[lbo-talk] Taste in music {was: volume)

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Jun 24 09:06:53 PDT 2003


Alex
> before you go off generalizing hip hop as "macho nihilism"
> try to listen something other than the top 40 marketed crap
> that seems to encompass your worldview of the genre. as a

Jks:


> Course one might read the classics: Othello, say (jealousy, murder,
fraud), or MacBeth (murder, usurpation, tyranny, revolt); or Anna Karenina (adultery, suicide), or Homer's Illiad (slaughter), or listen to opera like Tosca (attempted rape, tyranny, murder, suicide) . . . . Jks

WS:

It is not that much the lyrics but how the music is being used and by whom - blasted in everyone's face from cars and SUVs by urban gangstas, suburban jocks and assorted wannabes. Nobody does that with classical music.

The same holds for country and western - the lyrics are ostensibly about "love" - but the music is used as the anthem of redneck machismo. I would go as far as saying that the "Ride of the Valkyries" is objectionable based on the way it was used in the "Birth of the Nation" - except that it has been used in that context only once. But I guess I would hate Wagner if I lived in Germany (not that I like him now).

It would be more accurate to say that I dislike certain groups of people and by implication, the cultural expressions that define their identity. In the same vein, I dislike guns and SUVs - not as machines but as cultural identity symbols.

Wojtek



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