All Indian music sounds the same to me.
Is that just my limited upbringing? If I had been brought up in India, would I find the same rich variety in Indian music as I do now in Anglo-Saxon music?
I could say the same thing, for me, about Arabic music, African music, or South-American music. Is it just me being a bigot, or does the European/American tradition really have more variety than music from other continents? Enquiring minds want to know. Perhaps readers with a richer life experience than me (not hard to find!) can enlighten me?
Bert stepped up:
It has been demonstrated for a while now that the decoding of visual information is a complex process, carried out by multiple mechanisms located in different areas of the brain.
For instance, the ability to instantly recognize familiar shapes comes from the pre-processing done in the optic stem, and not the brain itself (which is too slow). This pre-processor is trained mostly in the early ages, and will adapt to any given environment. The older you get, the harder the retraining.
Conscious exploration of an unfamiliar scene (like, say, an artist's rendition of an alien society) takes much time and effort, when compared to just looking out your window. People who have traveled far will know the feeling too.
[I do believe that a great deal of an artist's quest in the visual arts resides in going beyond this automatic understanding of our perceptions. To "unlearn" what has been automated, in order to view things as they truly are. But I digress.]
It has been my opinion for some time now that the same must be true of hearing. The most obvious signs come from the processing of spoken language. For example, it has been demonstrated that natural and second languages (i.e. learned pass the age of about six) are processed in different areas of the brain.
As a consequence, while one will effortlessly decipher any variation on his own mother tongue, localized accents in a second language often are a problem (for me, anyway).
I believe that in this regard, music should also be considered as a form of language in its own right, and that some training of specialized sub-processors is involved in the decoding.
If the parallel with speech holds, it is therefore likely that "alien" music (let's call it that, for we are all somebody's alien ;) is not processed in the same way as the music one has grown up listening to. It would require some re-training of the hearing centers before alien music could be fully "understood", and even then it is likely to never become completely familiar.
Note that differences in hearing between people go much deeper than that. For instance, I do believe that musicians and non-musicians do not hear the same thing when listening to music. For example, when two different musical pieces are played at the same time, I hear mostly unpleasant noise, and separating the two requires a great deal of conscious effort. Yet I have seen musicians write down the score of a part they were "working on" while humming to background music. And by "working on", I do mean listening to it. To a tone-deaf person like me, this kind of feat does appear impossible.
Yet, in my years as a sound man, I did demonstrate an ability to decompose and debug "sound images" that was uncanny to many musicians. This often led to strange situations where, while both the musician(s) and I were working on the same piece, we had the hardest time communicating (while we managed to make fun of this most of the time and did manage to achieve good to outstanding results, it was extremely inefficient and that's what ultimately led me to pursue other endeavors).
It is likely that there are many more forms of hearing, apart from the two I describe above, although I cannot easily imagine what those might be. Anyway, such variations certainly explain in part why we are constantly puzzled by others. Brings us back to this old cliché: reality, as filtered be our own abilities, simply isn't the same for each of us. [Perhaps bigots see something really ugly when they look at the naked body. =8O ]
Note that the above is only an opinion of mine, supported by little scientific fact... much more would need to be said and done to fully explore the topic.
13 comments:
I'll have to agree with you - Indian music does indeed sound the same to me too. This is probably a product of the music culture we are programmed with from an early age.
Chinese music also sound ALL the same - like a large box of knives and forks falling down the stairs.
Eolake, you mean the classical Indian music, don't you? Because if you played and listened to the modern Indian music of artists such as Nitin Sawhney, Talvin Singh, Medieval PunditZ or Zakir Hussain, you might well discover, that it is a music that is not boring at all :)
It has been demonstrated for a while now that the decoding of visual information is a complex process, carried out by multiple mechanisms located in different areas of the brain.
For instance, the ability to instantly recognize familiar shapes comes from the pre-processing done in the optic stem, and not the brain itself (which is too slow). This pre-processor is trained mostly in the early ages, and will adapt to any given environment. The older you get, the harder the retraining.
Conscious exploration of an unfamiliar scene (like, say, an artist's rendition of an alien society) takes much time and effort, when compared to just looking out your window. People who have traveled far will know the feeling too.
[I do believe that a great deal of an artist's quest in the visual arts resides in going beyond this automatic understanding of our perceptions. To "unlearn" what has been automated, in order to view things as they truly are. But I digress.]
It has been my opinion for some time now that the same must be true of hearing. The most obvious signs come from the processing of spoken language. For example, it has been demonstrated that natural and second languages (i.e. learned pass the age of about six) are processed in different areas of the brain.
As a consequence, while one will effortlessly decipher any variation on his own mother tongue, localized accents in a second language often are a problem (for me, anyway).
I believe that in this regard, music should also be considered as a form of language in its own right, and that some training of specialized sub-processors is involved in the decoding.
If the parallel with speech holds, it is therefore likely that "alien" music (let's call it that, for we are all somebody's alien ;) is not processed in the same way as the music one has grown up listening to. It would require some re-training of the hearing centers before alien music could be fully "understood", and even then it is likely to never become completely familiar.
Note that differences in hearing between people go much deeper than that. For instance, I do believe that musicians and non-musicians do not hear the same thing when listening to music. For example, when two different musical pieces are played at the same time, I hear mostly unpleasant noise, and separating the two requires a great deal of conscious effort. Yet I have seen musicians write down the score of a part they were "working on" while humming to background music. And by "working on", I do mean listening to it. To a tone-deaf person like me, this kind of feat does appear impossible.
Yet, in my years as a sound man, I did demonstrate an ability to decompose and debug "sound images" that was uncanny to many musicians. This often led to strange situations where, while both the musician(s) and I were working on the same piece, we had the hardest time communicating (while we managed to make fun of this most of the time and did manage to achieve good to outstanding results, it was extremely inefficient and that's what ultimately led me to pursue other endeavors).
It is likely that there are many more forms of hearing, apart from the two I describe above, although I cannot easily imagine what those might be. Anyway, such variations certainly explain in part why we are constantly puzzled by others. Brings us back to this old cliché: reality, as filtered be our own abilities, simply isn't the same for each of us. [Perhaps bigots see something really ugly when they look at the naked body. =8O ]
Note that the above is only an opinion of mine, supported by little scientific fact... much more would need to be said and done to fully explore the topic.
Indian music is in fact much more varied than western music. Not only does their use of quarter tone intervals allow more finesse in melodies, but their rhythms are often more complex and sophisticated too.
Perhaps listening to an Indian song performed by a western rock musician might help. Here is Jeff Beck performing Nadia.
Here is the original sung version by Nitin Sawhney & Reena Bhardwaj.
Indian music is in fact much more varied than western music. Not only does their use of quarter tone intervals allow more finesse in melodies, but their rhythms are often more complex and sophisticated too.
I laughed my ass off when I read this. Western music is far superior. Where are the Mozarts, the Beethovens, the Bachs of other types of music like Indian, but any other. Wesern music has such variety and subtlety that no other can match.
Too funny!
Wesern[sic] music has such variety and subtlety that no other can match.
Are you a relative of Miss Carolina by any chance? How about taking at least a cursory glance of the subject before spouting your nonsense.
You will not be able to understand this but for the benefit of other readers I will state one more example. Indian classical music uses just intonation (absolutely pure intervals), whereas western music uses the equal tempered scale (all notes are very slightly out of tune).
Why this is so in western music is another topic. But what this means is that Indian classical music is extremely complex. They are essentially continuously shifting their scales to fit physically pure intervals as they go -- within a single piece. This obviously requires a lifetime of training. A western classical musician couldn't dream of grasping the skills needed for that.
However, a western string section left to their own devices will gravitate towards pure intervals, but the problem comes from the instruments with fixed scales, such as brass and the reeds, which can not play in just intonation.
Whatever the reason, I find the same effect even within different types of western music; much of it seems the same to me, and I can't appreciate it the way others seem to. For what its worth, as a small kid, all I can remember hearing at home was classical music. Maybe my brain was programmed like Bert suggests.
It seems to me that the Indian classical music with tablas and sitar (traditional Indian musical instruments) makes the tune of the music finer. Its a good idea to mix the Indian beat with western music. Woohoo! I am sayin' this not because I am just an Indian its sounds great, trust me.
Forget what I said, I have just found the answer to why Indian music sounds wrong to you... you need to have your ears fixed!
TTL, you are a colossal fool. I can just picture you sitting at your keyboard, typing your bullshit, hoping that no one calls you on it. Have you presented any proof that Indian music is somehow superior? No, you have not. This is just the oh-so-popular current trend of trashing superior Western culture and trying to prop up the inferior cultural traditions of inferior countries. Finland is one of those inferior countries, which has produced nothing of value in art, music, philosophy, or science. I don't wonder why you try to tear down at every opportunity what others have created.
I pity you.
"Have you presented any proof that Indian music is somehow superior?"
The question was not about superiority. It was about variety, and maybe also about complexity and subtlety. I have presented three items of proof, or at least talking points, on that.
"This is just the oh-so-popular current trend of trashing superior Western culture and trying to prop up the inferior cultural traditions of inferior countries."
Huh? Personally, I much prefer western music to eastern music. But this discussion was not about preferences, so I keep my preferences out of an otherwise technical discussion.
"Finland is one of those inferior countries which has produced nothing of value in art, music, philosophy, or science."
Finland has produced plenty in the fields of art and music. But, I agree, not so much in science, and hardly anything in philosophy.
"I don't wonder why you try to tear down at every opportunity what others have created."
Huh?
"So don't talk to me about the English. Because while the Greeks were building roads and cities and temples, what were the English doing? I'll tell you what the English were doing. They were running around in loincloths, plowing up the earth with the arse bone of a giraffe!"
Shirley Valentine on compartive merits of Greek and English culture.
From "Shirley Valentine" by Willy Russel.
Shirley was ticked off at Dougie for slaggin' the Greeks. In the 1980's Britain was "superior" to Greece in many respects. There are times when Greek culture was above the British, there were times when Indian culture was above British. Indeed, right now India is probably exporting more films and music than Britain, and delivering more KLOC too.
The example of Where are the Mozarts, the Beethovens, the Bachs is interesting. Why harp on about Europe's past? Why not cite Liegeti, Strauss(Richard), composers who are from less than 100 years ago, but have stood the test of time, even though they are sometimes un-listenable. What about now? Where is our classical music? Not John Williams? How about Philip Glass, or Adams? Oh, Michael Nyman.
What about when the cultures come together? You get interesting pieces like Glass and Shankar's Passages. EO, as a Bowie fan will back me up with comments on Glass's abilities which show in "Heroes". Another interesting blend of cultures in music was Gabriels interpretation for "The Last Temptation of Christ", or what about Yuki Kajiura's style, a blend of European and Japanese influences.
Ah, for Pascal, this is the type of waffle without maple.
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