THE REFLECTION
Reflecting on these weeks will be incredibly difficult because of the so many responses which I gained from the participants. Yes, this began as a reaction to Burkhalter’s Seismographic Sounds and specifically the section on WAR but it became so much more than that.
It became a discussion. A discussion about race, about acceptance, about politics, about history. A discussion driven by music.
And that was something incredible to see.
Burkhalters Seismographic Sounds uses this same idea, he sections the book into WAR and MONEY and GREED and all of the reactions are focussed upon these topics, but much of what is said is more scholarly and constructed… This was much more open and raw. The scholars, musicians and writers were given time to create a piece of writing focussing on a song, the participants in this experiment were not granted the same courtesy. All of the reactions are as they hear the music for the first time as well as directly after they have been given further information. I chose to do this, as opposed to giving them time to compose a piece of writing, because I felt as though reactions the reactions would be much more natural than written and edited pieces. It helped that it was in blog form, as there was less focus placed upon the academic writing and more upon the responses. Considering they began interviewing in 2013 and the book wasn’t published until 2015, they were given plenty of time to be ‘methodological and theoretical’ in their approach (p. 11).
I think the comment that will perhaps stick with me for the longest is ‘you’ve got to try if you want to find music from elsewhere… And I’ve never bothered’ which Helen Brew made all the way back in week one. And it’s true. The diet of English and American music doesn’t allow scope for Global musicians to make a name for themselves in the Anglo-Americanised world which we are living in. But, do they want to be? Everyone assumes that the pinnacle of success is to break into our Western music scene… But is it really? The songs I chose for the participants to listen to were specifically based on WAR, firstly because it was the section that drew me in during Seismographic Sounds, but secondly because I thought it might create a discussion. And it did. I think one element which perhaps became the main focus for a lot of the participants, which wasn’t so much focused upon in Seismographic Sounds was the lack of diversity there is in the music we listen to in England. There were rare occurrences where interviewees had heard of the artist or song I showed them but more often than not, they were completely clueless as to the artist, country and genre of the music. Seismographic Sounds, on the other hand, relies upon the knowledge of the interviewees to make commentary upon the music, this almost did the exact opposite. It affected all of the participants in many different ways, with some being angry at the media whilst others became angry at themselves. The overwhelming response though, was that we need to try harder to get to know more music. We are so harpooned in our small knowledge and trapped within the genres we know we like, that we are unable to see beyond this. I think a lot of the participants realised this and a lot of them decided that it was time to broaden their horizons.
It surprised me how many of the responses commented on politics… People know a lot more about politics than you might think. The theme of war, although difficult to discuss always (due to the language barriers), was very prominent in a lot of the weeks – but I was surprised by how much of the conversation was lead by politics. Much of what is spoken about in Seismographic Sounds is the same – often discussing the extent to which the government are to blame for the wars in said countries – but the profound nature of discussions which came out of simply listening to a piece of music often left the participants in a state of shock. some participants weren’t necessarily interested in the political statements which were being made and were simply focused on the music, but the vast majority were the exact opposite. Many of them were enticed by the political message, which perhaps indicates that meaning has a lot to do with whether we are interested in a song or not. Seismographic Sounds is unable to make this comment because the participants are all already interested in the kinds of music that are being played to them, meaning that naturally their sole focus is the message behind the song. For this reason, it was interesting to combine both of these elements and gauge the opinions of people who knew very little.
So… Did the recreation fail?
To emulate Seismographic Sounds was always going to be difficult and I gave it a good go.
But yes, I think it did fail. It created something completely different from Seismographic Sounds, it was its own entity completely. Instead it was a politically driven commentary upon the inability for Westerners to accept anything outside of their societies own expectations.
It emulated the findings of writers such as Jace Clayton, Keith Howard and Thomas Turino (to name a few) with their findings on Global Pop music in the 21st century. And I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.
As with many pieces of music, this blog began as one thing and became another. It was inspired by but not an exact copy of a book believing that ‘when passion, talent and energy of artists, scholars and journalists come together… the world become[s] richer, more diverse, and at times more challenging’ (p. 13). I believe to narrow this down to artists, scholars and journalists excludes the input of the everyday consumer, the one who really… Music is made for.