A Philosophical/critical Discussion Of Music

[PCP]

There are no true musical forms left to us. Have their ever been any strict pure musical forms?

The post-colonial school of thinking, which basically states that there are no pure forms of artistic expression truely available to us in any field, music, design, painting. Everything is simply a hybrid of influences, due mainly to global expansion and colonization. This school would have us believe that when we deal with the roles of colonizer and colonized, both are equally affected. An example of this would have been the British presence in Hong-Kong, the close ties and bonds needed to create a functioning society means that the two nations would both have to, at least partially, submit to the other's culture. North America is a great melting pot of nations, cultural influences from the West, East, North and South have created a land where artistic expression is a great and massive cross-section of all that occurs in the world.

Genres like Jazz may indeed be the first musical form attributed to directly to America, but Jazz was created through a cultural blending of backgrounds. From jazz, again through cultural influences, the Great American Musical was born, Ragtime, Be-Bop, The Swing Era and eventually our modern popular music in all its forms.

The age of mechanical reproduction is also largely responsible for the great diversity of musical forms. Music, say in Bach, or even Mozart's day was a much different experience than it is now. It was generally reserved for either the aristocrat's, anyone with money could have musicians living in their home, or hire Mozart or Haydn to compose for them. The other place where music was predominant was the Church, who, like it or not, are responsible for beginning the history of "Western" music. Music was treated more as a ritual than it is currently. You had to make a serious effort to go see music performed, and if it was in the Church, then there was of course much more to it than that. The music was the break in the action, a chance for those who didn't truly understand what was being said to them to reflect on the power of music as it was given to them by God....

It was Beethoven who was the first to create music purely for art's sake. There was no alterior motive to his compositions. He created strictly for the joy of creating and in doing so, heralded in a great break in the traditions of the previous 200 or so years. But this is another discussion entirely...

Mechanical reproduction changed all of this, music was suddenly less of a ritual and more of a comodity. Again, at first, those who could afford to make, produce and distribute recordings were a limited few and the earliest recordings are of classical music. This changed, and very quickly at that, with hundreds of independant labels springing up all through North-America and Europe in the early 1900's, producing novelty recordings, and classical recordings, but also jazz, and blues, and all that was created by merging all the influences.

Today we are constantly bombarded with music, from all sources, in places where we would least expect to hear it. The lines have blurred mainly due to the sheer bulk of the available material. Everything can be tagged and labeled in multiple fashions, depending on how you look at things. Even the distinctions of what can be considered mainstream and what might be considered avant-garde have broken down.

I think that the most we, as attentive listeners, can hope for is that the artists whose works we chose to seek out are expressing the sum of their gifts and experiences to us without outside influence. When corporations or outside factors work their way into the artists truest expression of himself, then it becomes weak and trivial.


There, my Sunday rant...
hope someone finds it interesting...

Cheers, All
PcP

[soopaman]

Thanks for that.

[Afronaut]

I was bored, had to read it.
Thanks.
You asked about players in this forum in another thread,
there is some players here, gonna post you few links
if you haven't found them yet.

Hey Guitarist's, most addictive riffs

Guitar-slinger's Own Mp3's, Music I made...

So This Is Musicworld.., Are There Any Musicians Among Us?

Musicians... What Equipment Do You Use?, post your stuff... i'm just currious

We Made Our First Mini Music Videos, and would like to get them out

My site hosted by Luca_Snipes

And here's a few usefull links too:

Musicworld Database, Get Your Music Here ...about SoulSeek.

Guide For Making High Quality Mp3 Files

Streaming Radio, It was FC's idea - i started it........

An Idea For Musicworld ...about OrangeCD

This should keep you busy for awhile...

Anyways, try SoulSeek, its a good app if you're looking for music, im sharing my songs there too
and if you got a huge collection, organize it with OrangeCD, that a good app too.
Check my sig for download links to SoulSeek and Orange...

Kippis:
-GS-