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

[Glassman, Michael]

Hi Huw,

Just off the top of my head I would say the blues more so.  I wonder if a music historian has ever taken an Activity Theory approach.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces+glassman.13=osu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+glassman.13=osu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Huw Lloyd
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2015 11:26 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The idea that our categories are created

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&p
> gtype=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
>
>