Why do we get music nostalgic?
Certain problems never go away. Sometimes it's because there's no solution to whatever the problem is. But just as often it's because the problem isn't problematic. The so-called 'problem' is just an inaccurate, unresolved phenomenon that two reasonable people can consistently disagree on. The “nostalgia problem” fits into this class: every now and then people interested in culture become scaled up in a soft debate about the merits or dangers of nostalgia (as applicable to art, and in particular to pop music). The dispute comes up again and again when a new generation reaches a societal position that is both dominant and uncertain. I suppose if this ever stopped, we would be nostalgic to the time when it was still periodically of interest to humans.
Nostalgia
The most current example is the book Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, written by British writer Simon Reynolds. Reynolds casually published his book on Slate and casually mentioned two oral histories that he saw as connected to the phenomenon. Those passing mentions led writers from both books to politely reject the idea that these works somehow relied on the experience of nostalgia. But this is not the only example: the music writer for New York magazine wrote on this subject, essentially noticing the same as what I just repeated, for whatever reason this “nostalgia problem” suddenly seems like something writers collectively worried about. The result is a group of people who defend and complain the consequences of nostalgia in unpredictable ways. I suppose a few of these arguments intrigue me but hardly. I'm much more interested in why people feel nostalgia, especially when that feeling is derived from things that don't really merge with any personal experience they supposedly had. I don't care if nostalgia is good or bad, because I don't believe any of these words really apply.
