Music Theory and White Supremacy

What people said

Kye · 2024-07 · Strong recommendation

The canonical video on the subject: [VIDEO] Some people will naively say "All music has pentatonic! Universal!" but ignore vital cultural context. One example in the video is ragas: they can look a lot like Western scales and modes, but they have a time and context. Western music also has a time and context, but it doesn't stand out as much to us unless someone goes full ham breaking that context like with the Imperial March in a Major mode: [LINK] It changes the mood from "this is the bad guys!" to something more positive and triumphant.

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shirleyquirk · 2023-03 · Strong recommendation

I grew up in a family of classical musicians, got a degree in music, and was briefly a professional classical musician myself. So my advice may be very out of touch with the experience of someone learning for the first time, but my experiences learning beyond European classical music theory left me feeling insulted. The basics of music theory are presented as though they are the foundations upon which all subsequent music is derived. In fact, teaching scales and chords is like teaching that the electron orbits the nucleus - a 'simplification'. There _are_ real psychoacoustic truths, alongside equally fascinating historical forces, that underpin music theory. Learn the language and idioms of music theory, by all means, but don't think of it as being in any way true. Its a syncretist cargo cult of hacks and rules of thumb handed down by centuries of men with dubious motives. I recommend Adam Neely on YouTube, he illustrates music theory concepts clearly, engagingly, and with an appropriate skepticism for received wisdom. Here's his discussion of some more political criticisms of music theory: [VIDEO] I recommend Sethares' _Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale_ to anyone interested in the underpinnings of why some notes sound good together and others don't. [2] [LINK]

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Kye · 2021-03 · Strong recommendation

There's a very good video on the way too narrow view many people in the west have of music. [VIDEO] I know the title will set people off in a place like this, but it's not a 2014 Tumblr-level "kill white people" style analysis. Totally worth the time.

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