Elevation of Musicians

In his work The Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche makes a claim regarding the rise in the popularity of music, “There corresponded to this extraordinary rise in the value of music an equally amazing increase in the prestige of the musician: he now became and oracle, a priest, or more than a priest – a kind of mouthpiece of the absolute, a telephone line of Transcendence”(The Genealogy of Morals, 237). Many musicians today still get this sort of hero worship. I have never really understood it. I love a lot of bands and musicians but the height that some carry their love of certain person or group can become a bit extreme. Though I am in no position to judge any form of fandom, geek that I am, music seems to harbor a sort of religious element that pushes it to another level. The musician I am most familiar with who receives just the sort of priestly attention that Nietzsche describes here is Maynard James Keenan, lead singer of the bands Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer. Again while I am a huge fan I do not go as far as some and take the man himself so terribly seriously based on the music he produces. Others treat his work like religion. I tend to agree with Nietzsche earlier claim, “...let me say one thing at the start; it is always well to divorce an artist from his work, and to take him less seriously than it”(The Genealogy of Morals, 235).

This song gets particular attention for its metaphysical and spiritual content but really more or less just because it is written in numbers of fi. It is ten kinds of fantastic in my opinion, sure, but I wouldn't pray to it.