On February 26, 2018, our HIST 390 class discussed one of the biggest contributions the United States introduced to the musical world: the concept of a displaced beat. Basically, in a basic 1, 2, 3, and 4 beat, the only ones that would have music over them would be 1, 3, and 4 (this could easily be any other combination as well). It was a hit, and by the 20th century, most of the music industry and independent performers were taking advantage of this idea, Louis Armstrong being one of many examples. It became so big that the concept of displaced beats integrated itself into many genres of music, some less obvious than others, including hip hop and jazz. Think about that. Two seemingly different genres of music are actually connected by a single concept and idea. And that’s not all. Swing, go-go, and rock music are also connected to the idea of displaced beats. And the connections between different types of music don’t stop there. Because so many types of music take from the same idea, they can actually go even further and draw even more inspiration from each other as a result, and because they are already connected, the transition is actually more seamless than one might expect. Pop songs nowadays can have a reggaeton beat to them! It seems that as long as you can displace one of the beats, you can make a song unique and marketable, which is probably why so many genres of music base their songs on this concept.
It doesn’t surprise me that one concept amidst the music world has been able to influence music as much as displacing beats has. When you look throughout history, you find that many things are based on previous ideas and are either taken in a different direction, followed faithfully, or improved upon so that the apparent flaws are no longer a problem for it. Everything is connected to something else, whether the person creating the new thing realizes it or not. There really are no truly “new” ideas anymore, just slight changes and tweaks on old ones. That doesn’t mean that new creations can’t be good, it’s just that they need to realize that they are already a small part of something much bigger and out of their control and that they have to work both harder and smarter to step out of that particular shadow. Every decision matters, even the type of genre, despite all genres already sort of being connected anyway. We live in a world where skinny, sloppily dressed white guys can sing the exact same song a big, black, elegantly dressed woman can sing despite changing the music up just a bit to fit a different genre, so the least a music creator can do is make their first song (before all of the covers come in) as distinct and definitive sounding as possible. Otherwise, a cover could possibly replace their spot in the hearts of the listeners.