fromthemouthofmoi

Listening to music in a language or culture other than your own is like watching a film with subtitles; you either love it or you don't. I am trying to think of analogy for why we might not like different sounds found in music. Is it as simple as: we like what we like or is it more complicated than this? I recently listened to a podcast, Here's The Thing, with Alec Baldwin interviewing Paul Simon. Simon was researching the work of a man named Harry Partch who according to Simon realized that on a traditional music scale there were sounds (notes) that were often not heard or used in composition and that there were a wealth of other sounds to be heard and used. When I heard this I had a Eureka moment because living here in Mexico I often perceive Mexicans singers as singer 'off key'. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Mexican singers where hearing or using a different scale that my ears were unaccustomed to. We understand this when we listen to traditional Chinese ...

As I mentioned in my previous post,  Classical: Music To My Ears Part One , there is elitism associated with classical music. In Country & Western (C&W) music something else is at play: classism. As with classical music I have heard, equally, people dismiss the Country & Western genre outright and I suspect this is due to a notion that involves race, place - the southern United States, and perceptions of intellect. While those that do listen to classical music may have an arrogance embedded in their reasons for listening, in some ways those that don't listen to Country & Western have their own type of elitism. Like Jazz, Country & Western music is a unique American creation and it might be interesting to note that one is dominated by Afro-Americans and the other, by White Americans with both emanating from the Southern regions of the United States where slavery had a stronghold at one time. I suspect this separation of race and music was a necessary consequen...