On Jan 14, 2007, at 1:34 PM, John Howell wrote:
At 12:03 AM -0500 1/14/07, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
On 1/13/07, Andrew Stiller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This is conventional wisdom, but it's simply untrue. Any culture, at
any time, that has an identifiable classical music must also have a
popular music lying outside those boundaries.
I do think we're getting tangled up in semantics. Define "popular
music," specify "popular among which class or which segment of a
population," and contrast it with "folk music" rather than assuming
they are exactly the same.
Well, OK. To me, classical, folk, and popular designate the three main
strands of music in any civilization (i.e., a society w. cities). Folk
music is the music of the countryside, popular music is that of the
mass of city dwellers, and classical music is the music of the
intelligentsia. Typically, folk music is performed by amateurs and has
no identified composers. Popular music is performed by professionals,
whose training however is usually sketchy, and who are percieved as the
creators of the music. Classical music is performed by highly trained
professionals who display other features associated w. learnéd
professions such as a gatekeeping ritual, a specialized jargon, and so
on.
The borderlines among these three types of music are by no means rigid
or unbridgeable, and all three can exist in multiple varieties with
varying audiences and traditions. The introduction of mass
communications tends to destroy the folk tradition and replace it with
a form of popular music that imitates the former folk styles but with
pop cultural accoutrements.
I think that'll do for a start.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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