RE: [microsound] State of Music

[Michael North <michael.north@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a generalization....african music/traditional African music doesn't
have a backbeat.....the 2 & 4/of 'pop' music....quite a bit has been made of
this in analysis of 'jazz' music......

mike_north
http://www.front.bc.ca/details.p?record=1609
http://aaeol.ca/

//*-----Original Message-----
//*From: pprice@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pprice@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
//*Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 3:48 PM
//*To: microsound
//*Subject: Re: [microsound] State of Music
//*
//*Dear Tobias,
//*
//*I will not respond to the first 3/4 of your post because frankly I don't
//*understand it. You are obviously a more erudite individual than I am. I
//*will respond to the following however...
//*
//*
//*> .....HOLA! Disco as 'western'? What, Africa just jumped into Germany?
//*That's
//*> later--that's post-Detroit AfroGermanic. The EVENT of sound might
//*require
//*> not a reduction to disco, but an opening to jazz and disco's isomorphic
//*> descent from the experience of transatlantic displacement, the diaspora
//*and
//*> memorialized slavery.
//*
//*If disco is not western, what is it. I think your idea of "isomorphic
//*descent from the experience of transatlantic displacement," etc. is
//*perhaps a racialist romantic fantasy. Can you honestly deny that Motown
//*is immeasurably closer to Mozart than to ANY traditional african music. I
//*am not an ethnomusicologist but I know of no traditional  african culture
//*that uses equal tempered major and minor scales. I know of no traditional
//*african culture that uses the "functional harmony" of western classical
//*musics "common practice period." And one could continue looking at
//*melodic patterning and structure, etc.
//*
//*I was trying in earlier posts to make a distinction between style and
//*actual significant structural change. I think that your "isomorphic
//*descent" issue is if anything a question of style. I wonder if you are
//*being influenced by a kind of Metaphysics of funk, where the true, the
//*absolute, the good, streams from mother africa to shake the booty of the
//*white man.
//*
//*Furthermore I am not sure why "blackness" should be more associated with
//*disco than say "gayness," or cocaine consumption for that matter.
//*
//*
//*well, thats enough for now.
//*
//*peter
//*
//*
//*
//*
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