I was trying to post comments to Chris' and Katie's posts and it wouldnt let me, so here is a new entry.
First, chris and Peters': Quite an interesting post.. don't really know where to start commenting. I will skip commenting on the computer stuff.. But will comment on the music stuff. One thing that is interesting about ethnomusicology is that it is sort of the study of the historical document of music from different cultures. At the same time... music is such a thing of the present. One performance, one instant. When playing quarter notes at 120 beats per minute... you get 2 notes per second, thats it! Can't ever get them back. Yet theres this huge class and body of academia on this thing... all of these academic types crawling around jungles with tape recorders looking for new music to catalog in the historical record, Doing research on the drum techniques of pygmy tribesmen in africa, trying to encompass what exists in Arctic music, etc. While it seems foolish to research a thing that should only exist in the present, I really enjoy it a lot.
As far as what music is... I refer to a quote by the Late, Great John Coltrane: "Overall, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many and wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe... That's what I would like to do. I think that's one of the greatest things you can do in life and we all try to do it in some way. The musician's is through his music." This talks about a musician's goal, but I think it can help the listener to concentrate on the many and wonderful things they can see through music. One last quote that is nice... "A musician's canvas is silence" ...it always reminds me of how much music is in the present context and is tough to bring out of the past.
A comment for Katie:
I too wasn't sure about the whole Chinese music thing... but WOW. Huge props to the Chinese musicians, and Susanna.. I eagerly await your project merging their music and hip hop..
As far as the whole cultural revolution thing goes... it must've sucked for the musicians who had to put down the music and instruments they had taken their whole life to master and take up other jobs or play crappy music. The Daoist drummer particularly saddened me, because he was sooo good.
Posted by jonesp at March 29, 2005 02:27 AM