Amateurs or innovators?

So how about this new Web site?

We are very excited about our new look and our blog's new home. If this is your first visit to The Cedar Music Blog, welcome! Here you will find musings, album and concert reviews, discussion about the ever-evolving industry and anything else we can think of to share with you. We would love to hear from you, too and strongly encourage comments.

Ironically, my post today involves someone who is very anti-blog: Andrew Keen. I am currently reading his book "The Cult of the Amateur" for a journalsim class. While I appreciate his arguments against some aspects of social networking (loss of privacy, narciscism, etc.) his whole basic argument is based on this idea of amateurs vs. professionals, which I have issues with.

Sorry dude: No one is born a professional. If I remember correctly, W.A. Mozart started performing when he was only a child at his father's concerts. That doesn't sound so professional to me.

And who decides who or what is professional? And why should we listen to them?

Personally, I know many amateurs making art that I prefer to the professionals. I bet some of you do, too.

One thing we do here at The Cedar is to support local, emerging artists. In the next month we have a number of local shows, from the emerging to the well-respected, long-standing artists and everywhere in between. Dark Dark Dark, The Pines, A Cedar Family show with Bunny Clogs and Peter Ostroushko are just a few. Check out links for these shows below.

So to all you amateurs out there: Keep it up. We like you, even if Andrew Keen doesn't.