Bottom line on American culture is that we're a nation of immigrants. And when the cultures mix, then you get some great new things out of that. Same thing happened in Cuba with African influences mixing with Spanish. And the rest of Latin America.
In America we've got several cultural musical traditions. Celtic fiddling, folk, country, and white gospel (which is different, it's not soulful like black gospel is).
Of all these groups, my objective opinion is that black Americans have contributed the most to CREATING the basis of our popular music. Everything else was added in later. Jazz is an American invention, that was black folks. The Blues too, again black folks. And Rhythm and Blues.
Historically, the neat thing is that all this cultural treasure came out of misery -- SLAVERY.. African beats and songs that evolved on the plantations into slave songs and black gospel. So I just find that interesting, how beauty can come from misery -- blues from black culture, and country music from poor white culture.
But if you must pick one, objectively, Jazz and blues are the greater musical achievements.
We white folks can sing soul, but it's derivative, we did not come up with this, that's just the bottom line:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')t Last-Etta James
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1uunRdQ61M
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Cultural death
Re: Cultural death
by Sixstrings » Sun 29 Jul 2012, 12:54:59
And that's okay to be derivative, an Asian can play a nice moonlight sonata but lets just not forget to give who came up with it some credit, you know?
P.S. by the way, the "find a white man to sing the black music" thing has happened more than once. First you had Elvis. Then black folks invented rap and hip-hop, and there were failed starts to find "the white man" like with Vanilla Ice and it was just a joke. Eminem crossed over, this time with black producers backing him but he's still not the real deal, and of course you've got Justin Bieber. Another "find a white man to sing the black music" thing.
Music IS culture and the best music comes out of poor cultures, rich folks are too fat and happy playing with their dancing horses in the Olympics. Great art requires pain, it's always been that way, if you're not in pain then all you can do is sing others' songs and be technically proficient but that's about it.
While we continue to argue about whether black folks came up with rock and roll, right now some poor American subculture is coming up with the next big thing that will later get appropriated by the music industry out to find "a white man" to sing their songs.
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Re: Cultural death
by SeaGypsy » Sun 29 Jul 2012, 17:45:23
Do you hate Jews or really just not like them?
You can't talk about Jazz without talking about New York City.
You can't talk about New York City without talking about it's music.
You can't talk about NYC's music without acknowledging the important specific cultural mix occurring in NYC at the time of the emergence of Jazz.
The key here is the mixing of several key groups. Saying 'Jazz came from blacks'; man just flabbergasts me. Jazz is a fusion of elements from all over the USA, Cajun, Delta Blues, Celtic, Cuban and Eastern European Jewish are all very much part of what happened in NYC.
So is the timing; post civil war and the banishment of slavery, the first new waves of migrants after this, from within and outside came to a paradise of freedom. Undoubted NYC was the center of the new world. The philosophy was grand, the openness unmatched anywhere on the planet. If it was folks of African descent playing the most popular music, that may have been down to the fact they had come from the lowest existence most suddenly to this miraculous exodus. Your summaries to date in this thread do no justice to what actually occurred in the Jazz renaissance of NYC.
On another issue, you love Elvis but hate Eminem?? 'Not the real deal' What a statement! He is a trailer trash child rape victim, man I have no idea how he could get more 'real' without doing the reverse of what Michael Jackson did, an all over black tatoo perhaps? How real would that be? It could easily be argued that Eminem is more original than Elvis. Like him or not, he has a very powerful life story and is taken seriously by black folks. Definitely an exception to the rule. Go look at a Beasty Boys concert vid and see how many black folks are in the audience (none/ because they really are shit, regardless of having sold a billion records). What about the Soggy Bottom Boys? Mainstream Delta Blues at it's finest; by a bunch of white folks.
You oversimplify American musical cultural history. I'm not arguning with you for the sake of it, but because you are wrong and some of what you are saying is offensive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08e9k-c91E8 (Movie version/ Oh Brother, where art thou?)
You can't talk about Jazz without talking about New York City.
You can't talk about New York City without talking about it's music.
You can't talk about NYC's music without acknowledging the important specific cultural mix occurring in NYC at the time of the emergence of Jazz.
The key here is the mixing of several key groups. Saying 'Jazz came from blacks'; man just flabbergasts me. Jazz is a fusion of elements from all over the USA, Cajun, Delta Blues, Celtic, Cuban and Eastern European Jewish are all very much part of what happened in NYC.
So is the timing; post civil war and the banishment of slavery, the first new waves of migrants after this, from within and outside came to a paradise of freedom. Undoubted NYC was the center of the new world. The philosophy was grand, the openness unmatched anywhere on the planet. If it was folks of African descent playing the most popular music, that may have been down to the fact they had come from the lowest existence most suddenly to this miraculous exodus. Your summaries to date in this thread do no justice to what actually occurred in the Jazz renaissance of NYC.
On another issue, you love Elvis but hate Eminem?? 'Not the real deal' What a statement! He is a trailer trash child rape victim, man I have no idea how he could get more 'real' without doing the reverse of what Michael Jackson did, an all over black tatoo perhaps? How real would that be? It could easily be argued that Eminem is more original than Elvis. Like him or not, he has a very powerful life story and is taken seriously by black folks. Definitely an exception to the rule. Go look at a Beasty Boys concert vid and see how many black folks are in the audience (none/ because they really are shit, regardless of having sold a billion records). What about the Soggy Bottom Boys? Mainstream Delta Blues at it's finest; by a bunch of white folks.
You oversimplify American musical cultural history. I'm not arguning with you for the sake of it, but because you are wrong and some of what you are saying is offensive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08e9k-c91E8 (Movie version/ Oh Brother, where art thou?)
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Re: Cultural death
by vision-master » Sun 29 Jul 2012, 19:05:55
This is a boom era in music, with high speed internet, just about anything is right at your finger tips. We never had it so good, never....
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Re: Cultural death
by Sixstrings » Sun 29 Jul 2012, 19:22:05
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'D')o you hate Jews or really just not like them?
SG, I seriously think they have entirely different history books in Australia.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'J')azz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in black communities in the Southern United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz
See that's the wiki.. note: BLACK COMMUNITIES. note: SOUTHERN UNITED STATES.
It doesn't say New York City nor anything about jewish folks. But I guess the wiki is all wrong and Jewish people in NYC invented jazz.
Let's try the opposite approach.. what ARE you willing to say of the unique musical contribution from African Americans? What DO you give them credit for? Surely gospel, I assume. And R&B, surely you cede that, and I assume the Blues.. ?
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Re: Cultural death
by SeaGypsy » Sun 29 Jul 2012, 20:01:36
I totally agree Afro Americans are the key players. I am also aware they did not develop Jazz in isolation from other ethnic communities, especially in NYC, which must include Jewish and Irish musicians in particular.
Wiki is not always right. It's an open forum. For example I just had an argument with my first aid teacher, who was a helicopter rescue service officer for 20 years, the highest level of paramedic in Australia. He had been lazy and relied on Wikipedia for information about poisonous box jellyfish. When pressed he mentioned the centrality of James Cook University's research on these nasty critters. During the first aid course, he was giving information from Wikipedia which directly contradicted JCU's findings and would have resulted in wrong first aid, possibly resulting in death.
My reading of Jazz history is that there were major melodic influences from Jewish musos. Google it.
Wiki is not always right. It's an open forum. For example I just had an argument with my first aid teacher, who was a helicopter rescue service officer for 20 years, the highest level of paramedic in Australia. He had been lazy and relied on Wikipedia for information about poisonous box jellyfish. When pressed he mentioned the centrality of James Cook University's research on these nasty critters. During the first aid course, he was giving information from Wikipedia which directly contradicted JCU's findings and would have resulted in wrong first aid, possibly resulting in death.
My reading of Jazz history is that there were major melodic influences from Jewish musos. Google it.
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Re: Cultural death
by Sixstrings » Sun 29 Jul 2012, 23:57:49
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'J')azz - Marcus Miller - Estival Jazz Lugano 2008 (HD)
Those guys are all black, save one white dude on keyboard. If Jewish folks invented jazz then let's see the evidence. I can't wait to go to New Orleans and hear all the great Jewish jazz bands. *I have nothing against Jews, but neither would I credit African Americans for matzo balls*.
SG says wiki isn't reliable, but for general things it's good like when somebody just denies something obvious like the moon landing or how rock and roll and ragtime and jazz and blues really did come from African Americans.
If you read the wiki on Jazz, you'll see the whole history laid out from slavery on up.. African drum beats.. black gospel.. blues.. ragtime.. it's all a progression, the very term "rock and roll" is as much BLACK as the word "rap" was. "Rock and roll" was black American dialect. They came up with it, they were derided for it, white folks wouldn't let their kids listen to it, so you can't deny them the credit now in 2012.
On the jazz wiki you'll see 19 black artists featured and 5 whites. Two of which appear to be Jewish. The roots though, it's definitely black American, and to this day you go see a jazz concert it's going to be mostly black folks performing.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')y 1808 the Atlantic slave trade had brought almost half a million Sub-Saharan Africans to the United States. The slaves largely came from West Africa and the greater Congo River basin. They brought strong musical traditions with them.[19] The rhythms had a counter-metric structure, and reflected African speech patterns. African music was largely functional, for work or ritual.[20] The African traditions made use of a single-line melody and call-and-response pattern, but without the European concept of harmony.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz
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