this is a boring blog entry related to what i study:
argh blargh, got into a dumb conversation with the musicologists today about 'the work' and 'the music itself.' someone in class asked, 'i'm confused and maybe i don't understand ethnomusicology very well, but do you guys listen to music for its pure aesthetic value' and what she meant was either the less harmless and maybe true 'does your field consider musical sound as its grounding principal' or the less benign but real question 'do you guys even listen to the music' or worst of the possible, 'how could you listen to that music and think of it as a discrete experience?' which i don't think she was asking, but other people ask that and while i would argue that popular music is important because it can make reference to things (other music, culture, politics, etc) it can also stand as 'a work' if that were something that we or anyone would ask of it. is it useful even to consider any music as a closed entity, with no author and no listener? maybe from a musicianship/teaching perspective.
anyway, i do think that there is a big problem in my field with not listening - not talking about listening and not actually listening, but i am also sure that the basis in anthro-derived methodology is absolutely needed in my work/thoughts about music and that the disconnect between critical/engaged/communal listening in an academic setting might have something to do with the fact that, as ethnomusicologists, many fear making judgements all together, or seem to be paralysed when asked to make on the fly comments about something that is 'outside of their interests.' this is, of course, the total opposite of music criticism where opinions might come out even before listening (like ethno, sort of, based on exterior elements, only not culture in general but industry/hype/pr culture) or without context or real, deep listening. where is the best place to be with listening? writing and thinking while the music is 'still fresh' or long after it has become 'a part' of the listener's brain?
well, whatever.
if there is one thing that i really believe that was passed to me by the dudes at brown u., it was that there is 'no music itself.' there is sound itself, but the study of that sound is science.
the sound of science, the science of sound, the science of the mind, mary timony, ash bowie, math rock, roads to space travel, baltimore, the aquarium, the sound of the sea otter tank, phillip glass, lincoln center, damrosch park, the freaky french circus people, the organgrinder, fritz lang's 'm', die kindermurder!, childlike, joanna newsom, fairies, tori, piglets, eeyore, tales of loss, songs of love and hate, famous blue raincoats, epistilary romances
