[FA Worldmusic] FA-Worldmusic Digest, Vol 18, Issue 19

[Phil Ballman]

Boy, isn't this fun?

>>> Most people don't have the background/knowledge to talk
>>> about music in these terms.  Many music writers don't even
>>> use this sort of academic language well, if at all. (maybe
>>> they don't trust their audience to understand it?)

Who says such a discussion needs to be academic?

For example: using the 'they sound like the Stones' example that came up,
here's how you could describe this fictional band's sound without using
categories/ labels, by just talking musically-

"With riffing guitars driven by a swinging backbeat, and playing songs about
bad girls and good drugs, these slumming white boys have just enough chops
and attitude to pull off their gritty take on down-home rockin' roll"

See how easy that was? :)

Ok- I've made my point (I hope)- but of course I use labels and categories
all the time, as a shorthand. But I'm serious about really trying to avoid
getting lazy with cliche descriptions that pigeonhole artists, limit
creativity, and worst of all- homogenize wildly divergent musics under some
lowest-common denominator catch-all rubric like "world music". Even the dry
"international music" is more accurate and less limiting....

My experience is that most people outside the industry bubble that we more
or less live in think of 'world music' as watered-down easy listening that
mixes ethnic traditions with a house track, or rock guitar, or new age
panflute (or something equally dreadful), and hence, should be avoided like
the plague.

carry on,
Phil












>>>
>>> I look forward to a year where this topic doesn't come up.
>>>
>>> Labels/categories suck, but it's a huge part of how people
>>> communicate.  Whether it be the dualistic "music is either
>>> good or bad", the geographic category of nation, stylistic
>>> category of genre, or something that doesn't have a
>>> literal meaning but a reasonably understood meaning like
>>> "world music", we categorize to communicate.