Re: [microsound] being 'political' in non-verbal music

[Exegene <exegene@xxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005, Kassen wrote:

> aleks vasic;
*snip*
> > IMO, or a better description would be complex communication.  Using
> > your rationale the lights on a stop light, red, yellow, and green are a
> > language of sorts.
>
> Yes. It is debatable indeed wether that is a language. When push comes to
> shove I think I believe those things to be a very limited language with just
> a few words and hardly any gramar. To me, within the larger context of
> comunicating ideas (possibly political ones) through the use of non-verbal
> sound the concept of comunication and the transfer of information are much
> more interesting then wether something is a actual language, should we be
> able to find a definition of "language" that everybody finds satisfactory..
*snip*

i submit that a language-candidate is indeed a language only if it can be 
used to write a book on literary theory(1). It follows that while 
stoplights convey specific agreed on information, because stoplights can't 
be used to convey musings on conveying musings with stoplights the use of 
stoplights can't be taken as language.

Further consideration of the thread starter seems to support certain other 
listees in their belief that nonverbal music may be made political by 
means of packaging, titling, and other things external to the music 
proper, and that nontraditional and noncommercial music are inherently 
political. A small push : the finished track is the transmissible, 
marketable congealment of the artist, but is not the vital truth, the 
artist's existence, awareness, and life-activities. Any attempt to keep 
politics sequestered inside the (nonverbal) music means allowing the 
artist's greatest expressive tool - hirself - to be depoliticized.


1 - Where book means anything similar to a recorded, transmissible and 
archivable message, literary theory is  divorced of western cultural 
imperialism, etc.

--
Dear Patron Saint,
your lips are lopsided
www.devo.com/exegene

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