Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Seth, do you think you could you provide a beginner's list of contemptible or at least dislikeable music along with a brief description of it baneful effects so we'll know where to spit our venom and thereby make the world a better place?

Rick Riekert wrote:

Seth, do you think you could you provide a beginner's list of contemptible or at least dislikeable music along with a brief description of it baneful effects so we'll know where to spit our venom and thereby make the world a better place?

Sure.

In general music that glorifies and promotes mindless sex, violence, crime, rape, iresponsible drug use, political oppression, totalitarian regimes, genocide and/or homophobia is at the very least dislikeable.

Seth wrote:

Rick Riekert wrote:

Seth, do you think you could you provide a beginner's list of contemptible or at least dislikeable music along with a brief description of it baneful effects so we'll know where to spit our venom and thereby make the world a better place?

Sure.

In general music that glorifies and promotes mindless sex, violence, crime, rape, iresponsible drug use, political oppression, totalitarian regimes, genocide and/or homophobia is at the very least dislikeable.

I recall listening to a lot of Mississippi John Hurt at one time, mellow and elaborate acoustic blues fingerpicking, very "happy" melodies, almost "frolikingly" happy, one song in particular set to a joyous melody described how he discovershis wife cheating with his best friend, how he then stabs, shoots, and strangles her, then chops her up into pieces and dumps her body in the river. Kind of like a rap song only with an uplifting and soothing melody with Hurt's impeccable guitar playing.

Yeah, how about Last Poets, Tribe Called Quest, Blackalicious, Beastie Boys, Atmosphere, heck, how about some Snoop D-o-double G and some RUN-DMC, not to mention KRS-One?    How about some Africa Bambaataa, who sampled Kraftwerk?  That's just scratching the surface of great hip hop, a pretty amazing genre that contains turntablists, slam poets, rappers, beatboxers, and the pioneers of remixing and sampling.  I'm not even that huge of a hip hop fan, but I have to represent. 

My favorite artists include Depeche Mode, Ray LaMontagne, Jeff Buckley, Bat For Lashes, Led Zepellin, The Beatles, and various jazz and world and classical artists.

axolotl wrote:

Oops, my response is super late, but I feel like playing "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" by the Ramones now, followed by Nick Cave's version of "Stagger Lee". 

Yknow, my music is different for different occasions.  If I go clubbing, I want to dance to some industrial or techno, like Lords of Acid or Covenant or VNV Nation.  If I listen to music at work, it might be ambient or IDM so I don't have to focus on it too carefully.  If I have been scoring a film--well, I'll go listen to some film composers, or Henri Dutilleux or Stravinsky or Lutoslawski, or Dvorak or Arvo Pårt.  If I am playing music, well, I'm either strumming acoustic guitar, or I'm assiduously learning some shakuhachi.  It's all good.

And that, in my opinion, is the greatest thing about music. No matter what your doing or what your going through there is a piece of music that just right for that time. Not everyone needs to agree on what is considered good music or bad music, the point is that for every piece of music created there will be somebody out there just waiting for it to change their life.

Vevolis wrote:

Tweaker (Chris Vrenna, former drummer for NIN)
NIN (I'm lost on some of the recent releases)


I'm not too familiar with The Violent Femmes other than American Music and something about one kiss and a swear word and also the theme to Spongebob.

I'm fond of only one or two things i've written.

Oh. And Wind Him Up by Saga.

Ahh you are thinking of "Add it Up" 

Did you know that NIN will be touring with janes addiction this summer.  I"ve never had the pleasure of seeing them live (NIN)  but i'm hoping to change that, I bet its mind blowing!

I saw NIN on the Pretty Hate Machine Tour - Man, was Trent Pissed Off!  That was in 1991 - I have obviously not forgotten it... it was memorable.

Kiku Day wrote:

[
Nazi Germany loved Wagner's music. That is a fact. But Wagner's music has nothing to do with Nazi Germany.
When I first heard Wagner, I was so amazed by his reputation of being bombastic and grand. Despite his use of over-sized orchestras - I think his music is most of the time transparent and beautiful.
Both Richard Strauss and Wilhelm Furtwängler had to go through de-nazification after the war. Wagner was laying peacefully in his grave.

So, yes. I listen to a lot of classical music. I love opera! And when I am in London I am surrounded by what is now labeled 'World Music'.

I think in trying to endorse Wagner's music the only winnable argument is to say the man and the music are two separate entities that need not be confused.   Trying to argue that, yeah, he hated Jews but he wasn't a really serious anti-semite like those other guys is a really ugly path.   Wagner was a cultural hero in Germany who helped legitimize the perspective that Jews were alien creatures in Germany who needed to be removed.  And he was a passionate anti-semite his entire life.  He just went public when he got older when anti-semitism become more widely accepted.   Nazism did not spring up over night; it was a product of a long cultural legacy of which Wagner was not a minor player.   

I imagine for you this  issue is somewhat abstract.  But for me the holocaust is the event that killed off my European family, and the parents and grandparents of many of my friends and loved ones.    I mention this to just ask you to realize that referring to the holocaust as 'unfortunate circumstances' can be painful.

Seth wrote:

I think in trying to endorse Wagner's music the only winnable argument is to say the man and the music are two separate entities that need not be confused.   Trying to argue that, yeah, he hated Jews but he wasn't a really serious anti-semite like those other guys is a really ugly path.   Wagner was a cultural hero in Germany who helped legitimize the perspective that Jews were alien creatures in Germany who needed to be removed.  And he was a passionate anti-semite his entire life.  He just went public when he got older when anti-semitism become more widely accepted.   Nazism did not spring up over night; it was a product of a long cultural legacy of which Wagner was not a minor player.   

I imagine for you this  issue is somewhat abstract.  But for me the holocaust is the event that killed off my European family, and the parents and grandparents of many of my friends and loved ones.    I mention this to just ask you to realize that referring to the holocaust as 'unfortunate circumstances' can be painful.

I am sorry if I offended you with my post. I am not trying to defend Wagner. There were parts of his personal life that cannot be said to be positive at all. And I don't think man and music are two separate entities at all. No music without a man organising the sound - which is highly connected to his/her cultural background.

Seth, I don't think Nazi-Germany is an abstract issue for me. I am from a country that was occupied by Germany for 5 years during the war. I am half jewish and the jewish side of my family left Russia when... well... 2 million Russians died during the war.
I used the words 'unfortunate circumstances' because we all know (or hopefully we all know) that these years contain a lot of pain. This pain is different to each individual - I therefore used what I regarded as a somewhat open term for this to leave space for the individual experience of these years. I apologise if that was painful to you. I did not mean to belittle what happened with these words.

Last edited by Kiku Day (2009-03-25 08:14:58)

Kiku Day wrote:

I apologise if that was painful to you. I did not mean to belittle what happened with these words.

No need for an apology.  Without knowing someone well it's sometimes hard to know the intent behind some euphimisms.

To not have contempt or disdain or at least a dislike for some music is to ignore its potential to influence the world.

Sure there are musicians and bands and songs that I don't care for much, but my point was about discounting entire genres wholesale.  Furthermore, isn't ignoring or discounting these more brash accounts of life a way of ignoring or discounting aspects of life we find distasteful?

That would then, I assume, include 'The Ride of the Valkyries'?

Excellent point (and excellent avatar too!).  For folks that poo poo baudy accounts of sex and violence, let me direct you to the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Homer, whose works were written in verse and meant to have at least some musical quality to them.  The language doesn't sound so blatant to us, but trust me, that is mainly due to our romanticism concerning the past and our rather ignorant reverence for the unfamiliar.  Even more to the point, I'd say that the macho bravado so evident in Rap is reminiscent of some aspect of Japanese culture.

It's a slippery slope if we don't listen to music by bad people, musicians usually fit that category.

Not to mention the fact that not playing them silences less than desirable perspectives and the baser aspects of our history.  "Those ho do not know history are doomed to repeat it."  Since when is simply playing music, or even listening to it, an endorsement, anyway.

Sorry, I won't engage in the moralistic arguments anymore.  I know it is not the point of the thread, my apologies.

Thanks axolotl.  Yes Tribe Called Quest and Run DMC are favorites of mine.  I also enjoy Grandmaster Flash and Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, and a few other pioneer Rap/Hip Hop groups from my youth when Rap was just forming itself and coming into its own.  Some attitudes expressed here about Rap sound very similar to what I heard my parents an grand parents say about Rock N Roll bands like Steppenwolf, The Who, The Rolling Stones, and even The Beatles.  My dad, a 30+ year Navy man, used to enjoy calling them Hippy Pinko Faggots.  I know, it sounds so steryotypical, but it really is true.  They were going to be responsible for the dissolution of all that was good about Western Culture and moral values.  LOL.

How about also posing the question, "What do you not listen to"?  Try NOT listening to music you normally would listen to without giving it a thought for a while.  If you want to change your ear, stop listening to everything except shakuhachi for a week, then even longer, just as an experiment to see what might happen to you. I'd love to see a dozen people do this and come back and talk about it. I'm going have my students do this as homework.

Seth wrote:
In general music that glorifies and promotes mindless sex, violence, crime, rape, iresponsible drug use, political oppression, totalitarian regimes, genocide and/or homophobia is at the very least dislikeable.

Seth, the devil in your lack of details is words, not music; or if you prefer, words set to music, i.e. songs. I’m sure I’ve never heard a homophobic melody; though if, per impossible, one were to be written I see no reason to think it couldn’t be quite danceable or otherwise enjoyable. You seem to believe certain songs are morally reprehensible. If that means anything I suppose it means that performances of those songs incite or tend to incite people to do bad things they would not otherwise do. That belief and its consequences has a long if somewhat unedifying history, dating at least as far back as Plato. Is it true? I’m sure we can all give some anecdotal evidence that supports our own inclination, but that’s about it. As for music making the world a better place, I’ve been listening to Palestrina and the B Minor Mass for the past 30 years and am the same moral nondescript now as when I started. But then, Joseph Goebbels adored Mozart whose music was deemed too “violent” by 18C members of Vienna’s aristocracy (maybe they were right, eh?). So one shouldn’t expect too much. I once attended a performance of the St. Matthew Passion where half the audience fell asleep. To the extent that they were unconscious and not doing one another harm you might say that Bach’s music helped make the world a better place for those 3 hours.

All the best.