Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Wed, 22 Jul 1992 10:15:39 EDT
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      This page intentionally left blank

From:         Sonia Kovitz <skovitz@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject:      Stravinsky--oops

> Re: my message yesterday on Stravinsky--I actually meant Shostakovich.

Okay, I thought that Stravinsky was living in Europe by the time the heavy
hammer came down. Not that it was a particularly smooth time for him anyway--
I believe he had a bout of tuberculosis, and lost a wife and child to
tuberculosis, between the depression and the war. His really doleful piece,
I think it's the Symphony in C, was a reflection of that.

>    ...Because
> my brain is teeming with casts of thousands from ponderous Russian novels,
> these things happen.  (I was especially thinking of Shostakovich's symphony
> on the seige of Leningrad during WWII.)  Anyway, I think Stravinsky is a more
> interesting composer.

I think so too, but I don't dare say so out loud where Tim can hear me.

From:         DMetcalf%IC-LOG@WALKER-LTT.ARMY.MIL
Subject:      CHANTS

> I seem to remember a reference in an old sci-fi novel (was it 1984 or Animal
> Farm?) to the author (sometime in the early 1940's or earlier) predicting
> that the 'music of the people' would degenerate into mindless lyrical
> "chanting"... is that what's happened?  Did that 'way-back' author foresee
> "rap" music?  What impact will "rap" have on music in the future?  Is it a
> valid form of music, or only one ethnic group's means of self-expression in
> the face of frustration?

I don't remember this from Orwell. I vaguely remember another SF pulp story,
a detective potboiler in an interplanetary setting. One planet was apparently
the planet of conspicuous consumption, where the inhabitants wore suits with
loudspeakers built into them, and playback units that had a switch to tailor
your personal musical accompaniment to your mood-- I remember the detective
chose the music for "Bold and Daring Enterprise." So this author foresaw
either the Walkman or the ghetto blaster. I can't remember anything else
about the story, it was otherwise pretty wretched.

But I confess that I have a problem with rap. My idea of music is intimitely
connected to melody, and rap pointedly doesn't have any. I generally don't find
its rhythms interesting enough to compensate, either. And I find the idea of a
popular music that tells people it might be worthwhile to shoot me because of
my skin color a lot more threatening that a popular music that tells people to
enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. Silly of me, isn't it? I'm checking into the
Tipper Gore Clinic for Disillusioned Liberals tomorrow...

I think there was something in field hollers, spirituals, blues, etc. that's
missing from rap, besides melody: faith in a higher power, serene acceptance of
life's manifest crap in the interest of peace and justice, something like that.
I'm trying to be sensitive here both to the way religion was used as a tool of
oppression among the slaves and the Amerinds, and to Rotcod Zzaj's justifiable
mistrust of the faith of his fathers :-) But the way I see it, spirituals stand
for an attitude in line with Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, leaders who
worked for change in a principled and spiritually healthy fashion, and ended up
not only improving the lot of their fellows but enlightening their erstwhile
oppressors. The tone of rap is more likely to be the voice of the Symbionese
Liberation Army. And I got news for you: what comes out of the barrel of a gun
ain't love.

All disclaimers about vicious overgeneralizations apply in droves, of course.
But if you want to refute me, please include an instance of a rap track that not
only preaches calm and reflectivity, but fosters it in its sound. My perception
of most rap grooves is, they're intended to make you dance, so they make me
fidget.

From:         MARGUERITE MCANNALLY <M0MCAN01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
Subject:      Country Music List

> It appears this list is fairly dominated by heavy metal, blues, and folk.

Nonsense. Those are just the threads you've run into this month. You missed the
Drum Wars, Prokofiev and the Russian Front, the First Church of Sharrock, and a
whole bunch of blather about my band :-)
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