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Western Music Isn't What You Think
- trextrex 2y agoOn a slightly related note, does anyone know of good articles written about the false dichotomy of "East" vs "West"?
- anthk 2y agoOn Spain, flamenco itself it's fusion based music before the 'fusion genre mix' was even a concept. It mixes iberian, Gypsy, Arabic and who knows more genres under a very complex guitar tune (Paco de Lucia would be either the Alan Turing or Knuth of guitar players) with even more complex singings. The rest of the country had jotas/aurreskus/muñeiras and so on, a kind of dance with hops, jumps and kicks to the sound of flutes/tambourines and drums, very different to flamenco and a far simpler structure, pretty common across Europe. Nowadays, I'd recommend Medina Azahara, a group which mixes flamenco with progressive and psychodelic rock. But it wasn't the first one to do so; Triana did it before.
- Gerard0 2y agoAny album recommendations from Medina Azahara? There's way too many! :)
- v9v 2y ago>They are named after population groups, but who were the Aeolians, the Lydians, and the Phrygians? >They were slave groups, conquered by the Greeks in Asia Minor. This is incorrect. Each of these were separate civilizations and not names for a "group of slaves". This can easily be verified by a simple search so I don't even understand where such a misattribution comes from.
- jhbadger 2y agoAlso, Lydians and Phyrgians spoke IE languages and Aeolians were a Greek-speaking people themselves despite living in what is now Turkey, so none of them seem particularly "non-Western". I totally agree that there is no hard and fast line between Western and non-Western cultures, but these groups in particular don't seem particularly exotic.
- marginalia_nu 2y agoParts of modern day Turkey was very much part of the hellenic world, at least as far as Homer is concerned. It's where you find Troy, ffs.
- im3w1l 2y agoYeah someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it makes more sense to continental Europe was on the edge of the Mediterranean culture rather than saying that that the Mediterranean sea was at the edge of the European culture. And this has to do with it being faster and easier to travel on water than land back then. So it unified people rather divide.
- marginalia_nu 2y agoThe contemporary view of the Mediterranean is distorted by all manner of historical events that had yet to happen. The East-West Roman schism and subsequent fall of the western empire, the early Islamic conquests, and later the sprawling Ottoman empire added a lot of cultural distance between the European Mediterranean, Asia Minor and MENA that did not meaningfully exist earlier.
- RecycledEle 2y agoI do not mean to take anything away from black musicians, but the music people say started with blacks was massively changed by the music-executive types before it went mainstream. The people who enjoyed the modified music would not recognize the pre-music-executive versions.
- defrost 2y agoPretty sure there's love for R.L. Burnside, Mississippi John Hurt, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Howlin Wolf, et al from Rolling Stones fans. It's hard to imagine a modern lover of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbe5RERDh4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbe5RERDh4k not recognising or appreciating https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWM82eQKdQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWM82eQKdQk Pre and Post Paul Simon ( Graceland (1987) ) mbaqanga music didn't change that much Pre (1983) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq6qRpEZVTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq6qRpEZVTY Post (1987) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR7UbvhVT8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR7UbvhVT8g
- 082349872349872 2y ago(1933) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiCEVl_9-MM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiCEVl_9-MM (1977) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_2D8Eo15wE&t=32s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_2D8Eo15wE&t=32s EDIT: I like the Lead Belly interpretation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fii6PX0-VXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fii6PX0-VXs because it sounds like you start to swing the hammer on the beat, but it has enough inertia to land on the spike off the beat. Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeGImvYpk2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeGImvYpk2U
- defrost 2y agoRam Jam??? What about Spiderbait from Oz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU1VfYYKMDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU1VfYYKMDk (or even: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqGrzJHDwc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqGrzJHDwc4 ) I'd argue that despite the change in pace and instrumentation the original form and song can still be recognised and appreciated, the first version of this I heard was Lead Belly in about 1982 or so .. not a lot of TV in my part of the world growing up and not much time for that in the 'big' smoke at uni. Going back to the GP assertion I still argue that people that enjoy modern modified forms of music can still recognise and appreciate the earlier forms. (1930s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHLbaOLWjpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHLbaOLWjpc (2020s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdjhPHvH09I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdjhPHvH09I
- kazinator 2y agoThat some ancient Greeks {allegedly, disputed} named modes after slaves is completely irrelevant today; we have a 12 tone system with a diatonic scale in which we just start/end on different notes to make modes. Their names could be anything. The underlying scale is related to the harmonic series, which is a universal that transcends humanity. Music history shapes how instruments are made. There are some tunes that are taught, usually no older than a couple hundred years at most, and beyond that, people just use their ears. Mostly, people tell their own stories with music in their own way, not stories from past generations, let alone distant cultures from centuries or millennia ago.
- pimlottc 2y agoThis is an interesting article but there’s a certain smugness in the presentation that’s off-putting. I’d love to see more citations and fewer claims of shocking originality.
- notresidenter 2y agoThere are a lot of arguments of authority and _0_ empirical evidence, apart from "I've spent 30 years of my life on it"... There are no sources!? And then, there are things that jump out to me as false, that could be true, but because the author cites ZERO sources, it's unclear if he's ignorant after 30?! years of research or has an interesting insight. It's so unscientific, and it's sloppy useless writing like that that makes some people say that the social sciences aren't sciences.
- esics6A 2y agoWhat can be described as “Western Civilization” is a much bigger cultural zone than we define it. Historically people also never really divided the world this way. It’s just modern academics that screw these concepts up completely, have obvious agendas and lack context. Europe, North Africa and Middle East are all part of “The West”. The regions were only ever divided at various times by empires, language groups and religions. The author of this article is disingenuous with their argument at its core as a result. Musical traditions from Baghdad are still western. This is why music could influence other music because these were all western musical styles. Edit: Wanted to add that the alphabet is a western linguistic concept that’s common to all western languages.