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Re: Re: more fun for all ages with touchy subjects
>
>> i personally feel if black people hadn't thrown
>> their
>> music and rhythms into the musical melting pot, we'd
>> all be bankrupt. i also personally feel if white
>> people hadn't taken elements of black music and made
>> it their own, we'd all be bankrupt
>
>And if white people, centuries earlier, hadn't created
>- or more accurately discovered - the vast myriad of
>musical form we take for granted, we all - black
>musicians included - would be bankrupt.
>We owe a lot of black people for a lot of develpments,
>but they didn't invent good music.
>
>Kelvin
Okay, I partly agree with both of you, and partly think you're both
blowing it out your ears.
<pompous, overbearing tone> As the list's resident ethnomusicologist*
</pompous, overbearing tone> I should point out that musical development
is something _we_ might think of as Western, but different cultures have
musical development that has absolutely nothing to do with what we even
think of as music. Ever heard Chinese Opera? I rest my case. However, its
utter incomprehensibility to some doen't make it any less valid, yannow?
And while we might think of the early notation used for Gregorian chants
as being the first music notation, I'm sure some folks in India or Japan
might take issue with that.
As for who "created" music, Kelvin, my love, I hope you're not trying to
say it was white people. The most recent schools of though about human
evolution seem to point to modern man coming out of Africa, up into
Europe, across the Bering Straits, then down into North America.
Australia and Australasia were in there somewhere, too, but don't ask
me-- I slept through that class. And along the way, along with the furs
and the knives and the smelly kids, I'm sure they had a few songs.
Cultures that far predate our own had quite rich musical traditions.
Native Americans had gorgeous and beautifully carved bone flutes.
Africans had drumming and rich rhythmic patterns. I'm just grabbing at
bits and pieces of things. All I'm saying is that music is a human
language, but not a specifically cultural one. Believe me, I don't speak
Chinese Opera and I seriously doubt I ever will, but I respect its
validity as an ancient art form.
And although jazz is considered a purely American musical innovation, it
wasn't created in a vacuum: its roots come from a Melting Pot even larger
than America. Everything comes from somewhere and there really is nothing
new under the sun. Not that that's a bad thing!
* Yeah, I really do have a degree in this. Split major: Music/Literature,
specialising in ethnomusicology/children's lit. Honest to G-d. No, I have
NO idea what I was thinking when I declared a major.
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