White people ruining shit for other white people

[Clinamenic]

Yeah as much as I'm enamored with classical right now, I think its clear that kind of gatekeeping is misguided. There are other roads to excellence.

I think there is value in taking a set of rules and integrally transcending them, but here you are free to reject these rules. Perhaps not if you want to reach certain heights of institutional prestige, but free in your own pursuits, which is considerably more important in my opinion.

 

[woops]

jazz and pop music are both 100% based on western notation. i thought @thirdform might have told you that there are whole worlds of non-western music from india, japan, turkey, wherever, surprised he missed that chance. but i know this post is a waste of time.

 

[luka]

jazz and pop music are both 100% based on western notation. i thought @thirdform might have told you that there are whole worlds of non-western music from india, japan, turkey, wherever, surprised he missed that chance. but i know this post is a waste of time.

he didnt miss the chance. he said it, just like he always does.

 

[version]

Another facet of this stuff is ironic engagement. Someone likes the music, but feels obligated to acknowledge that it's somehow silly that they do.

 

[woops]

he didnt miss the chance. he said it, just like he always does.

yeah he did sort of but he also didn't point out that there's plenty of microtonality from the west too. but it only began to emerge after 2,000 years of culture

 

[Clinamenic]

Another facet of this stuff is ironic engagement. Someone likes the music, but feels obligated to acknowledge that it's somehow silly that they do.

Yeah this is the sort of in-culture game theory I think @suspended has his finger on the pulse of.

 

[forclosure]

only read the first two posts of the thread, but i have noticed that talking about hip hop in england (mostly with real people rather than the internet, which is an important distinction) is an area where i've encountered some of the most dickhead responses over the years. the one that sticks in my mind is someone pretty much laughing in my face when i told them i liked JME, over drinks in Audio in Brighton in about 2008. but there have been a few things like that and basically in england i am a bit wary of talking about it much, not least because my hiphop taste leans towards the garish and mainstream (as in, mainstream in the US), and that does tend to get looked down on a bit, and i find the 'backpacker' stuff essentially quite boring. aesop rock obviously, but even a lot of the griselda stuff that i think seems to be popular with those types.

i have always vaguely assumed that this is something to do with the decontextualised nature of being into an artform where the engine of it is on another continent. lets face it, its really hard to know much about what black americans are like if you're not around and seeing it with your own eyes (much less participating in it). there is a kind of insecurity there i think, people trying to one-up one another. which is an interesting question for a forum like dissensus actually.

I remember one Northern gentleman telling me "you have to be rapping over your grandad's record collection" for it to be real rap

granted in the "real world" rap in england even with the advancements made over the years is still treated with a "lol rap music is a thing" kinda regard, Honey G when she was on X Factor or like Radio 4/Edinburgh Fringe types making the same kind of "i'm a white guy using Run DMC flows" jokes you thought would've been put to pasture by now, on the same level as that terrible Ben Folds cover of Dr. Dre

you're right about the decontextualising part its why people over here can amass a knowledge of rappers across the US but never know the real context and the responses to that i've seen can be a double edge sword

 

[forclosure]

The music that was most looked down upon when I was in school was actually dance music, specifically stuff like bassline and hardstyle which people would label as "chavvy".

would it surprise you to know that people STILL use "chav" now? and i've seen americans use it, i feel like that's just a result of them being around the kind of english people who think the kooks and the zutons are important bands

 

[woops]

barty, a musical prodigy, will tell you that western classical is almost childlike in its simplicity and if you want to hear something complex in technique and conception the only place to go is jazz

funny. anyway it's not at all true that complexity = number of notes in your scale = musical worth. everyone on dissensus knows this.

 

[version]

would it surprise you to know that people STILL use "chav" now? and i've seen americans use it, i feel like that's just a result of them being around the kind of english people who think the kooks and the zutons are important bands

The thought of an American pronouncing it is really jarring.

 

[forclosure]

and of course my nemesis Munya Chawawa making those kind of jokes but having the gumption to say he's doing it as a nod towards cultural appropiration and fake ownership of black culture

fuck off cuzzy

 

[luka]

funny. anyway it's not at all true that complexity = number of notes in your scale = musical worth. everyone on dissensus knows this.

i dont think he was assessing it on that basis.

 

[forclosure]

The thought of an American pronouncing it is really jarring.

as jarring as Brits saying "boomer"

 

[shakahislop]

I remember one Northern gentleman telling me "you have to be rapping over your grandad's record collection" for it to be real rap

granted in the "real world" rap in england even with the advancements made over the years is still treated with a "lol rap music is a thing" kinda regard, Honey G when she was on X Factor or like Radio 4/Edinburgh Fringe types making the same kind of "i'm a white guy using Run DMC flows" jokes you thought would've been put to pasture by now, on the same level as that terrible Ben Folds cover of Dr. Dre

you're right about the decontextualising part its why people over here can amass a knowledge of rappers across the US but never know the real context and the responses to that i've seen can be a double edge sword

one thing that i did notice when i got to the US is that for a while i got a bit put off some of the hiphop i like. coz there was something really different about listening to all the macho will-to-power boasting (in some of it, not all of it obviously) in a place where slowly those voices and accents slowly dissolve from being decontextualised cartoons and become associated with actual people that you meet. i'm not talking about black people necessarily. just that there is something in all the boasting and showing off which is really american, you come across it all the time here, and its jarring at first when you have a european sensibility about these things and haven't adapted yet

actually one of the most interesting contextualising things here, that helps me hear the music better and get more out of it, is the existance of a black middle-class. i basically had no idea that such a thing existed in the us, not that i'd ever thought much about it. but suddenly things like saul williams made more sense, that there were all these black people not in the ghetto, living in fort greene, harlem, that kind of thing.

 

[sus]

@suspended i bring up indie rock in this instance cause considering how big all that was in the 00s and compare that to some of the bands now who are considered notable they're total opposite to say Bright eyes,Beirut,Animal Collective & Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire especially its like if you told certain people now that they were once a very big deal they wouldn't believe you

Funeral sold a million records.

 

[forclosure]

webbie, to be fair, is very catholic in his tastes. there was more rock music than rap in his top 100 from what i remember.

name me your favourite album and i'll listen to it start to finish and freak out my new neighbours

there was but alot of that stuff was from like my mid teens when i wasn't listening to rap, i believe alot of them writers who think of themselves call it their "bohemian years"

Its not like i ever binned the stuff i liked before hand out of embarassment never did its just somebody had opened up my mind to what was out there and that was the stuff i just went raggo with it lol

no way was i gonna let dem crackers take away Essentials and Scarface from me NOT EVER

 

[sus]

It's a wonderful record, one of the oughts classics. Yeah it's about teenagers, it's all a bit romantic and sentimental etc etc but rock music is a genre for teenagers, so

 

[sus]

@suspended there's even articles about how people on Tiktok are trying to bring back "indie sleaze" and "twee" NOW IS YOUR TIME

Yes Beiser and I were talking about this recently, hard to tell what's manufactured from what's genuine revival, if it is genuine revival, it says something interesting about the retro period shrinking dramatically. It used to take decades but now aesthetic turnover is so rapid that it can happen in 8 years. Etc etc. Assuming it is a real revival. I haven't been in New York lately so I don't know what people are wearing. @shakahislop is it a genuine revival?

 

[luka]

It's a wonderful record, one of the oughts classics. Yeah it's about teenagers, it's all a bit romantic and sentimental etc etc but rock music is a genre for teenagers, so

fairly certain arcade fire was for 30-something couples about to put down the deposit on their first home

 

[version]

Shaka's leading the indie sleaze charge.