Why no AFOL music scene?

[Aanchir]

About a year and a half ago I joined the brony community, but it wasn't until this spring when I attended a brony convention that I really discovered how amazing the brony music scene is. Previously, I had been more or less avoiding it. Music isn't quite like art or comics that you can glance at, form an opinion on, and go on to look at other things. Particularly when you're someplace where you don't want to play music and distract others around you. But after experiencing a brony concert and hearing bronies singing some of the more well-known songs, I realized this was too important and too impressive a part of the community to ignore. A few months later and I have nearly six hours of brony music on my iPhone.

Moving on to my main point, this got me wondering why music isn't a bigger part of the AFOL community. I've been to Brickfair several times, and I find music is conspicuously absent from most of the event. The folks from BZPower at the BIONICLE table occasionally bring a stereo to play music, but there is never any live music or community-generated music. This year, some BZPower members who have their own band are hoping to possibly hold a concert at a BZPower picnic one evening during the convention weekend, but their music generally isn't LEGO-inspired.

The best explanation I can come up with for this dearth of AFOL music is that LEGO, as a hobby, is already a form of creative expression in and of itself. When it comes to creative expression among LEGO fans, MOCs far outnumber fan art, fan fiction, fan animations (even those generally are using the LEGO products as their medium), fan comics and fan music. But even in the BIONICLE and Ninjago fan communities, which have had a wealth of other forms of creative expression (and which have had well-promoted official promotional songs), music seems to be conspicuously absent (the closest we got in the BIONICLE community tended to be fan-made music videos of the official songs). Besides, it's not like other creative hobbies don't have their own musical expression — my mom is a quilter and has at least a couple albums of quilting-inspired music.

Are there any musicians here on Eurobricks who can offer some insight into why this might be? Perhaps you have other passions you prefer to write music about, or perhaps you find the LEGO building experience hard to express in music and lyrics, or perhaps you just don't think AFOLs are interested in listening to music by other AFOLs? Do you think that the kind of creativity that the LEGO hobby inspires simply doesn't overlap much with the kind of creativity it takes to write good music? Do you think there's something more that the LEGO Group could or should be doing to encourage its fans to explore their musical talent? Do you think fandom-inspired music is a silly concept to begin with? I'd like to hear some other people's thoughts!

EDIT: Also, on an unrelated note, does anyone know why when I went to edit my post I found HTML bold tags in the middle of every instance of the word "expression"?

Edited June 30, 2013 by Aanchir

[Bricknave]

I'm no musician, but I think the reason why is because LEGO is a medium in itself.

Using a medium to express thoughts about another medium is uncommon, and some mediums are harder to use for that

purpose than others (there's plenty of music-related paintings, but hardly any songs about painting.)

Edited June 30, 2013 by Bricknave

[Scorpiox]

I'm not surprised at all that there is no LEGO music being performed or produced, to be honest.

Your comparison to MLP is not something I agree with, as the two are extremely different concepts. One is a Television series, one is a medium for creating.

I'm no musician, but I think the reason why is because LEGO is a medium in itself.

Using a medium to express thoughts about another medium is uncommon, and some mediums are harder to use for that

purpose than others (there's plenty of music-related paintings, but hardly any songs about painting.)

Expressed perfectly by Bricknave, his reply basically explains this whole topic in a single few lines.

[Grimmbeard]

I agree with Bricknave, that it's pretty hard and would be unusual to write music related to LEGO.

I've been to Brickfair several times, and I find music is conspicuously absent from most of the event. The folks from BZPower at the BIONICLE table occasionally bring a stereo to play music, but there is never any live music or community-generated music.

I've noticed this as well. I think they should at least play any type of music at the events.

[just2good]

Yeah, MLP:FiM has something to work of off. Though a lot of the music sounds nothing like the TV show, they're inspired by the show. Also, a lot sway to sound like the show, or are remixes. Most AFOLs don't even watch the LEGO shows, so there really isn't anything to work off of. Now, maybe SOMEONE can make some LEGO based raps, for the fun of it.

[Faefrost]

Isn't one of the current overplayed pop songs "Lego House"?

[Kivi]

Being into both lego and music hobbies in past 20 years, I must admit that it is at most difficult to find any overlap between them and that's probably the reason why there is virtually no lego-inspired music. But on the contrary, I have already seen some music-inspired lego creations and some of them are pretty cool.

[Aanchir]

Isn't one of the current overplayed pop songs "Lego House"?

Well, yes, and that's one of the reasons I'm so baffled at the lack of LEGO music from the actual fan community. Writing something poetic about the LEGO experience, even if it's just using LEGO as a metaphor for other things, shouldn't inherently be any harder or less intuitive than writing music about any other activity or experience. Or should it be? Is there something about the LEGO building experience that makes builders unlikely to think of it in a poetic or lyrical terms?

Yes, it's a form of creative exp<b></b>ression in and of itself. But that hasn't stopped LEGO fans from expressing themselves in other ways. A search for BIONICLE on DeviantART turns up over sixty thousand results, and less than a seventh of those are in the sculpture category where you find MOCs. A search for Ninjago brings up 18,851 results, and less than seventy of those are in the sculpture category. Some MOCs might be categorized as photography as well, and of course people generally join DeviantART to post art rather than MOCs specifically, so it's not a representative sample. But still, it seems to indicate thousands of people expressing their love for the theme in ways other than MOCing. Why, then, hasn't music been a part of these fandoms even when they were at their strongest?

Besides, if country artists can write a billion different songs about things as mundane as drinking, fishing, and driving tractors, I find it hard to believe that the dearth of LEGO songs out there truly represents all that can be written about the hobby.

EDIT: There's that bizarre word filter again. Someone ought to fix that...

Edited July 1, 2013 by Aanchir

[legokingnm]

this is the best Lego song I know of:

Edited August 10, 2013 by legokingnm