Jazz

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Mon Jan 22 04:37:32 PST 2001



> Gordon Fitch wrote:
> > If it is America's _the_ classical music, then you're going
> > to need a new box for Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Harry Partch,
> > Brain Eno, etc. I guess Glass and maybe Eno can go in the
> > semi-pop box but the others are going to be a problem. They
> > aren't jazz and they aren't pop and many people take them
> > very, very seriously.

Uday Mohan:
> Eno's a Brit. And Reich's been remixed (the "Reich Remixed" CD) by
> electronica artists. Partch seems too idiosyncratic to be labeled
> classical. He's certainly not part of any performance canon.

I meant, _if_ composers like that were going to be subjected to classicization treatment.


> > What differentiates classical from pop in Indian
> > is discipline, ambition, and context.
>
> No formal elements? And success in both Indian classical and pop musics
> require ambition and discipline (from what I've seen as a not very
> knowledgeable fan of some of it).

Different kinds of ambition and discipline. As in the West -- and here I'm going only by ear and intuition, since I've only begun to study Indian music theoretically -- some subjects and moods seem to be appropriate to classical but not to pop. The point I was trying to make, though, was that Indian "classical" music is a _living_ practice, like jazz is supposed to be, rather than a serious of embalmings, and it's connected to its roots in folk-traditional-popular music just as jazz is supposed to be, and as "classical" Western music was when it was alive. So the word "classical" seems to mean something different in the Indian context.



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