(no subject)

[merchimerch]

Tonight R and I went to a "big band" concert at the conservatory. It wasn't as bad as it could have been and parts of it were really quite good. There wasn't nearly enough full ensemble stuff in it, it was mostly the director showing off his sax quartet and the start student (a tenor sax player) trying his hardest to be Paul Desmond. Most of the pieces were unforunately devoid of dynamics, but the intonation was quite good. There really wasn't much by way of improvisation, and all the solos ended up sounding horribly canned. On the one piece that had improved solos (Take Five), the tenor sax, guitar, and bass all actually improved. Unfortunately all of them except the guitar player lost the meter in their solos (and not in the artsy-on-purpose way).

The whole concert has me thinking about affinity vs. heritage in terms of what music we play and think we're good at. I've had lots of people tell me I'll never really be able to play the dutar, that I play really good for a foreigner, and others who insist that I must have Uzbek blood in me somewhere. Still others tell me how ashamed they are because they can't do what I'm doing and I'm a foreigner. So what does this all add up to? For starters I think it proves how important music is as a way of claiming that your group is different from another group. It happens in generational divides, cultural and subcultural divides and a lot of authenticity seems to stem from coming from the group that is *supposed* to play the music.

The only one exception to this that I can think of is European Classical Music. Everyone can play this, understand it, claim it as theirs. Midori, Yo Yo Ma and a bunch of others have proven that you don't have to be European or of European descent to understand classical music as an insider. I think this is why it is thought to be so objectively beautiful - it seems kind of like a universal. My big question is that why aren't other musics like this? Uzbek music has a history dating back to the middle ages and is complex much the same way Euro-classical music is. Why is it not a universal that I can grasp onto? Why will I always be the American playing the Uzbek music. Jazz seems to fit in the subjective case too - there was just something missing from this concert.

Oh on a completely unrelated note, all the MCing and commentary was done in Russian. When they announce the band almost all the members had Uzbek names (meaning that they *probably* spoke Uzbek). Why wasn't this concert bilinguified? Albeit I've been to shashmaqom concerts where no Russian is spoken, but this seemed so odd. Even though there weren't any blatantly traditional uzbeks in the audience in duppis and hijab, there were Uzbeks in the audience. The issue of language choice is so odd and interesting here.

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

Could it not be that it is a property of European culture that we attempt to export it, that we prosyletise, and thus we can hardly complain when we succeed? But surely Arabic music has had a wide impact on non-ethnically-Arabic populations, in a similar way?