3 ms·

For me, at least, the desire for new-to-me music isn't paired with a disdain for repetition or tradition. It's more like that I want to discover more traditions

by pxc 3y ago

For me, at least, the desire for new-to-me music isn't paired with a disdain for repetition or tradition. It's more like that I want to discover more traditions and connect with them, and to develop a better intuition for how the constituents of my musical universe are interconnected. The traditional use of music you highlight really resonates with the way that I listen to music, incidentally. I joked recently with my roommate that for me, music is poetry with embellishments, while for him, it's drums with embellishments. Lyrical memorization has been a central part of how I've related to most of the music most important to me, too. I suppose you're right, though. Most people engage relatively casually with music, and that's okay.

thaumasiotes 3y ago
Where did I say people engage relatively casually with music? I highlighted a form of engagement that is (a) extremely serious, but (b) actively undermined by novelty. You're right that a lot of people seem to view lyrics as being at best an annoyance; I've seen multiple people on HN argue with a straight face that in order to translate a song from one language to another language, it's not necessary for the meaning of the new lyrics to be similar to the meaning of the old lyrics. This is not a sense of "translation" that I'm familiar with for other linguistic phenomena. I've also seen people take offense at the idea that the concept of a "song" might involve singing.