Nature and nurture in musical appreciation (or Growing up a WASP with MTV)

Bob-Dubery

In another thread I start to rambling on about "unusual" components of music - things that can be done with timing and with the harmonic component that start to introduce elements of surprise that the brain may latch onto if they're well enough done or just switch off from if there's too much and it goes on too long.

I got in this

X-rated Bob wrote Now... I do know that some people seem to be able to understand, even enjoy more "surprise" and "tension" than I can. I recall some years ago watching John Zorn and David Sanborn (who usually doesn't go down this particular musical route) engaging in some "free improvisation" on some TV show. It seemed to me to have abandoned any concept of tonality or time signature or tempo or anything. Very quickly, for me, it stopped having any kind of form that I could latch on to and I briefly considered Frank Zappa's observation that some modern jazz "sounds like geese honking" and then changed channels.

It may be
a) that some brains are wired differently to others and can take more stretching of structure
b) that some folk have a deeper understanding of musical theory and thus a deeper or more sophisticated appreciation of unusual musical structures
c) the Emperor's new clothes.

I can't say - and I'm biased anyway.

Jack Flash Jr contributed this

Jack Flash Jr wrote Take a listen to traditional Japanese music for unresolving music... holy cow.

And this is interesting to me because maybe the musical culture that you grew up in determines what is "weird" or "complex" not to mention "conventional" for you. It's none of my (a), (b) or (c) above, it's just growing up in a culture that has very different ideas about music and the way it's structured.

And I think there always is a structure, even if my WASP ears don't get it. Maybe I don't even have a musical culture, but the TV and radio instead. Not the same thing I think.

Let me now present to you a passage from an article by Joe Boyd How Stalin created World Music. In this article Boyd, who became heavily involved in the then new "world music" scene in the 70s and 80s, talks about a trip he made to a festival in Bulgaria. He contrasts it to the Boston folk music scene that he grew up around.

For three days I wandered around that magical plateau finding astonishments and delights at every turn. Each region had its own stage with a panel of judges marking the performers. Under trees masters of the gaida, the tambura, the gadulka, the khaval and the teppan (bagpipe, lute, upright fiddle, flute and drum respectivley) passed around jars of homemade rakia and jammed for hours, professionals from the Koutev and other ensembles sitting in with village virtuosi. At night, in the campsites, huge circles would be formed near a gaida player and a bonfire and people would dance wildly, shouting to be heard above the wail of the piper. It was one of the most extraordianry weekends of my life.

I thought back to childhood summer evenings in Princeton, new Jersey, when the Folk Dance Society would meet in a park near our house. Those circles were filled with the nerds and wallflowers of the University, young men with pocket guards and slide-rules and girls with glasses, long corduroy skirts and sandals. When a tricky 5/4 or 9/4 rhythm came on the record player, you could see them counting under their breath as they tried to avoid tripping over their own feet or their partner's. Even at a young age I could sense that this was the least sexy thing imaginable.

But that first night in Koprivshtitsa I saw girl's hips swaying easily to the complicated rhythms – no counting under their breath here – and the eye contact that passed back and forth as the men gripped their waists and flung them forward and back across their bodies seemed to indicate that it was not, in fact, an unsexy phenomenon.

These Bulgarian gypsies got the stuff that the guys in Princeton could just about get right if they really thought hard about it. In fact it was beyond "getting" it, it was natural to them. They didnt' have to try, didn't have to figure out the time signature.

I think those of us who have grown up with western popular music may be disadvantaged because we've grown up within a set of constraints that determine what we can easily understand and what sounds natural to us, and those constraints are narrow indeed.

Wizard

X-rated Bob wrote I think those of us who have grown up with western popular music may be disadvantaged because we've grown up within a set of constraints that determine what we can easily understand and what sounds natural to us, and those constraints are narrow indeed.

Agreed.
Never too late to change though.
A new "feel" can be learned through concentrated immersion listening and exposure for a period.
The mind has to be open though.

deefstes

X-rated Bob wroteI think those of us who have grown up with western popular music may be disadvantaged because we've grown up within a set of constraints that determine what we can easily understand and what sounds natural to us, and those constraints are narrow indeed.

That's an interesting notion and I agree that we should always try to expand on our constraints, but are the constraints imposed by western popular music really all that narrow when compared to any other musical paradigm? I'm not saying, I'm asking. I can't say that I know the constraints that are set by Indian, Japanese or Aboriginal music so I wouldn't know if those are narrower or broader than western music.

I don't think you should sell western popular music short though. It builds on a long and proud tradition ? The 12 equal temperament division of the octave, for instance, that forms such a basic premise of all our music might seem like a "constraint" but it really makes sense and it has undergone some refining over the centuries. It has been tried and tested and I think it stood the test of time. There are good reasons why it outlived the Chinese 53 equal temperament for instance.

That's not to say that western popular music is stagnant. There are things we take for granted today that would have been very foreign to the ear a few centuries ago. Having a pentatonic minor melodic line on top of a chord progression of the same key's major would have been unthinkable and yet today that forms the basis of blues music.

Jack-Flash-Jr

That western music (from pop to metal to classical) exports so well (and it does) is an indication that the rhythmic basis speaks to people in almost all cultures. Like in film, the "west" appears to have developed a shorthand/alphabet/sign language that is easy to pick up even if you're not raised with it. All the universal signifiers are present and easily communicated... I think J-pop is more popular in Japan than traditional Japanese music not because of cultural colonialism by the US but because it conveys a message in a more easily understood form that perhaps all brains are better wired for. That does mean "we" have dumbed down music worldwide to a certain extent, at least where the most popular forms are concerned but at the same time elements of other world music are creeping (have crept) into western music as well... from the seventies with Zep's Kashmir and other experiments to the late nineties and 2000's popular re-emergence of drone.
@ Wizard: I really try to immerse myself in other music forms... I would listen for hours on end to Koto music which is more accessible than the stuff they play during Kibuki for example but I always found it was a state of mind inducer rather than an enjoyment thing. Sometimes they crossover but when something is purely about zoning out for western ears you're not drawn back into it so easily.
As an aside, when I bought a koto I found myself simulating slide guitar on it, brilliant for that... and my pluckings always went back to resolving bars...

Here's some Koto:

Edit: Deeftees is on the same wavelength!

Jack-Flash-Jr

Here's a bass koto with some bends (if you elongated and slow them they sound exactly like a slide):

Bob-Dubery

Jack Flash Jr wrote but at the same time elements of other world music are creeping (have crept) into western music as well... from the seventies with Zep's Kashmir and other experiments to the late nineties and 2000's popular re-emergence of drone.

I'd assert that these things, in western pop music, go back a bit longer. The Incredible String Band (who were big and popular and influential at the time even if they're now regarded as an embarassing 60s cliche) stake out a good case for being the first "world music" act, or the first to incorporate what would become "world music" into their compositions.

Most noticably Northern African elements, but hillbilly, american negro, indian and eastern european elements too.

I'd like to sit and work some time lines out because on the other side of the pond you had the dizzyingly eclectic Kaleidscope chucking middle-eastern things into the mix. It'd be interesting to figure out who was first, though it's quite possible that neither outfit knew about the other.

The Stones had a sitar on "Paint It Black" - certainly they got that sound on record before the Beatles did.

There was world music before Peter Gabriel - or Paul Simon.

Listened to any of the Joe Boyd "Lucky 13" podcasts? The theme tune is Dudu Pukwana's "Church Mouse" from '70 or '71. One Richard Thompson is playing kwela guitar on that. Mike Heron (of the ISB) recorded a solo album in 1971. It opens with a blast of township horns (arrangement by Dudu Pukwana) grafted to a sort of Spencer Davis blue-eyed soul composition.

Those last couple probably don't count in the greater scheme of things though - those recordings sunk without trace in their own time. Fun, but not particularly influential.

deefstes

Jack Flash Jr wroteThat does mean "we" have dumbed down music worldwide to a certain extent

Have we really dumbed it down or have we perhaps smartened it up? The Koto is a good example. I'm sure you would know more about Koto tuning than I do but, if I'm not mistaken, the Koto today is not tuned the way it was tuned traditionally. During the period when the Koto was used solely for traditional classical Japanese music in the imperial court, it was tuned to a much different and less understandable tuning. These days the tuning is more in line with western intervals, making it easier to play and more diverse. In the imperial court there were only a set number of pieces that were played (could be played) on the Koto. So it would seem that the change in tuning was for the better and thus not a "dumbing down".

singemonkey

Before the string-band there was John Coltrane and his "modal-jazz" based on his experimentation with scales used in "non-western" cultures. That was freakin' amazing stuff.

Western music has it's strengths, just like other forms have there's. Furthermore, Western music was given a massive, over-dose, shot in the arm at the end of the 19th century in the USA when the descendants of African Slaves's adoption of western music became noticed - now modified by their own cultural music forms whose origins they had mostly forgotten. Western music after that combined classical music's incredible mastery of harmony, and western European folk's wonderful melodies, with the rhythmic and improvisational genius of African music.

There's nothing simple about Duke Ellington's work, for example. And nothing easy and simple about what Louis Armstrong was doing - no matter how catchy it was. To back up what Jack is saying, I think that fusion of African folk, Western-European folk, and European classical music, is a very potent mix that knocked people out in cultures all over the world. An explosive combination.