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It’s Time to Let Classical Music Die


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2019 Jul 5, 9:04am   4,352 views  18 comments

by Bd6r   ➕follow (2)   💰tip   ignore  

Welcome to the Brave New World of Wokeism.

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/its-time-to-let-classical-music-die/

Classical Music is Inherently Racist

In my previous articles, I laid out my experiences and reasoning for coming to this conclusion. I started with “Am I Not a Minority?” to explain the everyday racism people of color experience and how it manifests on an institutional level. If you haven’t read it already, I encourage you to explore how institutions uphold their power by choosing which minorities to give access to.

The few scraps given to minorities are overwhelmingly white–occupied by white cisgender women or LGBT+ individuals. The few PoC who are given access to institutional space are most often light skinned and non-Black while also exoticised and tokenised.

And that led me to my second article, “Escaping the Mold of Oriental Fantasy“–a personal history of isolation and colonization, of how Western classical music participates in the act of destroying culture and replaces it with its own white supremacist narrative.

Western classical music is not about culture. It’s about whiteness. It’s a combination of European traditions which serve the specious belief that whiteness has a culture—one that is superior to all others. Its main purpose is to be a cultural anchor for the myth of white supremacy. In that regard, people of color can never truly be pioneers of Western classical music. The best we can be are exotic guests: entertainment for the white audiences and an example of how Western classical music is more elite than the cultures of people of color.

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1   theoakman   2019 Jul 5, 9:36am  

Blacks of the past invented their own music that white's couldn't come close to playing either. Motown, Jazz, 70s Funk, and 80s/90s hip hop. I would say that in the 2000s, hip hop degenerated into such crap that whites were able to produce the same nonsense.
2   Automan Empire   2019 Jul 5, 11:03am  

Silly author. Here's the solution: Go ahead and compose stuff as good or better than, say, J.S. Bach.

It's humbling (not ego-threatening) to think that by the time Mozart was my age, he'd been DEAD for almost 20 years!
3   marcus   2019 Jul 5, 11:08am  

How silly can you get ?

Good music is eventually embraced by a lot of people, and it's independent of race. The race of those that invented it is irrelevant. Sure, dominant cultures at a given time are in a place to have financial and other resources in support the development of art and music as well as its gaining public exposure. In modern times music and other art is still more likely to be produced and marketed for and by dominant cultures, but race is irrelevant. The biggest market for Jimmy Hendrix was white teenage boys.

Surely the race of the Beatles, Stones or Joni Mitchell for that matter (all white), or many of the most globally successful 20th century pop music acts is not coincidentally aligned with the most developed countries, and the markets of their initial markets at that point in history. But that doesn't mean that the market place and capitalism can't do a good job of identifying talent. WE do have a problem now with music being relatively free, but thats a different discussion.

My bottom line on this:

Mass media in modern times has so far been a good arbiter of whats commercially good in music and a lot of that has been good in a way that transcends the fact that it's commercial. Often it goes the other way, but that's the price we pay, that is the garbage music that doesn't interest us. The market place working includes all forms of classical, which should live as long as there is a market for it. And even after that, when the market is small there will be immense amounts of classical available to it's devotees.

Music is independent of race, but it's not independent of intelligence.

Not that I think it's the case, but if we are being periodically observed by some far more advanced alien civilization, classical music as well as other music, would be one of the things that give them hope for us.

theoakman says
Motown, Jazz, 70s Funk, and 80s/90s hip hop


And Reggae.

Surely much the best music has yet to occur, but few people could argue that the pop music of the 20th century has not been positively influenced by everyone's embracing music irrespective of race.

I've never even heard of a racist that argues for keeping music "white." And if they did, they're probably too ignorant to understand the influence of nonwhite cultures on the music they like the most. Nobody is that fucking racist.
4   Automan Empire   2019 Jul 5, 11:13am  

marcus says
I've never even heard of a racist that argues for keeping music "white."


A huuuuge impetus for the Drug War and shifting obsolete law enforcement resources at the end of prohibition to marijuana was to prevent "the scourge of black musicians using their African inspired jazz beats to seduce white women."
5   Bd6r   2019 Jul 5, 11:15am  

The issue is that OP-type crap is becoming acceptable and no one calls it out for what it is, namely race-baiting. A few years from now this will be printed in NY Times and will be called a Brave and Stunning Editorial, and perhaps we will hear this on stage of 2024 D debates.

Shuffle the card deck and pull out something that instantly becomes RAYCIST because Fucking White (Males) oppress everything.

Automan Empire says
Silly author. Here's the solution: Go ahead and compose stuff as good or better than, say, J.S. Bach.

Exactly. I'd bet that author can't write shit for music so xe writes editorials. Similarly, the complaints about females not getting visibility as comedians have been brilliantly addressed by Bill Burr..
www.youtube.com/embed/2Pn1RVZu-24
6   Bd6r   2019 Jul 5, 11:22am  

jazz_music says
While you're at it same with all those old canvases by Michelangelo, da Vinci, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Picasso, Raphael, Monet, Velázquez, Renoir, Degas

I am sure those are racist as well, and should be burned together with Shakespeare's books as symbols of white privilege.
7   Tenpoundbass   2019 Jul 5, 11:22am  

Classical music annoys people with low IQ's.

It's like Jazz, but real Jazz. Not the erratic noise kind, people call Fusion. That's music, so Stupid people can say they listen to Jazz.
8   marcus   2019 Jul 5, 11:25am  

Automan Empire says
A huuuuge impetus for the Drug War and shifting obsolete law enforcement resources at the end of prohibition to marijuana was to prevent "the scourge of black musicians using their African inspired jazz beats to seduce white women."


You have a point. That's why I said:

marcus says
And if they did, they're probably too ignorant to understand the influence of nonwhite cultures on the music they like the most.


Because Jazz was already commercially huge and had been greatly affected by black artists at that point.

But you're right. Stupidity and fear know no bounds.
9   Bd6r   2019 Jul 5, 11:29am  

marcus says
Because Jazz was already commercially huge and had been greatly affected by black artists at that point.

I'd say jazz was CREATED by black artists. At least that is what they say in New Orleans
10   SunnyvaleCA   2019 Jul 5, 11:33am  

Classical music, especially the works of Bach, is a building block for most of the music western music that followed, including nearly everything from the USA even in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ask yourself this... where can I go to a store and buy a keyboard instrument with something OTHER than a 12-note octave with 5 accidentals? Where do you think something as fundamental as that configuration came from? Who worked out the tuning systems and music that caused it to come about? I'll give you a hint: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/

So, are the people trying to leave classical music behind also leaving behind classical (Newtonian) physics? I guess we'll throw out classical calculus too? Let's throw out all the science, mathematics, and engineering that were perfected during the classical music era as well! We can go right back to the dark ages.
11   Automan Empire   2019 Jul 5, 11:38am  

SunnyvaleCA says
So, are the people trying to leave classical music behind also leaving behind classical (Newtonian) physics?


Whiny socialist types seem to have an affinity for "atonal music" most of which isn't anything I could finish listening to once much less play over and over again throughout life.
12   Bd6r   2019 Jul 5, 11:38am  

jazz_music says
That's not why they would be eliminated.

Look out below. Totalitarianism is getting established here.

It's a matter of national survival all frivolity and distraction must be eliminated.

I don't know, younger generation is incapable (at least majority of them) to concentrate in order to read a book anyway, irrespective of their political views. Attention span has decreased to 30 seconds or so and critical thinking is not taught any more. Twatter, facebook, and Instagram have successfully dumbed down their users.
With respect to crap I posted in OP. I'd argue that the fact that collective Left does not shun this type of garbage is largely responsible for the rise in Trump and assorted other sociopath populists in politics, not the other way around.
13   Bd6r   2019 Jul 5, 11:42am  

SunnyvaleCA says
So, are the people trying to leave classical music behind also leaving behind classical (Newtonian) physics? I guess we'll throw out classical calculus too? Let's throw out all the science, mathematics, and engineering that were perfected during the classical music era as well! We can go right back to the dark ages.


"On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White"
She also believes society's focus on maths as a key skill can perpetuate discrimination against minorities.
Ms Gutierrez said knowledge is "relational" and must be treated as such, saying: "Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/teaching-maths-white-privilege-illinois-university-professor-rochelle-gutierrez-a8018521.html
14   marcus   2019 Jul 5, 12:57pm  

I read the rest of the article, and actually think the guy has a point. And he actually loves classical music. One might allow that just maybe the distasteful and racist way he makes his point is just to get peoples attention.

But I think he could accomplish more (while getting less victim status), by trying to gain more exposure for the less commercially successful Mideastern music he wants to support, by playing the game from within the western system.

Making the system the enemy is not the way to do it (although that's not what certain ill-conceived political cults seem believe these days).
15   Bd6r   2019 Jul 5, 1:02pm  

marcus says
less commercially successful Mideastern music he wants to support

Middle East is pretty affluent itself, many countries are better off than West. Seems that ME music in theory could be very commercially successful at least there. Xe is going off from an West-centric assumption that only success in so-called West matters.

Also, the guy is supposedly able to be culturally immersed in Middle East without knowing Arabic, which is a sign of laziness and idiocy.
16   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Jul 5, 9:47pm  

Anybody who doesn't now think there's a listsrv for the wokenuts ...


... is in the River in Egypt.
17   Tenpoundbass   2023 Mar 29, 1:45pm  

Delta blues and Jazz musicians had a great understanding of Classical music. Their understanding of scales, and different tunings while not getting lost was better than most Guitarists on any album out today.

Muddy Waters gave an interview in those early Library of Congress tapes, (before the Rock revival and coinage of "The Blues")
When asked about his playing style and his tunings, Muddy replied that he tunes to open chords, and the scales he plays is the Spanish Scale.
It was later the labels in the 60's called it "The Blues" and redone all of the great blues songs(as it were), using standard tuning and simplified the music to Pentatonic Scales which they call Blues Scales today. They played Pentatonic scales back then too, but it was almost a Chromatic scale than a Pentatonic scale. But those Delta guys were playing more complex scales than Pentatonic scales. BB King has his own scale, that still to this day I have not seen it identified as anything but "This is how BB King played his leads".
18   clambo   2023 Mar 29, 3:39pm  

No wonder I like classical music.
I listen to KDFC with my Roku.

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