Dear friends from all over the world,  We read with great interest all
the articles about <<the market of mechanical music>>, initiated with
the letter of Kevin McElhone, and I completely agree with Nancy Fratti
who says that "the Internet is the main media to get out our message."

You know what the youth wants: the music _they_ like and anything that
might astonish.

Yes, our pets are dinosaurs (age, size, bad condition when discovered,
dead-ends in the Darwinian evolution), but you can't catch the interest
just by saying that they are very old!  You must at least make your
dinosaur eat pop corn or jump a double salto as a yamakasi if you want
to catch the attention.  I mean, make your instruments play the music
that youth likes.  Isn't it the first purpose that to make music?

Our dinosaurs might astonish young people if they can enter the world
(steampunk style, complexity, powers, computer analogy, ability to
create music...).

We think the main impediment to their interest is the music we offer
them -- it is nearly impossible to interest them in the instrument if
it doesn't play what they want to hear first.  Some of them have a
repulsion for pre-WW2 music. We might try to introduce them to "old"
music later...

So you can complain about the fall of market prices and «merry-go-round»
your cheerful old music (what you (we) can do for yourself and your
own pleasure of course) but if you want to seduce the young people you
must at the minimum offer them the kind of music they want to hear --
and send it where they like to go: on YouTube!  You can't play
everything, of course, but anything with a melody.  In the old days the
orchestrions played the up-to-date music; why wouldn't they still do?

Now, how to make them find these videos?  It is another problem which
is the job of everyone.  You all have astonishing documents about
Mechanical music, haven't you?

Why don't you send your videos to relay them in la SeriNET, published
in the French magazine Musique Mécaniques Vivantes and freely available
on the web site of the AAIMM (Associations des Amis des Instruments et
de la Musique Mécanique):  http://www.aaimm.org/ 

We try to gather spectacular and amazing videos of Mechanical Music in
La SeriNET.

Here is the new La SeriNET No 91 in English with its videos about
Mechanical Music:  http://www.aaimm.org/spip/spip.php?article899 

We do not know if it is sufficient to make young people come to Mechanical
Music but anyway it is obviously necessary to be present on the Internet.
For the moment, we do it for you...

Meilleurs souvenirs de France!
Jean Nimal

 [ Mike Ames has had, over the years, a huge amount of "new" music
 [ arranged for the instruments in his collection.  Often the reaction
 [ to the new music is positive, but some respond with a kind of
 [ "That's just wrong to have that kind of music coming from an instrument
 [ of that era".   I made a similar observation at a theater organ concert
 [ here in San Diego.  The performance that day was alternating songs
 [ between "traditional" songs and clever arrangements of Beatles tunes.
 [ During the intermission a conversation on one side of me was: "we've
 [ got to find a way to get younger folks to join.  I can't climb the ladder
 [ into the pipe chambers much longer".   On the other side of me
 [ was major grumbling about all the terrible "new music" being played today.
 [ I've got news for the guy who said that:  Most of the kids find the Beatles
 [ music played that day to be as ancient as I found some of the old show
 [ tunes.
 [
 [ There's lots of contemporary music that would make great material for
 [ arranging onto mechanical musical instruments.  Consider Robin Thick's
 [ "Blurred Lines":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOyE8NRiSvo 
 [ There's lots of others that have complicated enough melodies to make
 [ interesting arrangements for street organs and orchestrions as well
 [ as reproducing pianos.  They will keep us interested but are also
 [ current so the "kids" will connect with it.
 [
 [ I hope we don't give up!  --Jody