{"id":1229,"date":"2018-02-26T16:02:30","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T21:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2018-02-26T16:02:30","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T21:02:30","slug":"gray-haired-and-dying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2018\/02\/gray-haired-and-dying.html","title":{"rendered":"Gray-Haired and Dying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I heard yet another talk about audiences last week that used two adjectives interchangeably to describe them: \u201cgray-haired\u201d and \u201cdying.\u201d<\/p>\n

I get it.\u00a0 The young demographic is a big prize: get listeners hooked in their teens and twenties and you could have them coming back for a half century.\u00a0 That\u2019s just not the case with a 60-year-old listener.\u00a0 But there are still problems with this approach that deserve a closer look.<\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s clarify the relationship between \u201cgray-haired\u201d and \u201cdying.\u201d Most people start graying in their mid-thirties to mid-forties.\u00a0 Since the life expectancy for Americans is currently at 78, many of us will have gray hair for the majority of our lives.\u00a0 Given that reality, saying a gray-haired person is dying is about as accurate as saying a person who doesn\u2019t have gray hair is wearing diapers.\u00a0 Sure, it\u2019s true in a number of cases, but the number is relatively small.<\/p>\n

Secondly, though the young demographic is the big prize, dismissing gray-haired listeners seems a bit greedy.\u00a0 There are currently 108 million Americans over the age of fifty.\u00a0 Capture the interest of even 10% of them and you have quite a following.<\/p>\n

Next, at various times in our lives, our perceptions are dramatically impacted by hormones.\u00a0 Music that is hormone-driven can have a powerful appeal in those stages, and for that reason a lot of music zeroes in on the very themes our hormones find most engaging.\u00a0 That\u2019s great \u2013 in fact, it\u2019s a huge boon to the survival of the species \u2013 but it is not the entire sum of the experience of being human, nor is it the only thing that music can do well.\u00a0 Humans beings of all ages can also think about their place in the world, suffer, laugh, and even develop wisdom over the course of decades of experience.\u00a0 These are things we all do, especially when hormones are more or less dormant, and music can be a vital part of that shared experience.<\/p>\n

So sure, hormonally driven music serves a valuable function \u2013 I don\u2019t have any desire to downplay its importance.\u00a0 There are, however, extended portions of our lives when that kind of music can seem limited, beside the point.\u00a0 At times like these, a piece like Webern\u2019s Symphony<\/em> or Lang\u2019s love fail <\/em>can be the answer.<\/p>\n

And yet, I can\u2019t deny it, of course: first and foremost, go for listeners in the 15-45 range, they are and always will be the big prize.<\/p>\n

Just don\u2019t diminish the importance of the rest of the population \u2013 hair color notwithstanding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I heard yet another talk about audiences last week that used two adjectives interchangeably to describe them: \u201cgray-haired\u201d and \u201cdying.\u201d I get it.\u00a0 The young demographic is a big prize: get listeners hooked in their teens and twenties and you could have them coming back for a half century.\u00a0 That\u2019s just not the case with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1231,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions\/1231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}