[FA Worldmusic] music chains and knowledge transfer

[Dmitri Vietze]

I had both my family musical path and my individual personal path.

I grew up with my mother listening to Alan Stivell and Balkan folk dance 
music. When Graceland came out she bought that and started backtracking to 
artists like Miriam Makeba, who her parents had listened to out of their 
interest in the New York Jewish union-organizing folk days. And then Luaka 
Bop cracked things open with the Brazilian compilations and a Haitian one. 
Independent from that, I went from late 1980s socially conscious hip hop 
(KRS One, Stetsasonic, Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest) to listening to 
jazz (because of the jazz samples in hip hop) to taking a History of Jazz 
class in college, whose first class was about the African roots of blues 
(field hollers as African knowledge transfer to the Americas). And before 
that, influenced by the street performers of NYC, I started experimenting 
with bamboo flutes, panpipes, and Bolivian quenas. There was this guy named 
the Goat Man (white beard) who played a bamboo flute accompanying himself on 
a shruti box (free reed Indian drone bellows), which he played with his 
foot.

I have heard that there has been some debate in the jazz realm about whether 
smooth jazz leads people "up the chain" to jazz. Some people thought it 
would and then later realized it didn't. I wonder what research has been 
done out there about the influence of samples in one genre of music leading 
to interest in another genre. Also about whether/how often customers who 
make impulse buys of compilations (such as those by Putumayo), "move up the 
chain," and research deeper into an artist catalog or into a particular 
genre or cultural repertoire.

Much respect,

===> Dmitri!
music at rockpaperscissors.biz


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Weisberg" <robwv at panix.com>
To: "fa-world music list" <fa-worldmusic at folk.org>
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2007 6:28 AM
Subject: Re: [FA Worldmusic] knowledge transfer...


> Testimonial:
>
> My personal case history (age 44):  I heard the Specials, Selecter and
> Beat in high school, I followed the trail to the Intensified compilations
> of 60s Jamaican ska and rock steady - and the rest is history!
>
> An old but fun radio dj trick (and educational, kiddies!) is to do sets
> based around this kind of musical chain)...
>
> Rob W / WFMU / http://www.wfmu.org/tsp
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