So you wrote
"Dear Bart,
Why not compare Neville to Caucasian people in his home genre (easy listening) instead of African Americans in other genres (Armstrong:jazz, Wonder:R&B)? The soundscape of popular American music is more complicated and diverse than "drum pattern recycling" as you call it. If you do not educate yourselve in the distinctions, you end up making irrelevant comparisons based on skin color."
All right then
Do you really believe I' m daft or candid enough not to know of the widespread labellings "easy-listening" and "R&B" ? Do you seriously buy R&B wasn't ever meant to be "easy-listening" in the first place, when composed by songwriters in order to appeal to a broad audience, thus making big bucks out of music? Why should we finally subscribe to artificial differences imposed upon us by the music industry?
Secondly, what is the good of bringing about this improper and archeologically-speaking controversial dated "caucasian" term? (for further unprejudiced, trailblazing ethnological information, try reading enlightening "Black Athena" from Martin Bernal) Who broached the issue of "skin colour" if not you? And so by the same token who is trying to "make distinctions"?
Unfortunately, I happen to believe that the "soundscape of popular American (with capital A) music" chiefly consists of....well, popular music, period.
Next, you wrote
"1) There has always been crappy music in every age and genre. The newest stuff has a higher proportion of crap because it has not been filtered out yet. There are some terrible Baroque operas out there, they are simply not done anymore because they could not withstand the test of time.
2) Some new music is great, and you can't assume you'd recognize it to be so, anymore so than Beethoven's last quartets were appreciated in his time"
It's all fair and square, still a wee bit besides the point, that is, the point I was humbly trying to make. So this time try having the grace not to misconstrue the purport of these lines I'm again delivering to you:
Aaron Neville, albeit unintentionally as far as he's personally concerned, belongs to a category of American Pop Music the major record companies europeans "delegates" keep on importing regardless, owing to the fact he is a black american (all right, I said it bluntly). Little does the qualitative content matter to them, inasmuch as it's a trendy thing to do. Now if you're wishing to read me in the small print, you'll be relieved to find out that my criticism neither points to the black american community nor to americans in general. It rather underlines a contemporary western european sociological pattern, which I suspect reveals a latent offset to exacerbated guilt feelings towards formerly enslaved and colonized people. Is it such a huge sacrilege to call this up? Does it prevent me from beeing a "peaceful person"? Or is it you mistake peace for mental motionlessness? Why should taking on historical responsabilities prevent one's scrutinizing mind eyes to shed politically correct blindfolds in order to take a sharper look at disturbing modernity edges?
Now for the asking, who knew better enough to feel commited to decide certain "terrible" Baroque operas were not to stand the test of time? Was every human beeing (shackle)free back then, able to read, write, and vote? So if you really stand for respect towards non "caucasian" minorities, why not first try to clear your judgement from sureptitious surrounding prejudice?
Let us call the cease fire And join into the peace choir Bart
|