[lbo-talk] Indian Beatles

joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Fri Jun 9 21:29:07 PDT 2006


Don't get me wrong -- I have nothing against a fusion of styles, borrowings, imitation, etc. That's life, art, etc. But this is not quite that. I mean, I saw a lot of that in Romania where traditional music was thought backward and simplistic and boring when it was none of those things and abandoned in favor of seventh rate imitations of western pop and rock.

I see a lot of fusion and exploration going on in middle eastern music/dance and latin american music/dance and it seems, well, better and more fruitful. Maybe the problem is that I was watching TV, where the worst of the lot tends to gravitate.

Joanna

Dwayne Monroe wrote:


>Joanna:
>
>I eat at a neighborhood Indian restaurant as often as
>I can and they have their TV permanently tuned to some
>bollywood-type station. And on that station I see
>something which, I don't know, seems a silly imitation
>of Western pop and dance, and it's heartbreaking when
>I think of how much richer the native traditions are.
>I come from a country that has always been a wannabe,
>at least in the urban centers, and its urban culture
>is pretty vapid too.
>
>========================
>
>
>I do see your point, but consider...
>
>
>Traditions are invaluable but, as living things, have
>a limited space-time shelf life. That is, without
>their original context, venerable forms are museum
>pieces. Lovely? Often. Enriching to the "soul"?
>Sometimes.
>
>The real challenge for various cultures in the
>Anglo-sphere age is to craft their own style of
>modernity. Borrowing from the West is fine; the
>Japanese surely did it and then went their merry way
>into "Samurai Champloo" and "Paranoia Agent"
>territory. But there should be a synthesis of these
>borrowings into a unique vision of the new (because we
>don't want to go all Jerry Mander here and long to
>keep peoples in some idealized version of the past).
>
>A lot of the S. Korean pop I'm uh, subjected to is
>quite vapid. But what's the answer to that emptiness?
> I don't precisely know but I do know using the Akhak
>Kwoebim (15th century Korean book of the people's
>musical arts) as your principal guide would not be a
>21st century solution.
>
>
>
>
>
>.d.
>
>
>---------
>At my Buddhist strip club, there is no pole, no stripper, no techno...only the impermanent arising of mind-formed entities temporarily manifesting.
>
>http://monroelab.net/blog/
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
>



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