tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post8202000808823338521..comments2024-03-27T23:06:03.736-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: Friday MiscellaneaBryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-39472504396206024072020-02-27T09:53:11.983-06:002020-02-27T09:53:11.983-06:00Yes, I have thought many times that Hot Tamales &q...Yes, I have thought many times that Hot Tamales "They're Red Hot" is in a somewhat different genre than the other Robert Johnson songs.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-63038255164462729252020-02-26T19:04:19.540-06:002020-02-26T19:04:19.540-06:00Well, "Hot Tamales" is pretty jazzy/ragt...Well, "Hot Tamales" is pretty jazzy/ragtime in terms of chord vocabulary and form so it's not really any kind of slip up to have heard that element in Robert Johnson's work. <br /><br />Hagstrom Miller quoted Johnny Shines as saying Robert Johnson was willing and able to play any song he liked that he'd heard on the radio. By extension, the case is that African American musicians were into show tunes, pop songs, blues, gospel and even some classical (after all, William Grant Still and William Levi Dawson and Florence Price symphonies got written in the first half of the last century). Actually the kindle edition of Segregating Sound is fairly low priced, too. Wenatchee the Hatchethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13208892745502555715noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-47788853594654505252020-02-26T17:14:02.615-06:002020-02-26T17:14:02.615-06:00Before you jump on me, I meant to say "blues&...Before you jump on me, I meant to say "blues" not "jazz." Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-70305680833590368972020-02-26T10:03:52.192-06:002020-02-26T10:03:52.192-06:00Thanks for this deeply informative comment! I real...Thanks for this deeply informative comment! I really had no idea about the boundary crossings that you cite. Though as soon as you say that Thelonious Monk knew Chopin, one wants to say sure, why not? I wonder what music Robert Johnson played other than jazz?<br /><br />I will take your recommendation of the Kyle Gann book to heart. It has been mentioned before here, but I have not had a look at it.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-30136851385929134452020-02-25T19:37:55.261-06:002020-02-25T19:37:55.261-06:00the music business has a long history of shoehorni...the music business has a long history of shoehorning artists but Hagstrom Miller's case is that in the earliest decades the industry shoehorned people along explicitly racial lines. I.e. "hillbilly" musicians who had classical operatic training were steered into doing corn pone hillbilly affectations and black musicians who could play classical pieces were told they could only sell blues or jazz numbers. <br /><br />Where this becomes interesting as a counter-history is in the ways that contemporary music history and historiograhpy has showdowns with music journalism and histories more steeped in traditional 20th century concepts. hagstrom Miller specifically mentions Ted Gioia's Work Songs as a good book operating from a paradigm that musicologists and music historians have increasingly rejected in light of the work that scholars like Hagstrom Miller have been doing to demonstrate that there are racist essentialist narratives about "white" and "black" music that have foundationally misrepresented how interactive musicians were across genres prior to the consolidation of the commercial music industries. The easiest way to put it was that Robert Johnson could and was willing to play anything but he only recorded blues when record companies came by. Lonnie Johnson and his family knew classical works. Thelonious Monk was familiar with the works of Chopin but he was locked into jazz. <br /><br />It's one of the key disagreements I have with Ted Gioia's recent book, that he presents a series of paradigms that scholarship in the last thirty years has basically rejected. Gioia's white-math-science vs black-magic-shaman is predicated on treating most all forms of tuning as "science" or top-down control and yet I just finished up Kyle Gann's fantastically readable book on microtonality and the history of revolutions in tuning systems where he pointed out that the idea that tuning and temperament was "science" and not art is far more an invention of the last 100 to 150 years than it ever was in earlier eras of music. The Arithmetic of Music is gloriously cheap in Kindle edition and I recommend it. It won't make you a fan of Ben Johnston or Alois Haba or Ivan Wyschnegradsky if you weren't one already but Gann's book got me looking forward to, eventually, hearing Chrysalid Requiem. <br /><br />Wenatchee the Hatchethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13208892745502555715noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-75021918796483595372020-02-24T12:21:14.569-06:002020-02-24T12:21:14.569-06:00Wenatchee, I am always impressed with the breadth ...Wenatchee, I am always impressed with the breadth of your musical knowledge. I never got past that opening of the NewMusicBox article.<br /><br />Doesn't the commercial music business always try to shoehorn artists into certain predictable roles?Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-13938027060797848712020-02-23T18:31:32.134-06:002020-02-23T18:31:32.134-06:00the newmusicbox part 1 has me uncertain I'll r...the newmusicbox part 1 has me uncertain I'll read part 2. It seems like a variation of an idea I played with at my blog that I called "the liberation of being average". My journalism professor gave a short introductory statement at beginning newswriting where she said "I want to make sure we don't misunderstand each other so I'll get this out of the way. Most of you are average writers. Most of you will get average grades. There is nothing wrong with getting a C." I heard that and I thought to myself, "I love this prof already." <br /><br />Saw some of the Yolanda Bonnell headlines about her asking that no white theater critics review her ceremony-theater work. Being half Native American by lineage I get the claim that Native American voices are marginalized at a purely statistical level, Native people constitute about 1 percent of the U.S. population so inevitably that's going to mean that the even fewer artists of Native American descent are going to be marginal within a fairly literal percentage point of the national population. Which is why I'm ambivalent about invoking First Nation/Native American voices as marginalized in the conventional usage, made marginal by the nature of the market. Well ... yes, if Native/First Nation artists in theater or the arts are one percent of one percent of the national populace the "marginal" part is statistically inevitable. <br /><br />Requesting that no white theater critics review the work seems of a piece with a movement in North American commercial arts and entertainment to have a kind of sumptuary code that seeks to limit production and distribution rather than consumption as sumptuary laws often did in earlier societies. I've been mulling this over as a hobbyist who has never managed to be part of the paid music-making/gig scene. Whether that changes I don't know but I can keep writing and playing what I enjoy and see if others enjoy it, too. <br /><br />I just finished Karl Hagstrom Miller's Segregating Sound and it's interesting how lengthy and in most respects persuasive he is in arguing that the music industry has had a pretty extensive Jim Crow regime of its own, paradoxically promulgated by academic folklorists and industry leaders. Short version, the American South music of the music industry catered to and pandered to a variety of ethnic stereotypes that were imposed by the industry down on musicians. Lonnie Johnson and his family may have played light opera arias and Broadway showtunes along side blues in the 1920s but when the industry wanted to record Lonnie Johnson ended up playing blues (and jazz, his work with Armstrong and Ellington was amazing!).<br /><br />I also recently finished Jas Obrecht's book on early blues guitarists and it was fun to learn that Tampa Red recorded one of his first blues as a song accompanied by slide guitar and tuba! Wenatchee the Hatchethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13208892745502555715noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-12408525660662034272020-02-21T16:55:05.231-06:002020-02-21T16:55:05.231-06:00Thanks, thanks, thanks!!!
Keep those comments com...Thanks, thanks, thanks!!!<br /><br />Keep those comments coming, we love them.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-10545230356527558922020-02-21T16:02:07.206-06:002020-02-21T16:02:07.206-06:00Your Friday Miscellanea is so interesting --- inde...Your Friday Miscellanea is so interesting --- indeed your whole site --- I can barely keep up; your interests are wide (From Zappa to Stravinsky and beyond), your commentators are fine writers, plus you're a classical guitarist and composer .... what a blog! What a guy! I already know you're nice since all Canadians are nice and polite (at least that's what Seattleites feel when they visit Vancouver). I'm still writing a comment in my head to the Stravinsky post of a couple days ago .... cheers!Dex Quirehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06460141401009787503noreply@blogger.com