#134

caveat: i’ve not watched the neely video and likely won’t…if that bothers you then please ignore my comments within the thread

first i want to thank @yaxu + @oot for asking so many great questions and steering the thread toward what i expected after reading the OP: amplifying + considering black voices on this subject as part of a critical discussion

secondly, i’d also like to thank @ElectricaNada despite disagreeing with portions of what you’ve written above…i appreciate you sharing your views and have taken time to mull over how i feel about the perspective you and many others offline likely share

i’d like to focus on my own experiences rather than offer rebuttal for each of the things you’ve said which deserve to be challenged

with that in mind, because they personally affect me and link to other experiences i’ve had, i can’t totally ignore two statements you’ve made above

i will speak bluntly but make no mistake, i’m not calling you a racist or making an ad hominem attack. i’m not even interested in debating whether each assertion is factual…i merely feel compelled to share how they make me feel

both these comments seem rooted in white supremacist (and eurocentric & elitist) thought. the underpinning idea seems to be that blacks couldn’t possibly have created something so beautifully complex on their own and the main ideas which elevated the forms were merely adapted or borrowed from skilled (white) predecessors overseas

a wide range of contemporary influences must be acknowledged but seeing the same basic principle shared twice felt like you are denying reality of each genre’s african foundation (or at least have not considered/researched how african harmony was woven into their dna)

if true, you view would indicate that jazz and blues aren’t what they appear to be: distinctly black, distinctly american distillations of african rhythmic + melodic traditions

again, despite the fact that this angle bothered me i’m glad you brought it up and i’m probably gonna make new music which confronts the premise in a more nuanced way

my third point

i’m not terribly worried about agreeing with everyone on this because we all have different perspectives (and baggage?) with regard to music theory + systemic racism / white supremacy

with few exceptions, most users have been discussing advanced music theory education in academic settings so i’d like to carve out a different route (since it kinda misses some aspects of the reality i encounter regularly)


[source]

i love music like this but am content knowing that i’ll never produce something quite like it myself

the complexity and freshness are the result of dedicated effort to learn and apply traditional harmonic theory in a way that is creative and satisfying for the artist

for me it’s loads of fun to listen to and quite rewarding for artists who’ve made it their priority…but i have no interest in learning enough to know the notes/chords and progressions by ear

i enjoy music structured this way but prefer to leave things related to the technical theories underpinning the performance below a certain threshold

this puts me at odds with a significant number of my peers

NOTE: before continuing i’m gonna catch up on several comments i missed while typing this

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#135

Re your first point, you’re inferring something I haven’t said and don’t believe. It’s not implied in my historical analysis of the development of jazz harmony either. American music is a consequence of cultural blending—is this really in dispute? This is a beautiful thing to me.

Re your second point, you’re repeating a Jim Crow-era narrative that assigned race to music, and you’re not questioning the logic of that ideological reification. There is a whole history of how jazz became labeled a black music, thus obscuring the cultural blending at the core of the music. That’s a very interesting topic to me, but there are so many ways to continue this part of the discussion.

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#136

"In classical music there is usually a composer, that delivers his fully-formed ideas into the hands of the musicians that are expected to play it as faithfully as possible. "

This is only true if you think the score is the music and you ignore everything that is played but not explicitly notated. The un-notated bits are kind of the point of hearing it performed.

Jazz musicians musicians for the most part tend to work from a “score” for the preconceived harmonic structure and melody. Improvisation is not some pure out pouring of musical ideas formed in a vacuum, for the most part it is an reorganisation, ornamentation and extrapolation of existing ideas.

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#137

@Ethan_Hein recommended this book a while back and this thread is motivating me to push it higher in the to-read list.

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#138

I just discovered abakua this year and was stunned to realize it’s tied to a specific group from the city where my mom grew up

if you wanna chat more about this hit me up in another thread

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#139

you’ve used this phrase a few times, can you elaborate? Can there be “blending” when the power dynamics are so unbalanced? It feels like a euphemism for appropriation, or other aspects of cultural colonialism when considered in the context of historical power dynamics, rights, and systemic oppression.

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#140

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :point_up: that’s the quintessential statement right there about the current state of evolution for us all to me: a movement away from centralized forms of power to something more… rhizomatic/decentralized.

academic institutions and institutions in general, form too much of a centralized authority. personally, i’ve felt that although i had the privilege of ‘class’ to gain a degree, during and after that education was processed, i came to realize how worthless it was to me because i can’t even culturally relate to this notion of beauty which is somewhat defined by a cultural bias i was never born into nor a part of:
‘let’s analyze, critique, and think so acutely on a subject so that by the time we’re done studying it so much with our minds, we’ve ripped it into shreds that no longer represent anything of what we felt originally when we first approached this beautiful thing with our hearts’ (that’s how i’d sum it up - music theory in particular)

this also reminds me of what Howard Zinn has written about bias in terms of ‘historians’. a non-African-American historian will bring a certain bias to how they document/analyze the history of slavery in the U.S. differently than African-American historians - it is indeed ALL biased, and learning becomes a game of choosing who you’re going to trust, hopefully, after a thorough read into all accounts of that same history, which by the way, is probably impossible for most human beings so most of us end up allowing a little bias into our learning whether it’s subconscious or fully conscious.
(being ‘self-conscious’ should actually have a good connotation, but it doesn’t seem to… maybe there’s a better term for it… i dunno… ‘self-awareness’… ya, maybe, but still a little too confident/arrogant for all of us imperfect humans, if you ask me :alien::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: (:point_left: sorry, can’t take myself too seriously online - communicating by stagnant text over an inter(net)weaved web of communication nodes makes me too self-conscious to try and represent my full being in any real comprehensive or even unalterably-proud way :man_facepalming:))

i think the most valuable part for me, of all my education, was a class i took from Michael Pisaro during my MFA at CalArts where he introduced us to and spoke very deeply about many philosophical works, the quintessential ones for me being “Noise”(albeit a bit outdated in its categorizing nature):

“Society Of The Spectacle”:

and of course, this:

it finally gave me a breath of relief to read certain things(even though it will still take me years to grasp everything fully because of the complexity) which helped me navigate ‘maya’ (not assuming others don’t know, just to be thorough in explanation: it’s a sanskrit word meaning the illusion of the world around us - a powerful force imposed upon us during life to force us to break free of various dualities in our lives(example: how do we claim to own/control anything material if death is the final evidence we don’t even own/control our own lives?) - i don’t know much about Indian culture(being born in America), so this idea of ‘maya’ was actually only introduced to me because it’s my mom’s name, but as a result of it being her name, and described to me by my parents, became a formative part of the way i think - even though, unlike my parents, who are Hindu, I’m agnostic, because i believe, the best way to live in tribute to the awesomeness of the universe(even the notion of God) is to remain humble enough to consider and respect all possibilities).

this illusion is inherent in all parts of society and from my experience, it feels as though it stems from the ego, kicking into a fight-or-flight response, instead of embracing/accepting the fact that our bias, especially when concentrated in centralized authority, actually renders everything somewhat unknowable and often, ‘whither’, uncontrollable over the longest term.

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#142

I love this performance of this piece in the way that it plays with the juxtaposition of composition, improvisation, autonomy and collaboration.

It’s large scale. It’s European. It’s American. It’s African.

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#143

Can you or anybody please else explain appropriation in the context of music? I honestly cannot fathom how that works in a form of art that is based on stealing/borrowing/copying.

Not trying to be snark (if it looks like it I blame the fact that I’m typing this on my phone so I can’t be more elaborate), Istruggled with this term a lot but I never really get what people mean when they bring this to the table. I’d be happy to know how you use it @emenel just in the context of your post.

That reminds me of the point that Derek Bailey raised in his Improvisation book about the recipe not being the food! What a great way to showcase how our priorities are skewed.

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#144

Kofi Agawu has a nice chapter on appropriation in his African Imagination book, I’ll try to revisit it and summarise later.

I think Deep Forest’s Sweet Lullaby is a good extreme example for discussion though. Based on an extended sample of an ethnographic recording from the Solomon Islands, permission for use was sought, not given and they used it anyway, misattributed to the wrong people/country/continent, liner notes that treat ‘African music’ as a singular, primitive concept etc. In this case it’s not just being inspired by Baegu music but exploiting and selling someone else’s culture in a willfully ignorant way.

Somewhat away from that extreme we could look at Reich’s clapping music, taking Ghanian music practice, changing the instrumentation and then selling it in the Western context of a genius composer.

On one hand being inspired by music outside your culture has to be a positive though, right? So I’m keen to understand this better as well… Generally though I think cross-cultural collaboration is a healthier approach than the mindless sampling of Deep Forest et al.

Yes true. But the notated part is visible and mass produced, and too often treated as the essence of the music.

I know little about orchestral music but from the outside find it interesting that (according to Christopher Small) orchestras don’t actually need a conductor. So there’s this (most often white, male, upper class) quirky person waving their hands around at the top of the hierarchy, who gets all the adulation and money but isn’t really needed. Now there’s a metaphor

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#145

I’m going to pull a Bernie here and ask
and what’s the next line?..
“Maybe with a little 'tude, but not too much!”

^ Gotta make a space for the idea/commodification of the individual of course ; )

That’s not what I said tho.

I don’t think it’s controversial to think that when something is described as improv that a significant portion/aspect of it is being made up on the spot. I’ll put it this way: if you go see a concert where the performers are playing only Led Zeplin songs it would challenge your idea of what improv is. So while I’m not going to go down the road of defining with “improv” or “classic music” are, we’re having a discussion here in good faith where I need to be able to assume that you know what I’m talking about.

To your point:
Yes, Jazz musicians work off a score, but the assumption is that the score is only the bare bones terrain. There will even be prescribed moments of increased freedom when taking solos.
And to tie it back to the metaphor I was speaking to when I brought this up: I would say that jazz (and I imagine I know what you mean when you say this ; ) is much less mechanistic than the performance of a work of classical music.

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#146

Would it be valid to say that classical performance and jazz performance, sit on a spectrum of freedom (in the form of improvisation), and in one the freedom mostly takes the form of interpretation and expression, whereas in the other there are explicit parts which encourage or even demand of the performer to improvise?

And thus, classical performance audiences find themselves attributing greatness mostly to the composer, and to some extent those performers that are deemed to have expressed themselves and the composer in the “best” (for lack of better term) possible manner, whereas jazz audiences are more than happy to emphasize the now and give praise to the creativity of the performers, and less so on whoever wrote the skeleton on which the performance is based upon.

From the experience I have with performers of the classical repertoire, they’re mostly focused on interpretation and dive deep in the meaning, history, and any “truth” that may be derived about the piece. It seems to me that they act more like mediums for the composer and less like individual musicians who have something explicit to say.

And I dare say that this dynamic changes a lot when talking with a composer who might be there, in the flesh, to talk about the piece at hand. Lots of anecdotes there! Don’t want to derail the thread which is focused on the theory, but I firmly believe there’s a lot to be discussed about the performers themselves, improvision, and how it all fits under each classification of music.

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#147

Your question accepts the logic of reifying cultural groups and assigning the reified entity property rights to cultural products. This is a recent idea without much traction in world history. Most artists have been individuals who take inspiration wherever they find it. Sometimes we don’t even realize the source, or think much about it beyond how to incorporate it into our own work. It’s only after the fact that musicologists can begin discern larger patterns in stylistic development across bodies of work.

Many of the musicians in turn-of-the-century New Orleans alternated gigs at the opera house with gigs at clubs, with gigs on the steamboat or at the water park, performing a variety of styles for all of the various social groupings in the city. Do you think they gave any thought at all to cultural colonialism or cultural appropriation? Those concepts would not even have registered with them.

I don’t see any analytical utility in those concepts, myself. They appear to perpetuate the racial ideology in much the same way that Ewell and the theorists he cites do. I find more value in the work of scholars who question the racial ideology than those who invoke it uncritically.

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#148

This is shaped by marketing though. Most classical albums and concert advertisements feature and promote the performer far more prominently than the composer. This likely has an effect on audiences.

#149

meh… contrary to your view of the world where clueless artists inadvertently breathe in free-as-in-beer inspiration to use in their work without ever really thinking about it (a sure sign of their inherent genius), I would argue that by not assigning “property rights” (a term that ridiculously seeks to associate basic respect, proper accreditation, and just compensation for labor with the capitalist endeavor) you are giving free reign for entities with the most power to exploit cultures at the expense of those who are the primary drivers of culture. Which is unfortunately where the world is now, and none of us should want to be there.

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#150

How do you assign property rights to a culture? How do you police those rights once assigned? Any attempt to do those things accepts and replicates racial ideology. We have an example in US law, but this is probably a topic for a separate thread.

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#151

I guess there’s a distinction between exploitation-via-capitalism (which is generally meant when using ‘cultural appropriation’) and culture (as a verb, which is where cultures intermingle).

I think things like Clapping Music, and other “this thing has existed elsewhere but now look at it in a high art context” are bad, but on aesthetic grounds. It’s just lazy. I feel the same way about that as I do “really loud” music, or “really long” music. Where the aesthetic gesture is pretty flat and banal.

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#152

I didn’t say anything about property rights, which is a whole other discussion.

Appropriation (and other forms of cultural power) are much more about socio-political power then about direct property rights.

I will say, that we are not the people and this is not the place to re-describe the theory of cultural appropriation in detail, and definitely not to debate it (a debate that happened decades ago and has been more or less resolved from a history/media theory perspective).

I’m going to step back and make room for some other people and perspectives to get involved and see if there can be a more productive direction. This is starting to feel circular and about issues that are beyond the scope of our forum … there are entire library sections of books about appropriation etc that can explain all of this better than I can in this venue.

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#154

I guess I can imagine what you’re saying about chamber music but mostly my experience with listening to it (in concert and sitting in practice sessions where everyone gets to hash things out) is that the tightness of these groups doesn’t compare to the tightness found in even a “semi-serious” rock band.

Oh boy…ok, I know I’m making some huge generalizations here–and maybe I’ve just had terrible luck in finding the “good” chamber orchestras–but I’ve never heard a quartet/quintet that just feels like they’re playing…in the pocket. The engagement seems a bit more slack.

And–full disclosure–you’re right, I don’t enjoy it lol
Well maybe not on an aesthetic level, but I do like to think about it : ).

But let me get to the meat of what you’re saying because I find that more interesting:
I like/understand what you said about my comments really being about a certain period in history: 1600s-1920s. So if it helps focus the conversation I’m down to use that framing.

I also thought you had mentioned “orchestras”, but rereading it now I guess you hadn’t. But maybe taking it there–because I consider that the extreme example–also focuses the idea.
(Which is: metaphors built via music that creep into views about the ideal way to organize a society/group).

Metaphors with regard to orchestra personnel (not necessarily the sounds as I had been thinking about in my previous post):

  • Central co-ordination via conductor = middle management/over-seer

  • Hierarchy of ability (1st string, 2nd string, etc.). You probably never see a 3rd string violinist take the solo…well, why not? A: because I suspect the 1st string is seen to be able to “channel” the composer’s ideas better. Thank you for that terminology @ParanormalPatroler : )

  • An orchestra is large and thus if you’re using one you must be important = David Graeber talked about how the number of people you have working under you is a status symbol, even if their roles are “bullshit”. Not just any old body gets an orchestra to play a piece of their music so that must make one important ; ).

  • composers that write for orchestra usually try to utilize all sections of the orchestra. Like the idea of an idle section is a waste or something. (Correct me if this isn’t the norm…because I have no doubt there are exceptions.).

  • and this next point isn’t exactly about an orchestra’s personnel or structure as metaphor (so it’s distinct from the examples above), and admittedly I wonder if this is even a metaphor because to me it seems to be white supremacist turtles all the way down but… orchestras straight up get so much more funding than other groupings/configurations of musicians. To the [cultural] detriment of parts of the country. So my thinking there is that reinforcement of these metaphors is of great importance to a government --I’m thinking UK here. Much in the same way that soccer reinforces the idea of meritocracy, nationalism, militarism, and even some of the same metaphors I’ve described here about group organization.

*As an aside I’ve always wondered why speed walking isn’t more popular since the entire point of the sport there is to see how much you can get away with with regard to the referees and rules (is it running yet?). Seems like a perfect analogy to multinational organizations an banks lol

**Maybe soccer is just a less boring version of speed walking since they won’t allow re-plays

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#155

I have never run faster for a longer period of time than when attempting to play football (“soccer”).

I’m having trouble with the generalizations, @Angela.

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