Hi Ira,
useful pointers concerning Adorno and
the competitive space for a chosen path.
Point taken, also, on the ammo given to
the narrow listener, the oven-ready quip.
Apologies. And thanks.
What you say about antecedent
and parallel musics to Jazz, out of various
African communities is actually echoed by
attitudes that have been circulated from, say,
young Jamaican activists towards such precedents.
These attitudes cut both ways. There can be a
disdain for the African musics as being less
'developed', heard that line before and that is
matched by sentimentalised nostalgia for
an untarnished Africa that never was (take the
Ethiopian - Rastafarian adventures).
It is found also in the surges of interest in
'world' musics (musaics) that shuns (for example)
English Dance Musics, British narrative song
traditions and so on. Forms of right-on othering.
I continue to be astonished by the compartmentalised
ears of so-called music-lovers. "I like speed-metal,
but can't bear grunge", "Miles was great in the 50s
and the 60s but is patently off his head during the
70s - all that awful discordant electic noise".
As with one subject, dear to you heart i know, the
reaction from the purist folk community to Dylan
'going electric' at Newport.
Much of the problem lies in off the peg category
and dimished or impoverished reference. Plus, of course,
people still tend to like what they think they know
and know what they like. They also tend to go
for the cultural hit that does it to them every time,
over and above that which they don't yet know how
to process. All such displays prejudice, habit,
acculturate response.
Systems, at the very least, are there to be tested.
But surely the great blackbird in the purple hebe
will one day sue Messian's estate for shameless sampling.
Outrageous, to use a source - other than one's own!
What about all those Moorish influences on early
flamenco - Cante Hondo? Scales from our eyes?
You're right, at least Adorno addressed some of the issues.
Actually I find him hilariously dry on Bach.
love and love
cris
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