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I'd disagree with it being entertaining. I like a lot of his videos, but saying that it equates to white supremacy is an unhelpful and simplistic viewpoint whic

I'd disagree with it being entertaining. I like a lot of his videos, but saying that it equates to white supremacy is an unhelpful and simplistic viewpoint which perpetuates a rather tiring rhetoric of self - loathing against western society. Music theory was simply codified by people using Western classical music as a yardstick, and taking the common ideas expressed in it as the music to analyse using it. Is definitely somewhat out of date, and in need of improvement to encompass not only the music created in other cultures but also textural and sonic expression which makes up interesting music which could otherwise be under - analysed using WCM as the baseline, but equating this to white supremacy is to me incorrect, and missing the point of what's actually needed - an update.

guerrilla 6y ago
Did you watch it? He's not calling music theory itself white supremacist but the current culture that refers to it as "music theory" per se as in "the" music theory opposed to "a" music theory/theory of music. That it is seen as the yard stick and the only thing that taught is the problem, as that's clearly exclusionary, not the existence of the theory which can be no more racist than any other. I see nothing self-loathing about that. It's a useful criticism that might help get music education to broaden its horizons, which it already has started to do it seems.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Did you watch it? He's not calling music theory itself white supremacist but the current culture that refers to it as "music theory" per se as in "the" music theory opposed to "a" music theory/theory of music And he is still wrong. Every culture refers to its own music theory (or most any other kind of theory) as THE theory, not "A" theory. That's not because of supermacist tendencies, it's just familiarity and closeness. It's usually not useful, nor are we get any special benefit from, to take into account 2000 other traditions (even our own past ones, or some niche traditions in our midst) when we talk of the kind of music we do 95% of the time. It would be like saying "I am hungry - and this is my personal feeling", "This artist is fire - and I say this speaking on behalf of myself alone", "Macaroni and cheese is the best comfort food, for me that is". A useless and tiresome clarification. Even more so when everybody else (e.g. every other culture) doesn't reciprocate the same, and speaks of its own stuff as THE stuff. So, yeah, this is just a fad, and a very US-centric 2010-20x0 at that. No Italian would give two fucks if they refer to regular western music theory as THE music theory.
  - guerrilla 6y ago
    I think it's pretty blind to teach people that "this is music" rather than "this is how we've done music here and other people over there do it differently." We live in a global civilization now and there's no reason not to reap the benefits or to be exclusionary. Ignoring Indian and Chinese theories today is just sticking your head in the sand and promoting some weird type of conservatism. It'd be like ignoring the non-Western parts of math just because. That's completely irrational. > Even more so when everybody else (e.g. every other culture) doesn't reciprocate the same, and speaks of its own stuff as THE stuff. I've never seen this to be true in Indian music discussion. They know Western music too. I can only assume the same is true in China being that America and Europe export so much.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >I think it's pretty blind to teach people that "this is music" rather than "this is how we've done music here and other people over there do it differently." We live in a global civilization now and there's no reason not to reap the benefits or to be exclusionary. Maybe start american people actually listening to music outside of the US and UK? (And I'm not referring to latin americans listening to latin music). They're some of the most chauvinistic peoples when it comes to consumption of music, movies, tv series, books, etc. Then we can worry about some jazz player at Berklee or some high schooler at a school band learning western music theory as "this is music" vs learning about the gamelan or classical indian ragas... >I've never seen this to be true in Indian music discussion. They know Western music too. I can only assume the same is true in China being that America and Europe export so much. That's only because they have to play this too, as it has become popular in the 20th century. Historically however there was no mention or need to mention western music theory though.
    - djaychela 6y ago
      >Ignoring Indian and Chinese theories today is just sticking your head in the sand and promoting some weird type of conservatism. That is true, but I don't see that happening in music education in the UK. I can't speak for anywhere else.
    - 6y ago
- djaychela 6y ago
  I did watch it when it originally came out - on the day it came out, I think. It has White Supremacy in the title, and that means that the vast majority won't spend 45 minutes watching a video, they'll just take a headline and go with it. I have seen a number of people say that music theory is white supremacist (both before the release of the video and after it), and I think that someone who has as many subscribers as Adam Neely should be a little more careful and a little less clickbaity with video titles. I felt at the time he was trying to ride on the wave of a movement to decry music theory as something that was explicitly White Supremacist, and I don't agree with that sentiment. I appreciate that there are plenty of people who will say that I've been brainwashed by the establishment, or that I'm a White Supremacist for holding that view, but I'd say that's not the case. Saying that it doesn't encompass some traditions of music is one thing (and broadly correct, as I already said), but that's not the same as saying that it's white supremacist. Saying 'music theory is incomplete', or that 'music theory ignores other cultures', etc. would be fair enough, although again I think it would be one-sided. I'd be interested to see if the teaching in other cultures (such as, for instance Indian) encompasses Western Classical tradition (i.e. based around a 12-note octave instead of a 22 note one) in a similar manner - I would imagine that it doesn't, as it concentrates on the idiom that it describes. And I'm certainly not a music theory specialist, but I believe that attempts have been made to make a standard method of incorporating microtonality into western music notation. For the record, I spent nearly 20 years teaching in UK schools, and the music curriculum is most definitely not exclusionary - a wide range of traditions are covered in detail, and the roots of popular music in 'The West' are traced back to their origins, often leading pupils to make some interesting wider discoveries about culture and history. Music is not taught in a way that the Western Classical tradition is an exclusionary yardstick (although at A-level some elements of it are covered in some detail) And this has been the case since I was at school in the 80s, so this isn't down to any current changes.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    But it doesn't just ignore culture. The final sting in the video is the discussion of Schenker, whose analysis methods form the basis for much of what is taught as music theory today. And he was explicitly developing methods to demonstrate the superiority of german culture. It is more than just being incomplete.

guerrilla 6y ago

Did you watch it? He's not calling music theory itself white supremacist but the current culture that refers to it as "music theory" per se as in "the" music theory opposed to "a" music theory/theory of music. That it is seen as the yard stick and the only thing that taught is the problem, as that's clearly exclusionary, not the existence of the theory which can be no more racist than any other. I see nothing self-loathing about that. It's a useful criticism that might help get music education to broaden its horizons, which it already has started to do it seems.

coldtea 6y ago
>Did you watch it? He's not calling music theory itself white supremacist but the current culture that refers to it as "music theory" per se as in "the" music theory opposed to "a" music theory/theory of music And he is still wrong. Every culture refers to its own music theory (or most any other kind of theory) as THE theory, not "A" theory. That's not because of supermacist tendencies, it's just familiarity and closeness. It's usually not useful, nor are we get any special benefit from, to take into account 2000 other traditions (even our own past ones, or some niche traditions in our midst) when we talk of the kind of music we do 95% of the time. It would be like saying "I am hungry - and this is my personal feeling", "This artist is fire - and I say this speaking on behalf of myself alone", "Macaroni and cheese is the best comfort food, for me that is". A useless and tiresome clarification. Even more so when everybody else (e.g. every other culture) doesn't reciprocate the same, and speaks of its own stuff as THE stuff. So, yeah, this is just a fad, and a very US-centric 2010-20x0 at that. No Italian would give two fucks if they refer to regular western music theory as THE music theory.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  I think it's pretty blind to teach people that "this is music" rather than "this is how we've done music here and other people over there do it differently." We live in a global civilization now and there's no reason not to reap the benefits or to be exclusionary. Ignoring Indian and Chinese theories today is just sticking your head in the sand and promoting some weird type of conservatism. It'd be like ignoring the non-Western parts of math just because. That's completely irrational. > Even more so when everybody else (e.g. every other culture) doesn't reciprocate the same, and speaks of its own stuff as THE stuff. I've never seen this to be true in Indian music discussion. They know Western music too. I can only assume the same is true in China being that America and Europe export so much.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >I think it's pretty blind to teach people that "this is music" rather than "this is how we've done music here and other people over there do it differently." We live in a global civilization now and there's no reason not to reap the benefits or to be exclusionary. Maybe start american people actually listening to music outside of the US and UK? (And I'm not referring to latin americans listening to latin music). They're some of the most chauvinistic peoples when it comes to consumption of music, movies, tv series, books, etc. Then we can worry about some jazz player at Berklee or some high schooler at a school band learning western music theory as "this is music" vs learning about the gamelan or classical indian ragas... >I've never seen this to be true in Indian music discussion. They know Western music too. I can only assume the same is true in China being that America and Europe export so much. That's only because they have to play this too, as it has become popular in the 20th century. Historically however there was no mention or need to mention western music theory though.
  - djaychela 6y ago
    >Ignoring Indian and Chinese theories today is just sticking your head in the sand and promoting some weird type of conservatism. That is true, but I don't see that happening in music education in the UK. I can't speak for anywhere else.
  - 6y ago
djaychela 6y ago
I did watch it when it originally came out - on the day it came out, I think. It has White Supremacy in the title, and that means that the vast majority won't spend 45 minutes watching a video, they'll just take a headline and go with it. I have seen a number of people say that music theory is white supremacist (both before the release of the video and after it), and I think that someone who has as many subscribers as Adam Neely should be a little more careful and a little less clickbaity with video titles. I felt at the time he was trying to ride on the wave of a movement to decry music theory as something that was explicitly White Supremacist, and I don't agree with that sentiment. I appreciate that there are plenty of people who will say that I've been brainwashed by the establishment, or that I'm a White Supremacist for holding that view, but I'd say that's not the case. Saying that it doesn't encompass some traditions of music is one thing (and broadly correct, as I already said), but that's not the same as saying that it's white supremacist. Saying 'music theory is incomplete', or that 'music theory ignores other cultures', etc. would be fair enough, although again I think it would be one-sided. I'd be interested to see if the teaching in other cultures (such as, for instance Indian) encompasses Western Classical tradition (i.e. based around a 12-note octave instead of a 22 note one) in a similar manner - I would imagine that it doesn't, as it concentrates on the idiom that it describes. And I'm certainly not a music theory specialist, but I believe that attempts have been made to make a standard method of incorporating microtonality into western music notation. For the record, I spent nearly 20 years teaching in UK schools, and the music curriculum is most definitely not exclusionary - a wide range of traditions are covered in detail, and the roots of popular music in 'The West' are traced back to their origins, often leading pupils to make some interesting wider discoveries about culture and history. Music is not taught in a way that the Western Classical tradition is an exclusionary yardstick (although at A-level some elements of it are covered in some detail) And this has been the case since I was at school in the 80s, so this isn't down to any current changes.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  But it doesn't just ignore culture. The final sting in the video is the discussion of Schenker, whose analysis methods form the basis for much of what is taught as music theory today. And he was explicitly developing methods to demonstrate the superiority of german culture. It is more than just being incomplete.