[ExI] music survey

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Jan 16, 2022, at 3:29 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> I knew that there were a lot of genres.  To my extremely limited musical taste, there's classical and there's 'other', which I called pop.

That’s fine if idiosyncratic. I mean it puts you at odds with ordinary usage, and it does lead to confusion. I would’ve made very different choices if I knew you simply meant ‘non-classical.’ For instance, I probably would’ve listed Polyphia and other recent ‘progressive’ or instrumental rock bands.

(Non-classical is also a problematic term. Are Johann Strauss II waltzes classical or popular? I would classify them in the latter category, but perhaps they fit into both. This is kind of like high/low distinction in art generally, where there are plenty of artists that span the distinction, such as Shakespeare. SF (and just any ‘genre’ fiction) is almost almost classified as low art by critics and theorists and ignored. This has changed a little recently, though I still run into people under my age who presume SF, horror, mystery, etc. are not or can’t be serious art. And often the exceptions are reclassified as not genre writers. So, if someone like Cormack McCarthy writes a Western (which is like almost all of his work), they’re not seen as Westerns, but as literary fiction. In SF, Kurt Vonnegut gets welcomed by the literary establishment, but I bet it’ll be a few decades before the current crop of sophisticated SF writers are. Reminds me of how the Nobel was looked down upon because epic poetry was the obvious form of high art in narrative literature.)

> Katy Perry - one of the funniest things I ever saw:  one costume featured large lollipops affixed to her breasts.  
> I wonder if part of her act is a sendup.  A satire.
> 
> Jazz - I heard Dave Brubeck Quartet in concert in Hyannis Port in 1962.  It turned out that Brubeck's is the only jazz I like (he was classically trained by Milhaud and wrote classical music).  I  do like some pre-1950 jazz.

Many jazz artists are classically trained, even after Brubeck. Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Jan Garbarek, Wynton Marsalis, and Herbie Hancock all started with classical training. I wouldn’t make classical training the disideratum of playing great jazz, but, if that’s what you’re looking for, there’s them. ;)

> I did say no review, but I was lying.  In Dan's post he mentioned Sandstorm, so I heard it on Youtube.  Extremely annoying.  Also Astronomia - not as annoying but plenty annoying.

Dance music, in general, tends to be like that. The Strauss waltzes come to mind and a lot of classical ballet music.

By the way, I mentioned those two pieces to make a point. I wasn’t offering them as my favorites. Similarly for Katy Perry. I believe most people would agree Perry is pop and Darude and Tony Ivy are not pop — even though all three are ‘popular.’

> Is there a genre where nearly total repetitiveness is not present?  The songs varied only in the voice part - the background was totally repetitive.  I wonder at the musicians who play it.  I would be absolutely bored out of my mind, if anything was left of it after doing it for a few years.  More later.   bill w

Kind of strange that your taste in poetry — well, based on that poem you shared here a few days ago — seems to be for sing songy (in other words, ‘nearly total repetitiveness’ in the meter) work. ;)

Regards,

Dan
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