Re: music is life
Matthew Robert Chicoine (scooby@umich.edu)
Mon, 9 Oct 1995 13:31:42 -0400 (EDT)
Greetings,
I know some people might be reluctant to carry on this
discussion, but just skip the heavy, self-indulgent shit if you ain't
into it. Anyways, I remember reading the poem by Dryden last year in an
English class. Yeah, I think Dryden's take on the situation was ahead of
its time; the poem in its enitirety actually uses a lot of anomotopea
(sp?), aka the use of words to convey a sound or noise (eg. "boom").
Thinking about the later poetry of the beats (appropriate, huh?) and even
moreso of the styles purveyed by modern freestylers and rappers, we can
see how this aspect of language has become important in our portrayal of
music through words. Point being, Dryden's poem is dope.
As far as music as an all-encompassing entity, I kind of see the
idea. There has been a time-worn debate over what music is (can we define
it?), and more importantly, is music the "universal" language.
Ethnomusicologists and the like are quick to say no, that this is a
trite, played myth. They have come to this conclusion based on
different culture's unique reactions to certain types of music. Certain
African cultures, when played Western classical music, became agitated
instead of moved and had difficulty getting into it. The same could be
said of western culture when they have been exposed to music of other
cultures, their hierarchal egoisms writing the music off as "primitive"
and the like.
So certainly, a particular piece of music will not signify the same
thing to different people. Therefore music is not the universal language,
right? Nu-uh. For anybody to think that a piece of music will touch
different people in the same way is naive and ridiculous. Of course not,
music is a vague and abstract entity that has very personal, very open
connections to the greater emotions, ideas, and feelings that are
conjured up in the presence of music. Music is not science, we can not
explain music
in words. What we "get out" of music is individual, but the point is that
regardless of how we feel about certain types of music, you will have
some deeper reaction to certain types of music. You will be uplifted by
certain songs, be turned off by others. But here it is clear that music
is "speaking" to everybody, saying different things, but "speaking"
nonetheless.
The other very important aspect of this is that certain people
will better understand this language, through their personal
translations and/or their mastery of the language. Others, as is most
often the case, are oblivious to the power of this language, and are not
hearing (because there not "listening") like some.
So why, then, are we here chatting and sharing on this list? It
becomes apparent that we will be drawn to certain strains of the language
over others, depending on what types are able to effect us the most
deeply. Hence we are here to share and expound on our love for soul,
funk, jazz, hip-hop, and a basic love for contemporary expiremental
music, music that hasn't sold all of its soul to technology or
commercialism, but music
that retains the complex textures of jazz, the emotion of soul, the
syncopation of funk, the technology and lyricism of hip-hop, (all of
which are inheritantly similar in many ways) and throws them all into a
musical stew, breaking down the boundaries of "music" (does music, no
quotes, have boundaries?), culture, time, social and racial
misconceptions. THIS music is universal in nature: dynamic, ever changing
and expirimenting, adapting and fusing eclectisism. Even though we argue
about labels, the "jazz" is appropriate, for the spirit and philosophy of
jazz as forged by our inspirational heroes survives and expands in the
music we live.
Whoooooeeeeeeee! Did I just go off on a tangent or what. God
damn! Just a few (!) things runnin through my mind. This is the portion
of the text where I apologize to anyone not into this, anybody who thinks
this is a big load of shit, anybody who thinks this discussion is
pretentious. I always felt, though, as I'm sure others do, that this
list is a resource that should be used to share thoughts and ideas that
relate to, one, the music we love, and two, what (this) music means to us
personally. I'ma shut the hell up now. Peace out to all.
Bubblicious