offer a limited choice. Would we really walk out on a movie purely because the soundtrack is not to our taste? Would we change TV channels because we don't like the advertising jingles? (Choice in this last example has dramatically improved since the widespread introduction of remotes!). Limited choice situations can also be partial. We probably don't really like all of the songs played on our habitual radio station but often can't be bothered changing it. Similarly, we are prepared to put up with a certain number of unattractive tunes in a live performance for the sake of the whole experience. How much we are prepared to bear before we turn off or leave is a critical commercial measurement since this is the narrow door through which unfamiliar material is introduced to us. Unfamiliar material repeated becomes familiar and with music, familiarity tends not to breed contempt but attraction. Soon these tunes can become the "soundtracks of our lives". At this point they have become a viable commercial product.

Free choice situations are more obvious. Deciding to listen to a CD, seeing a band regularly because we know what they do and like it, turning up the volume on the radio when our favourite track is played... but are these really free choices? On reflection it becomes obvious that there are a number of influences on our choices even if we leave aside our personal musical histories. These influences act as gatekeepers to our listening. Some are subtle and disinterested, others are active, aggressive and have a significant commercial interest in our choices.

Critics are the traditional intermediaries between musicians and audiences. "Serious" critics allegedly analyse and evaluate music against a particular aesthetic. If potential audiences understand the aesthetic, they can interpret what the critic is saying and make an informed choice. In many cases this simply translates into: "I like/dislike what critic X likes". Modern critics have extended this approach enormously particularly in the area of what can be called, for want of a better label, commercial contemporary music. These writers often deal with the social and political implications of lyrics and, not infrequently, don't discuss the music at all. A more recent development is the explosive growth of genres and sub genres. More often than not a piece of music is slotted into one of the multiplicity of these brand new pigeon holes on the basis of a modern critic's say so and often with no reference at all to what the music actually sounds like. This new approach appears suspiciously like an unholy alliance between deconstruction and push polling!

This leads us to the "Critics of Cool". These are the ultimate gatekeepers since their word is law and brooks no interference, particularly interference based on reasoned argument or appeals to consistency. Their word alone defines what music is acceptable and what is not. The Critic of Cool gives no clear definitions or reasons for the "coolness" of a particular piece of music and constant change of what is acceptable is essential. The fashion world is often viewed as the ultimate commercial leveraging of the arbitrary subjective judgements of the self-appointed few. The cult of personality based on being famous for being famous is running at least a close second. The Critics of Cool make the music industry a very strong contender for at least one of these positions. One of the cleverest things about these gatekeepers is that they can appear anywhere. They are not all high profile media commentators: a little observation will identify at least one secondary Critic of Cool in every schoolyard and workplace in the nation.

Since we have descended from the rarified heights of the supposedly objective experts to those we meet everyday, we might as well stay down here and look at more mundane influences. Families and friends are a major influence on our music consumption choices, not only in the positive sense of jointly discovering new music that evokes mutual enthusiasm, but in the negative sense also. While some embrace the music of their parents' generation, I suspect more reject it simply because it is the music of that generation. (sometimes this is a decision which can be justified convincingly on any number of aesthetic grounds!)

Our choices are already severely limited. Radio, record companies, retailers and venues individually or under various forms of agreement dictate what we can hear or buy. They also influence us both directly by promotion and indirectly by influencing the gatekeepers. The internet has opened this up but paradoxically presented us with a new problem. When you can choose from everything on earth where do you start? Fortunately the internet has its own gatekeepers, yet again, to assist us!

How free then is free choice? What does the public really want to hear? One safe bet is that those who are in control of the music industry are spending a lot of their considerable resources influencing the answer to the second question and ensuring that the answer to the first is: "not very!".

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