[lbo-talk] Black music makes history

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Mon Oct 13 12:57:30 PDT 2003


CB: My grasp of it is perfunctory too. See Finkelstein's _Jazz: A People's Music_ and _How Music Expresses Ideas_. Some classical European composers used "folk" themes. The "folk" , of course, were dancing and partying, going to church, and , probably work songs. American slaves had field hollers.

Angela Davis has a lecture in which she discusses how music is more integral to everyday life and activities , such as labor, in traditional Africa than in traditional Europe.

I'd say classical jazz, as you describe it below, was integral to partying and recreating away from work - urban folk/workers' music; speakeasy, juke joint music. The key issue is the level and quality of audience activity and participation.

From: Carrol Cox

Could "classical[a] music" be defined as dance music turned chamber/concert music? My grasp of music history is perfunctory, but I believe that the traditions out of which first baroque and then "classical [b]" (=pre-beethoven) music developed were all dance traditions. And that concert music evolved from chamber music.

If so, then what Justin defines as a loss is more like the shift from Dowland to Handel????

_Different_ but neither better nor worse.

Carrol

P.S. Problem with terminology above, since "classical" has a least three separate senses, not easily disentangled. The "Jazz Classics" would not be "classical" in either sence a or sense b above, but in the popular sense of "classical," the best, the original. Someone else can try to untangle this if they care.



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