Performer- Wade Darnell
Culture- It is important to realize that American music is a part of World Music. I think we often forget to include ourselves into the conversation on world music and tend to focus on culture unfamiliar to us.
Instrumentation- Banjo
As I continue to work on the circular unit project, it becomes more and more apparent that we tend to leave ourselves out of the category of "world music" because it is what we know best. It is important to take a step back and put ourselves in the shoes of people from different cultures and then look at our music in order to appreciate it as "American Music". We tend to discus the music of cultures we are unfamiliar with, and then compare it to other cultures we are still just beginning to learn about. Why not compare the different cultures to the culture we know best?
By comparing and contrasting the music of different cultures to the music of our own culture, we can better understand both sides of the conversation and maybe even discover something new about the culture we have been surrounded by for our entire lives.
I definitely like the idea that you bring out regarding American music as being world music, even though we usually don't treat it as such especially in the classroom. The issue that usually comes along in Western Art Music in America is the fact that America is so new, and so the majority of the music can find some sort of root in Western Art Music. Because of this, I feel like a lot of scholars and educators try to stay away from American music when talking about World Music.
ReplyDeleteOf course American music is world music and we are fortunate to have such a wide variety of styles/genres. We make the separation between Western European Art Music in academia simply because that has been the dominant music shared and learned in music schools. Still, even that is a music of the world, is it not?
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