tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post9143850651863694667..comments2023-05-27T01:53:21.676-04:00Comments on Diane L. Major: Eclectic MusicUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-62206416535766903932016-11-29T15:25:15.849-05:002016-11-29T15:25:15.849-05:00Hello, Hank! How nice to see you here - welcome, a...Hello, Hank! How nice to see you here - welcome, and thank you for coming by and commenting.<br /><br />Elvis C. is a great one for me as a mental time capsule - take two tracks and call me in the morning. There are some New Wave artists who forcibly send me back; Adam Ant, Psychedelic Furs. If you like some of the grittier memories from that time, hit the PUNK Rocka tag and read a few vicarious memories (and see photos!) from my brother's mohawk and shaved-headed years.<br /><br />Cheers and be well as well!<br />--DDLMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768285199864217885noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-10192729744892752802016-11-29T12:25:25.293-05:002016-11-29T12:25:25.293-05:00I remember Grand Master Flash, it was so cutting e...<br />I remember Grand Master Flash, it was so cutting edge...but the genre developed...so many great artists. I mean really great growth. Ice Cube, Run DMC, NWA, Public Enemy, L.L.Cool J, Tone Loc, and one of the most prolific underappreciated guys, Biz Markie.<br /> I lived in Boston in the 80's...1980's thank you. Most of my fellow loft dwellers were in bands. Such a magic time. Then off to California, but it never equaled the rawness of the 80's. Everything from Ska (my fav.) new wave, punk, and experimental...my friend were in the Bentmen. Surreal shows. <br /> But the beauty of music is the diversity. I don't think there's a style of music I dislike, as with music and writing, it's the interpretation of that culture. I loved Elvis Costello, his lyrics and verbal acrobatics I always thought were legendary, but I wouldn't want to spend time with the guy he was in his heyday. <br /><br />Just some quick thoughts, be well. <br />Hank. french sojournhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14262858704848580714noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-16745414393642180472016-11-28T22:32:34.429-05:002016-11-28T22:32:34.429-05:00Hi, Diane! I think that when someone puts art out ...Hi, Diane! I think that when someone puts art out there, everyone of any background is at liberty to react, respond, criticize, or judge. If the only responses someone with a different skin color is allowed are praise or silence, then we're insulting the artist and his art by taking neither seriously. If art can't engage us or connect us and let us express honest opinions across our differences, then it's worthless, even harmful. And the last thing I'm going to endorse is the idea of policing people's opinions about art based on their sex or the color of their skin.<br /><br />I do think you've made a strong case for the musicality of rap, and for rap as music. I suppose my counter-argument would be that lots of things requiring strong musicality aren't necessarily music. Beautiful prose, for example, is often quite musical. But in the end, perhaps we're both right. Music and poetry have common, ancient, universally human sources and used to be one and the same. I prefer to emphasize rap as poetry because doing so plays to its strengths and puts its detractors on the defensive. Rap has reawoken people's understanding of the strengths of poetry, strengths that nearly a century of now-derivative postmodernist free verse tried to smother: that it's often best when it's spoken, performed, and heard; that it has rhythm rooted in physicality; that it's bound to tradition and rooted in form; and that everyone has innate poetic potential. Poets from medieval England to modern Iran would recognize their kinship with rappers immediately; I'm not positive that Mozart or Duke Ellington would. But the way rap has brought poetry back to its musical and popular roots is profound, and I don't think it gets enough (or, frankly, any) credit for that.<br /><br />Not popular opinions, I know, but it's been quite a long time since I had any of those...Jeffhttp://www.quidplura.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-78350905510357565722016-11-28T08:52:28.043-05:002016-11-28T08:52:28.043-05:00Been mulling your comment for a bit.
I'm not ...Been mulling your comment for a bit.<br /><br />I'm not so sure it's reasonable for white men to decide that rap is not music - even not to denigrate it, necessarily. It probably IS an oral formulaic, and it's certainly declamatory poetry, but how does that preclude its musicality? I'd certainly argue against the notion that its musicality is incidental. Creation as innovative as rap and hip-hop is hard work; there's nothing incidental when people put that into anything.<br /><br />Bob Dylan just won the Nobel prize for Literature. Is he not a musician? How does poetry preclude music?<br /><br />The instrumentation rap in particular uses can be unique, but how is scratching or sampling and fading any less a musical skill than drumming, or any other traditional rhythm instrument? It takes a musical ear to find the right track, to spin it (literally) into a new form. And beatboxing is perhaps more elementally musical even than instrumentation; it is the use of the human instrument itself, what is more fundamental to our urge to create song?<br /><br />Thanksgiving was good; hoping yours was too!DLMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768285199864217885noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-6614483462905642002016-11-25T00:07:33.025-05:002016-11-25T00:07:33.025-05:00You know, I'm inclined to agree with your ex t...You know, I'm inclined to agree with your ex that rap isn't music, but I don't say that to denigrate it, necessarily. It's a different sort of art entirely, an oral-formulaic popular (some might say "folk") declamatory poetry, and its musicality is pretty incidental. "Beowulf" was almost certainly performed, declaimed, to the accompaniment of a harp, and it's not music--but it's not nothing either.<br /><br />As someone who never "fit in" to any musical scene, I appreciate anyone who has truly eclectic musical tastes! If art can't teach us something about other people's experiences and perspectives, if it can't foster empathy, then it's useless (he said with his best curmudgeon voice).<br /><br />Happy Thanksgiving! Hope it's a good one for you and yours.Jeffhttp://www.quidplura.comnoreply@blogger.com