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Brown left a huge mark on modern music, particularly on hip hop which has pretty much taken over the world now and would sound very different without him. He inflenced a huge amount of people at an important time of their lives. His music is important to people. Personally, I think that's enough. With just that, I can be legitimately sad about his passing.
Firstly, I don't mean to challenge the legitimacy of anyone's sadness at his passing. You're sad - I'm not. I'm also not suggesting any superiority in my reaction. In fact, I think my reaction is "abnormal" and I want to understand the "normal" reaction. As to the classification of an artist's life and work - yeah, it begs for trouble, and is fraught with subjectivity. Putting forth the example of Kurt Cobain versus James Brown, it is clear that the amount of work or the years of life are not the only indicators or potential influence. So it's a flimsy whimsy of a measure.
That said, note how you (and others) characterize the "why" of your sadness: with regard to Brown, it's all in the past - Brown left a huge mark, Brown influenced a lot of people. As to the music: his music is important. People still enjoy the music.
I'd even say that his music being the source of influence, Brown will go on influencing generations of musicians. The music will be with us forever (or until the RIAA makes it illegal to listen to music by dead people).
So that's what I wonder: what is there to be sad about?
Get me: I was sad when Hunter S. Thompson died. Why? Because I wouldn't get to read his obituary of Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, or the other evil venal men who dragged us into Vietnam Part Deux. I got drunk for the first time in years. I got out my signed copies and caressed them with drunken love. I read through everything. I was very self-indulgent. Part of that self-indulgence was personal (he was an acquaintance), but much of it was what appears to be the case with the general mourning of an artist: I was mourning work that would not be done, and comforted by the work that was.
To me, mourning the passing of anyone is about what you'll miss from them. When a friend dies, you are sad that they will no longer be in your life. You have memories, but they are scant comfort.
When an artist dies, especially an artist who is "old" and who has contributed a large and influential body of work, what is there to mourn at his passing? The loss of future work seems to me the only thing - and if the surviving body of work is great, then there is almost no reason to mourn.
But that's me, and I'm weird about death. Too much of it at an early age probably.
So what I want to understand, I guess, is this: When you are sad that James Brown (et al) is dead, are you sad that there will be no more James Brown albums? Or is it that, over the years, you have formed such an emotional attachment to the music that James Brown has become a kind of "distant friend" (i.e. not close, personal friend) to you, and news of his passing affects you the way it would almost any distant friend? |
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