Belgian progressive rock music before & beyond the digit (a retrospective overview according to phonographic documents)

Abstract

The article presents a retrospective review of the archival heritage of Belgian rock, based on the analysis of relevant musical soundtracks. The urgency of the topic of the publication is due to the lack of scientific papers on the history of Swiss rock music in the background of documentary. The aim of the work is the scientific study of the communication conditions of the formation of the Belgian school of rock music in the early days and its features in modern digital conditions. The subject of research is the peculiarities of the development of Belgian rock music on the example of the analysis of the phonographic heritage of the DRAGON group (in detail) and others (in fragments). For the first time, a chronological picture of Belgian progressive rock music in general was reconstructed, and based on the relevant discographic analysis, attention was focused on studying the musical heritage of the DRAGON rock band. Methodological support was based on the use of general scientific and special methods determined by the purpose and objectives of the study. The scientific novelty of the article is to create a general basis for the formation, development and transformation of the Belgian school of progressive rock music for further study of individual actors in this sector, as well as to clarify the chronology of some events from the early 1960s to the present (60 years). The author concludes that Belgian progressive rock music is a separate musical direction in the European cultural space, which has certain characteristics and specific features. Particular attention is paid to the research task of studying the communicative conditions and the causes of transformations in the sound recording system in the context of digitalization. From the point of view of sound document communication, based on the obtained results, the forecasts of transformations in this sector in the conditions of digitalization are determined and substantiated. In addition, the author states that today there are trends of reverse migration of music between digital and analog formats. However, «inflation of the value of music» determines the dominance of the quantitative component over the qualitative