Myth of the Mainstream

'Mainstream' - a principal current of a river, 1667, from main (adj.) stream, hence, "prevailing direction in opinion, popular taste, etc.," a fig. use first attested in Carlyle (1831).

I propose that the concept of 'the mainstream', be it music, art, ideas, politics, entertainment and all other social constructs, is and has always been a social myth.

The key to this argument lies in the cyclical nature of the market economy, political thought, and technological advancement. For sake of simplicity, I shall concentrate solely on the development and eventual disintegration of the concept of the 'mainstream'.

What came before the MP3? The CD.

And before that? Vinyl.

And before that? Shellac and wax drums for musical boxes.

And before that? Sheet Music. Musical Scores.

As funny as it sounds now, at the very dawn of 'Popular Music' or pop, a 'Hit' technically accounted for the total sales of a sheet of music, a musical score. The expectation and reality of the market was solely reliant on availability of current technologies at the time (namely music boxes and pianos) and the musical ability of the consumer.

For the main part it was more economic to purchase an upright piano rather than a the musical box, purchasing songs for a music box was a privilege of the rich. Imagine paying $500 for an mp3 track? No one in their right mind would, yet the physical nature of such devices meant that supplying a range of music for any device would be beyond the reach of the masses. The 'Player Piano' moved things along somewhat, creating rolls of punch paper reduced the costs considerably. For many this was new technology was still out of reach of the average, or even middle income family.

For most, instead of an Ipod, there would stand, pride of place in the Sitting Room or Parlour, a basic upright piano, of which at least one member would be able to read and play music, and the others would at the very least need to hold a whole gamut of decent notes to make the performance painlessly entertaining. The more savvy music publishers (yes they were printers and nothing more), realized early on that if they wanted to increase their sales they'd need to expand their market.

A few seemingly harmless pointers to publishing a popular 'hit' led to a series of hard and fast rules that held back the creative growth of the music industry for over a century.

Family friendly. Their market was the Middle-Class Family, they had money, Sunday Evenings with little to do, a strong moral and religious upbringing and a very definite idea of what music should do.

It shouldn't offend, anyone, anywhere, anyhow. It cannot include any mention of any controversy. The melody must be light, instantly engaging and simple to follow. The whole family must be able to join in and not feel awkward or embarrassed in anyway. Basically hymns.

The market began to fracture eventually, songs for the kids, religious, risque ditties for young lovers and dirty old men, then came style... jazz, blues, big band. Finally wax rolls for musical boxes gave way to shellac and eventually Vinyl discs and as the sound quality improved, and the availability increased and prices reduced, finally those that played the piano instead of a Gramophone, were the rare exception.

The World has changed a lot since then, but as with all things fashion has a funny habit of repeating itself. More and more iPod fans and mp3 addicts are beginning to manipulate their own collections, with the development of a whole series of cheap and cheerful music mixing software releases on the way, it doesn't seem so far-fetched to imagine a time in the not so distant future where rather than the 'Mainstream' we will be talking in terms of Single Streams, or even the 'Onestream'.

In the past the more forward thinking printers and publishers of the day decided to buy music from songwriters for a pittance, sometimes even steal them outright and make all the profit for themselves. Now things are changing beyond belief.

Anyone can make music to a point with the aid of software and electronic instruments that a child could learn and play within minutes. With the increased interactivity involved in many of the new technologies, the PC being the original focal point, most consumers are no longer purely consuming, they are now producing. Be it their own Tivo TV schedule, the play list on their iPod, the answer phone message they recorded themselves. Consumption was never a creative act, but finally it seems technology is enabling individuals to come to that conclusion by themselves.

Eventually few people will purchase entertainment in any form, simply the means to produce it. As part of my Fine Arts Degree many years ago, I specialized in Photo Montage, appropriating and aggregating a variety of disparate images, and manipulating and combining them to form a new and original work. Nowadays few would ever consider going through the rigmarole of cutting and pasting printed matter when a graphics program and the Internet can provide vast more choice in subject matter and imagery.

Technology has led our actions, or rather inaction for most of the 20th Century, in the 21st we are witnessing the slow decay of Consumerism itself, and at the beginning the first change we are all both witnessing and providing, is technological manipulation of consumer goods.

As the manufacturers of multimedia devices finally catch up with demand we will witness more and more graphic and sound interactivity to the point that most products will simply enable us to create our own entertainment, as we have in histories past. The only difference is that your Bedroom DJ Mix is now heard by the world rather than an unwilling friend or family member. Local heroes and heroines will be born, down the road from my place are the band Keane, a very successful UK pop band from Battle, Sussex. Without the proliferation of social networking technologies I doubt that their meteoric rise to fame would have been as startling.

Other more stark examples are Gnarls Berkley and the Arctic Monkeys, who via the Myspace.com service have become major players in the world music scene. This isn't simply a technological change. The 'Futurism' Arts Movement at the turn of the last century was obsessed with painting fast cars and trains and planes, as much as a young boy might do these days. No one wants to draw an MP3 player, no one wants to write a poem about their Xbox. People want to 'use' them, and they do, all of them.

The idea that materialism can enable anything other than a show of wealth has changed, we no longer have toys, we have tools. Consumption is now lured by the idea of Production, the snake is eating itself.

Within your lifetime, your or someone you know will produce something remarkable, the miraculous is about to become commonplace and the 'Mainstream, obsolete.

The mainstream is diverging into a billion tributaries, the concept of popularity, and eventually mass advertising will dry up, along with monolithic centralized institutions and corporations. We as individuals are finally learning to disagree with each other, we are taking informed and personal choices in our consumption, and eventually the production of our own 'streams'. We fish for ideas, we take those ideas and create our own unique range of arts, entertainment and individual understanding of the world. And when we're bored with our own minds, we trade our goods with others, some like-minded, some not so.

Music, Art, Entertainment, conceived, designed and produced by the individual for the individual. Very much the way we began. Travelling Minstrels, visiting one village and the next, trading music, trading styles, ideas, even new technologies, but for the main part from home.

There never was a mainstream, the concept of the mainstream was conceived for the convenience of unwieldy organizations with little ability or even impetus to change. Like a vast dam, blocking and filtering the river, it is now beginning to crumble, and creative sources and flowing in from all directions, a veritable waterfall of new ideas, sounds and images are about to be born.

Paul Baines - Musician, Singer/Songwriter, Producer and sole creator of OneManBrand. UK-Based Electronica Artist offering free mp3 downloads. Visit http://OneManBrand.co.uk.

Read This Blog
Read This Blog
Beginners Bible To Techno Music Making And Selling. ($11 Rebate)
Quick Dvd Copy. ($11 Rebate)
Read This Blog
PCTV4Me. ($11 Rebate)
Read This Blog
Blackberry Mp3 Ringtones. ($11 Rebate)
Ear Training Power Course For Guitar. ($11 Rebate)
Top Mp3 Downloads Site - 75% Payouts, Makes 1 In 20 Sales! ($11 Rebate)
Making Oboe Reeds. ($11 Rebate)
Read This Blog
Read This Blog
Read This Blog
QuickTVdownloads.com. ($11 Rebate)

Chiropractic Is Responsable For The Rebirth Of Homeopathy In America

The history of homeopathy begins with the discoveries of its founder Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), a German physician. Hahnemann's first comments about the general applicability of the law of similars came in 1789.

Maybe the most prevalent reason that allopaths disliked homeopaths and homeopathy was expressed at a 1903 AMA (American Medical Association) meeting by a distinguished orthodox physician. "We must," he said, "admit that we never fought the homeopath on matters of principle; we fought him because he came into the community and got the business." Most physicians, even now, will not admit that economic factors play a chief role in what is practiced and what is allowed to be practiced. It only makes sense then that Hahnemann's principles constituted a philosophical, clinical, and economic threat to orthodox medicine.

The growing popularity of homeopathy in the United States started shortly after Hans Gram, a Danish homeopath, emigrated in the US in 1825.

The first homeopathic school in the US, the North American Academy of the Homoeopathic Healing Art, was founded in Allentown, PA, 1836 , by Dr. W. Wesselhoeft (1794-1858) .

Dr. von Lippe emigrating to the United States in 1839. He presented himself to the sole school of the homeopathic practice in this country - the old Allentown Academy of the Homoeopathic Healing Art. After assiduous application he was granted his diploma from

Dr. Constantine Hering (1800-1880), as President of the institution, on July 27, 1841. Dr. von Lippe filled the chair of materia medica in the Homoeopathic College of Pennsylvania from 1863 to 1868 .

In 1844 they organized the American Institute of Homeopathy, which became America's first national medical society. In response to the growth of homeopaths, in 1846 an opposing medical group formed, which then vowed to slow the development of homeopathy. This organization called itself the AMA or American Medical Association.

Shortly after the formation of the AMA it was decided to eliminate all the local medical societies of physicians who were homeopaths.

In 1848, the Homeopathic College of Pennsylvania was established by Constantine Hering, Jacob Jeanes and Walter Williamson, to provide training in what was then an emerging system of medicine called homeopathy. In 1869, the Homeopathic College was renamed in honor of Samuel Hahnemann, one of the pioneers of homeopathic medicine, as Hahnemann Medical College. In 1982, Hahnemann Medical College gained university status as Hahnemann University. In 2002, the Drexel University board of trustees voted unanimously in favor of merging Hahnemann University into Drexel .

In 1849, the AMA established a board to analyze quack remedies and nostrums and to enlighten the public about the nature and dangers of such remedies.

In 1855, the AMA put into effect a "consultation clause" in their code of ethics which spelled out that orthodox physicians would lose their membership in the AMA if they even only consulted with a homeopath or any other "unorthodox" practitioner. This of course meant that if a physician lost membership in the AMA, that in some states he no longer had a license to practice medicine. The AMA did everything possible to eradicate homeopaths from the practice of medicine, and the effects of these actions are still felt today.

1875 marked the year Michigan legislature voted to give money to a new hospital as long two homeopathic professors were allowed to teach at the University of Michigan.

In a 1890 Harpers Magazine article Mark Twain mentioned the great value of homeopathy: "The introduction of homeopathy forced the old school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business. Good old Mark also proclaimed "that you may honestly feel grateful that the homeopath survived attempts of the allopathists to destroy it."

By the early 1900s, there were 22 homeopathic medical schools, more than 100 homeopathic hospitals, over 60 orphan asylums and old people's homes and more than 1,000 homeopathic pharmacies in the United States.

In 1910, the Carnegie Foundation issued the infamous Flexner Report, an evaluation of American medical schools headed by Mr. Abraham Flexner and of course in cooperation with leading members of the AMA. While pretending to at least be somewhat objective, Flexner in his report established guidelines to endorse orthodox medical schools and condemn homeopathic ones. The report gave the most credits to medical schools with a full time teaching faculty and institutions that taught a pathological and physiochemical analysis of the human body. Homeopathic colleges did not get as high credits because there preference of employing professors who were not only teachers or researchers but also in clinical practice. Even though homeopathic schools included many basic science courses, they offered courses in pharmacology, which the Flexner report found to be a waist of time.

By 1906, the AMAs Council on Medical Education had created a list of unacceptable schools that in 1910, and closed hundreds of private medical and homeopathic schools and named Johns Hopkins as the model school. As you might have guessed, homeopathic colleges, in general, were given poorer ratings by Mr. Flexner's report. One of the implications of the report was that only graduates of schools that received a high rating were permitted to take the medical licensing exams. In 1900 there were 22 homeopathic colleges, by 1923 only two remained.

Between 1930 and 1975 it seemed that the AMA's oppression of homeopathy was complete. By 1950 all homeopathic colleges in the U.S were either closed or ceased to teach homeopathy. There were only 50 to 150 practicing homeopaths in the country, and most of them were over 50 years old.

A chiropractor, Dr. John Bartholomew Bastyr, N.D., D.C (1912-1995), was a third-generation homeopath from Dr. Adolph von Lippe. His teacher was Dr. C. P. Bryant (who had been, in 1939, president of the International Hahnemannian Association). C. P. Bryant had been taught by Walter Bushrod James who had been one of Lippes closest students. He received doctorate degrees in naturopathy and chiropractic from Northwest Drugless Institute and Seattle Chiropractic College, respectively. He became licensed to practice naturopathic medicine in 1936. He is also credited with being the Father of Modern Naturopathic Medicine. Because of Bastyrs influence naturopaths have been at the forefront of the rebirth of homeopathy in this country. He made sure that homeopathy shared equal emphasis with nutrition, hydrotherapy and botanical medicine in naturopathic education. Dr. Bastyr considered manipulation the most important therapy in his practice.

"Bastyr's conversion to homeopathy was an important move for the modern naturopathic profession. Homeopathy had been part of naturopathic medicine for decades, but its role had been much more peripheral. The majority of practitioners had not received such intensive, classical instruction as Bastyr. In the 1950's when Bastyr became involved in establishing and teaching a naturopathic curriculum at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, his balanced emphasis of homeopathy as a therapeutic modality coequal with nutrition, hydrotherapy and botanical medicine assured its place in the ongoing development of naturopathic science."

-Kirshfeld and Boyle, Nature Doctors, Buckeye Naturopathic Press, 1994

Naturopathy, which combined nature cure with homeopathy, massage, spinal manipulation, and therapeutic electricity, was developed in America largely through the work of Benedict Lust (pronounced loost; 1872-1945). From 1900-1938, naturopathic medicine flourished in America. Interest then declined, due to the emergence of miracle medicine, surgical advances during WWII, and the growing political sophistication of the American Medical Association (AMA). Chiropractic and naturopathy were taught together until about 1955 when the National Chiropractic Association stopped granting accreditation to schools that also taught naturopathy. In 1956, doctors founded the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in an attempt to keep the profession alive.

Dr. John Bastyr served as executive director. A chiropractor, naturopath and obstetrician, he began his practice in Seattle in the depths of the Great Depression; Bastyr was so revered as a physician and teacher that the Naturopathic College in Seattle was named in his honor. The key to Bastyrs legendary clinical successes lay in his basic philosophy. In a 1985 interview, asked to distinguish between naturopathy and conventional medicine, he said, The basic difference is that in naturopathy its not the doctor who does the curing, its the patient.

In 1978, after twenty years with only one legitimate college graduating naturopathic physicians (National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, OR), the first new naturopathic medical school, Bastyr University, was opened in Seattle, WA. In 1987, Bastyr University became the first naturopathic college to become accredited by the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education, which is the federally recognized accrediting agency for naturopathic medical colleges.

There are four recognized naturopathic medical colleges in the United States today: Bastyr University, National College of Naturopathic Medicine, Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine & Health Sciences, and University of Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine. There is also one in Canada, the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. Naturopathic medical training begins with a conventional premedical education. The student progresses to a four-year, scientificallybased medical school program. The first two years concentrate on standard medical school sciences such as anatomy, physiology, chemistry, etc. The second two years are oriented toward the clinical sciences, diagnosis and treatment. Standard medical techniques are taught along with mainstay naturopathic medical therapies. The end product of a naturopathic medical school program is a well-rounded family care physician that specializes in such therapies as: nutrition, botanical medicines, and homeopathy.

The Council on Homeopathic Education is the only organization that accredits training programs in classical homeopathy. To date, it has accredited five institutions: Bastyr University of Natural Health Sciences in Seattle; College of Naturopathic Medicine in Canada, Hahnemann Medical Clinic in Albany, California; the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, and the International Foundation for Homeopathy, also in Seattle. Notice that three of those are actually naturopathic schools fonded by chiropractors.

Brian Inglis (1916-1993), a distinguished British historian, commentator, and author of a two-volume work, The History Of Medicine, has declared: the rise of Chiropractichas been one of the most remarkable social phenomena in American Historyyet it has gone virtually unexplored (Inglis, THE CASE FOR UNORTHODOX MEDICINE, 1965). He was, at the time, unaware of the profound influence chiropractic would have on modern alternative medicine (CAM) as we know today.

Not only did chiropractic saved both the naturopathic and homeopathic professions from extinction in the United States, but it also brougth solid academic grounds for their development towards well recognized health sciences.

Dr Sylvain Desforges, B.Sc., D.C., D.O., N.D. : http://www.drdesforges.com

Dr. Sylvain Desforges is a doctor of chiropractic, osteopathy and naturopathy.

DishTVforPC.com. ($11 Rebate)
Master Resale Rights- $72.75 Payouts. Top Earners Make $3500 /Day. ($11 Rebate)
Download Unlimited Free Full Games, Movies, Songs Software & More. ($11 Rebate)
How To Burn Any Dvd Movie. ($11 Rebate)
Read This Blog
Brand New Registry Repair Site! ($11 Rebate)
Money And Employment. ($11 Rebate)
My Psp Downloads - Earn A Massive 75%. ($11 Rebate)
Read This Blog
Read This Blog
Flash Movie Site, Real Good Sale. ($11 Rebate)
Learn Entire Fretboard In Under 60 Mins. ($11 Rebate)
Read This Blog
Read This Blog
Read This Blog