an important person to me accused american popular music of being what is 'old skool' . Sheesh! 'old skool' .... a bruising perjorative that grates my soul! anyhow I had to correct him this way:
well...classical really! american classical music.
old skool is a denigrative term for a body of art that is unparalled in human history, greater even than Beethovens time, than the time back to J S Bach as a definitive beginning of the european period that produced music europeans call classic.
european classical music is indeed top drawer in many instances, especially Beethoven himself, who like Obama is in politics was a man of mixed African heritage, like Alexander Pushkin, the Russian literary giant. also like Aleaxander Hamilton the man who is credited with creating the american economy, born in the small island of Nevis in the westindies, but a representative of the eurpean Jewish banking power in those days, in the formation of the american state.
in politics Obama is not the first blac american president but Thomas Jefferson was. Andrew jackson and Abraham Lincoln, a noted extreme racist, himself, were also blac....even while there were legal affidavits going throught the american courts, identifying Lincolns' antecendents, and identifying Lincoln himself, as a descendant of certain slaves and to whom he belonged currently....for at that time slavery was still legal in america.
the possible link is never mentioned but racist half-blac man that lincoln was, he could easily have been eager to abolish slavery as well to save himself...as well as his vice president Hannibal Hawkins who was even darker than Lincoln. but such is the way of capitalism (any established system really) that it latches on to talent in its furtherance regadless of who the bearer of the talent is.
and even stranger is the fact, that even when extreme talent is borne by a member of an untouchable class, the power elite into which they have risen accepts those individuals even as their bretherin are contemptably dismisssed and dispatched in a literal and routine manner
there is classical music in most cultures and what we call old skool qualifies as classical american. there is music in there that is 50-60 years old and as fresh and relevant as the day it was released. in fact just about all of it is so fresh, never dated, tired or irrelevant to the ear and spirit.
check it out! the perjorative 'old skool' may be keeping you away from one of your greatest treasures...popular classical music of the not just the USA, but of the whole 'new world' ...indeed the music of the whole western hemisphere including latin America and the Caribbean, Spanish and English in particular