[Xmca-l] Re: The idea that our categories are created

[Huw Lloyd]

The impression I have is that the roots of jazz stem from an abeyance from
culturally perceived unpleasant/oppressive conditions and that patterns in
chord progression would be derived from that activity structure, not from
anything inherent in the music per se, i.e. an orientation.

Huw



On 3 June 2015 at 15:53, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu> wrote:

>
>
> I found this article from the New York Times incredibly interesting
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/technology/personaltech/spotify-sees-a-future-where-music-genres-dont-really-matter.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
>
> Having developed a very nascent knowledge of music late in life because my
> daughter is studying to be a jazz guitarist and I don't want to feel like a
> complete idiot when I discuss one of her concerts with her - the article
> reminds me that we (or the media trying to sell us stuff) creates
> categories that then for some reason become set in stone until they aren't
> anymore (but the decisions always seem to come from some place else) and
> the ways the Internet may be changing that faster than many of us can
> understand.
>
> If you read the first paragraph and the children of the writer going
> through different types of music as a stream -  I wonder though if the
> writer has it wrong, that if you went back and listened closely you would
> find they shared chord progressions taken in different directions.
>
> I may have this wrong the way I'm talking about it (I can see my daughter
> rolling her eyes in my mind), but jazz has its developing chord
> progressions, blues has its chord progressions, they swap back and forth,
> rock and folk and new wave takes from both and from classical, and
> derivative pop takes and simplifies from all.  Perhaps there is a natural
> flow as they move between each other, something we can never hear when
> there are strict category boundaries.  The steaming music phenomenon makes
> these boundaries transparent, almost as if they don't exist, so we traverse
> them without thinking we are making some type of transgression.  How will
> appreciation of music change when we don't have the gatekeepers (using
> Lewin's original concept) determining what we listen to?
>
> This of course is not just music.  In the academy there has been greater
> and greater move towards particularization and strict boundaries - AERA
> isn't one big conferences but hundreds of small conferences.  Will the
> boundaries start to break down so we can see and appreciate the "chord
> progressions?"
>
> Interesting to me, wonder what others think.
>
> Michael
>
>