millions of people around the world disagree, including me

 

In nature, dance music is not teleological, or goal-driven and usually involves cyclical structures that obscures the sense of linear (past-present- future) temporality and broaches a more non-linear, present-based sense of time. And the people you refer to are usually decidedly reluctant to think.

 

In nature? How about in a laboratory?

That could be said to be the case of all cyclic or repetitive music generally, if one wanted to get reductive. This also, as I indicated before, is a pretense/stereotype of what "dance music" is, when people can (and indeed do) dance to practically anything. From a generative perspective, any instrumentalist could be said to dance their music into being. The dance is the physical gestures they employ to realize what you hear, whether you in turn dance to it or not.

The notion of "linear time" seems easily disprovable. All times do coexist. But not because there is some more-accessible "now" - it's precisely the opposite. There is no universal "now", no present moment or direction of travel that can be assumed to share meaning between any observers. It's a trick of human perception, not unlike how looking close around you, it can look as if reality is flat, rather than your planet (and all of spacetime) being curved. Likewise, time appears linear if one observes only their surroundings on some certain scale. It can appear cyclic if seen on another scale. But the way it works is more "holographic", that is to say, nonlocalized.

This is why IMO music which has rhythm and a strong sense of discontinuity - bebop, breakcore, avant-garde classical - makes the best dance music. To paraphrase Salvador Dali, the vitality of pointillism is that it is an expression of our realization that matter (and time) is essentially discontinuous.

 

This I like.

 

In my case, I couldn't agree more. Back in the day, I was writing and producing pretty good alternative rock music. But, a few nights per week I went out to dance clubs. I confused my love for dancing and beats with creating music. Hence, I started producing dance music. Looking back, I messed up — derailed. For the most part, my dancy stuff (although produced well) isn't nearly as heartfelt or good as my indie rock-ish stuff.

 

I like dance music

 

Hang on i must have left my pseudo-intellectual dance music criticism hat somewhere else. My words just weren't big or authoritative enough last time.......
I am unsure as to what to replace all dance music with now that i have seen the light....please educate me as to what I should listen to that is so superior?
Should the artist already be dead? or just old? are they allowed to use electricity or must the notes be inscribed on parchment by quill with oak gall ink by a tallow lamp?
oh hang on through consultation with the encyclopedia britannica 1884 i found this [my dance music addled brain couldnt remember what teleological meant!]:
Teleology, (from Greek telos, “end,” and logos, “reason”), explanation by reference to some purpose, end, goal, or function. Traditionally, it was also described as final causality, in contrast with explanation solely in terms of efficient causes (the origin of a change or a state of rest in something).
and
A teleology is an account of a given thing's purpose.
For example, a teleological explanation of why forks have prongs is that this design helps humans eat certain foods; stabbing food to help humans eat is what forks are for.

So surely rhythm=danceability? and all music has some kind of rhythm?
If this thread carries on I will be forced to find a scientific explanation for why dance music works neurologically.......unless anyone else knows a bit more about it?

 

so funny or so absolutely not funny that ppl dont get it and fight over a term which is determined completly different and has many way of definitions....thinking they fight bout the same but talking bout different things.... dancemusic is not a solid term like yes or no...
this happens also on so much other areas these days...not good...not clever&smart ;)

 

yeah i did get a bit carried away there.....
i did try to read this:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_music#Rhythm but i didnt understand it.

 

The genuine type of music is the one that has been produced by the mere notes. I call them the note music.

In the 20th century by the entrance of improvisation techniques (without much thinking) and heavy reliance on the rhythms (disembarkation of African dance cultures in the US), notes' place in making music declined.

Just listen to "our music"s. You can hear anything other than notes and they pride themselves on producing modern music.

 

Oooh, like serialism? Tone rows, that sort of thing?

Your original post refers to "big composers" (a term I asked you to clarify), so you are starting from a category error. Improvisation and composition have some overlap, but they are often in practice different activities, with different concerns.

How do you determine how much thinking was supposedly involved in a given type of improvisation? And don't all of these improvisations typically involve the use of "notes"? If music is sound organized over time, then how do you account for the passage of time if you only compose and notate notes? Do all of your notes play simultaneously, or do you just write something like "4/4 60mm" and then stop thinking about it? Where does your temporal structure come from?

Why African rhythm specifically? I assume that you are aware that all cultures have rhythmic components to their music.

So, what makes constraining oneself to an arbitrary selection of frequencies "modern"? Aren't you basically just categorically denying any other kind of structure based upon some vague ethnocentric criteria?

 

Why do you play with words like post-modernists? They are patrimony and exquisite-art destroyers and and solely responsible for anything goes wrong. They are the conspiracy itself.

 

I... use words to communicate with people. Part of that process is refining meaning. I engage with people by asking them about whatever they find noteworthy to remark upon, instead of just passively nodding my head. Unfortunately, many people get defensive about this and shy away. My perspective is that it's a good thing that I cared enough about what they said to ask for more detail.

I tend to be wary of any instance of blaming literally everything upon THEM. "They" tend to be some blanket category a bigot ascribes to them, rather than anything one professes to themselves. It's always the reactionary mob who decides that person X is a postmodernist, a commie, a Jew, etc. - and as such are "fair game" for abuse.

Actually, I would argue pretty much the opposite - postmodernism tends to be based upon critique, i.e. a critique of modernism. Encouraging critique and literacy has a decentralizing, egalitarian influence. That runs pretty much counter to "patrimony", the notion of The Exquisite, greatness, etc being based upon a cultural canon that is supposedly for everyone, but curated in hegemony and cultural dominance. Do you aspire to "Make Art Great Again"?

This sort of "word play" you point out is firmly rooted in classical thought. Practices such as rhetoric, dialectic, logic, Socratic method, etc are ways people have conceptualized, refined meaning, communicated cultural value for thousands of years. But THEY are supposedly disingenuous, compared to those dismissive and anti-intellectual people who insist upon some unquestioned personal or cultural authority, who try to enforce some vague traditions that they themselves do not understand well enough to argue for? I disagree. Questioning the assumptions of ourselves and others is how people learn, and the biggest danger tends to be the seductive security of supposing that we finally have definitive answers. Many of our most significant questions may remain the same, but the answers often change with our understanding.

 

yeah, JOOF stuff is top, and i realized now how much talent and effort 00 Fleming puts into his label

 

Providing so-called equal chances for all people to annihilate everything (without knowing what they are in actuality) is the postmodernists' only achievement. Normal people can't make exquisite art. Now play again.

 

What does that even mean? There are probably countless works of your so-called "note music" in existence. In what sense are they supposedly "annihilated"? Giving attention to work that you, or some other self-declared "authority" doesn't care for, doesn't deprive you of anything real. It only deprives you of your sense of personal and/or cultural superiority, which you arguably aren't entitled to anyway. The Canon of Great Culture is simply imperialism, making excuses today for what is essentially rule-by-fiat. Your ancestors conquered somebody, so you pay lip service to their ideals and achievements all being "great" because they led to these circumstances. But this is absurdly simplistic, and IMO probably done mostly to excuse past and present uncivilized behavior with a veneer of virtue and respectability. It's easy to excuse force and low-cunning when they are in defense of the status-quo.

In any case, it is all a process of transformation. Nothing is ever "created" without something else being "destroyed". Whether its a tree and an animal used to make your paint brush, or the tranquil silence that existed before you bowed your cello. So what's the harm in knowing what cultures, what achievements were "annihilated" to create your culture, and your "exquisite art"? If that devalues them somehow, perhaps you can explain. Or perhaps you are invested in yourself or others being ignorant of this process, for some reason.

THEIR ONLY ACHIEVEMENT sounds like obvious hyperbole. Since you seem to be working from a different definition of "postmodernists" than I am, please offer some definitive explanation as to how postmodernism works, and how membership to that group is ascribed. Because, like I said before, slinging the term around like a pejorative that can mean whatever you like doesn't have much communicative value. What is "postmodernism" as a process, rather than as an identity? And is this answer according only to you, or also those who profess to be postmodernists?

That's a complete contradiction. Literally, "exquisite" means "carefully chosen". So, chosen by whom? According to what criteria? Excellence in a culture typically is a consensus established by means of some normative process. The distinction you seem to be dancing around is the difference between those who are subject to norms, versus imposing those norms upon others. That's basically just political power, but in your case "aestheticized" in terms of some faux absolute, or Platonic ideal, that: 1. you make no effort to advocate for, and 2. nobody else is obliged to subscribe to.

You seem pretty evasive on these points, and I am beginning to doubt that you intend to engage at all with the many questions I have already asked you here. They could be springboards for you to school us about whatever point you are making. But without more depth, it sounds a lot like "great people have greatness and achieve great things, and you need to recognize their greatness", which (whether you intend it or not) could be construed as authoritarian ethnocentrism and infantile narcissism. Or, maybe I just don't "get it". If I am missing the point, please do expand upon it.

 

No, that’s just a post-Saussurean evasion: the claim that nothing has a meaning, therefore everything does, and therefore all meanings are equally valid. That’s the artistic equivalent of Trumpism. Music is an Art and the single simplest definition of Art I ever encountered was in sixties cybernetics theory. Art is a special form of human communication, therefore what does art communicate, what is the carrier, where is the information and where is the noise in the signal?

You can slap a cow pat on a gallery floor and claim it’s Art, doing so is neither very original nor very communicative. You can make any kind of music you want and demand that it’s valid. Just don’t expect anybody to listen to it more than once is all. Write-only music is neither Art nor meaningful, it’s just a kind of psychic flashing. But hey, the internet’s awash with it, if that does it for you. It’s not about Platonic ideals, it’s about sharing a meaning with other people.

 

I wasn't making any such claim. Either all or nothing would still be a totality. What I was getting at is that since meaning is subjective, it follows that its validity is also.

I think that those are very good questions. My own perspective on the matter is quite hermetic, that the artistic process is an integrating influence, facilitating communication between aspects of the artist's psyche. Such as between the pre/proto-symbolic "deep mind" and the sense-of-self of the discursive mind. This perspective allows itself to be shared among collaborators, not used as a commodity or appreciated from outside, because it's all process. But as a very fragmented, isolated, autistic person - shared meaning is something I only approximate intellectually, rather than experience. From my POV, all we can do is build mental models of each other, and guess as to how close they may be. There is no intersubjectivity to confirm or deny it. Others, I suspect, might experience it differently.

I have always found discussions about whether or not a certain thing "is art" to be tedious and unproductive. As a permanent outsider to human society, the urge for artistic and/or personal validation strikes me as egotistical and strange. For me, what makes art communal is not trying to share the artifacts that result, but rather helping others by facilitating their own creative processes.

 

Are you serious? wow this could be said for EVERY popular style of music since the Beatles..

Also as far as originality goes I believe almost every polyrhythm and syncopated structure in music today can be traced back to a distinct
African Djembe dance can it not?

If you think when this was first released back in 98 It was just mindless repetitive nonsense..
If I knew you personally you would be dead to me