Beyond Soul.
- Thread starter luka
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- bartholomew the jaded bartman waiting in the sky barty hardy bartystep bloody hippity hoppity music bowie can blow me carly rae flotsam craner's veneer facetious pre-emptive strike fat cunt daddy issues gap year give the poor bart a break going native however do you want me it's lit jack law: vlogger jack rap and karouac jack the carl-laws jamming good jazz jizz kids these days level 4 as in chan like and subscribe lit crit misapplied spenglerism nosebleed not like this in my day obese pig patty is a scientologist patty is too hippy for hoodlum patty mafia pattycake pattycake hey the method man sadman callout sadman skrillex soul 2 soul soul lives soul man barty soulange knowles substance abuse thank god remarc wasn't ever a catholic the gloss the islamic age of dissensus the soul mafia world music was an abomination
Will you be gracing us with a musicological explanation of why it does what it does? I was swooning but this post has my heart broken, my very dear Pomegranate.
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
it's a minor scale, so broadly you could say it's 'not happy'. it's mainly used in the middle east so it has those kinds of connotations (exotic, pharoahs, ancient history, religion, etc.)
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
That was earlier today. We've had a thunderstorm and torrential rain since then. All cleared up now though. Temp is just right. T-shirts n shorts at the ready.
luka
Well-known member
Don't mind us patty. We're just jealous. Not that we want your life because we know we'd hate it but because we don't fit in and can't just go around enjoying ourselves willy nilly like that. We're freaks and not welcome around normal people. You go and have a good time. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it.
once again, very connected to this thread.
Truly the most astute thing I have said on the contemporary religious experience on this forum.
"You know what a miracle is ... another world's intrusion into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there's cataclysm. Like the church we hate, anarchists also believe in another world. Where revolutions break out spontaneous and leaderless, and the soul's talent for consensus allows the masses to work together without effort.... And yet ... if any of it should ever really happen that perfectly, I would also have to cry miracle."
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
I keep getting misconstrued here. A lot of it was already covered in dematerialization. This was part of a big post I made in that thread:
Look at how in the face of oppression, which most white people have no way to understand, the blacks of 1960s&70s America still managed to make the music that they did. Now transpose that concept to today. A completely different kind of oppression sure, but no-one seems to be reacting to it with the same level of strength that the blacks from back then did.
What changed? Are we weaker? Is it easier when who the enemy is is more obvious?
Look at how in the face of oppression, which most white people have no way to understand, the blacks of 1960s&70s America still managed to make the music that they did. Now transpose that concept to today. A completely different kind of oppression sure, but no-one seems to be reacting to it with the same level of strength that the blacks from back then did.
What changed? Are we weaker? Is it easier when who the enemy is is more obvious?
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luka
Well-known member
You lot, and especially third, no excuses for third, have to read this in return, right away, now, this instant. Very relevant.
https://www.cai.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/harmony.pdf
I like the drums but everything else sounds like hotel music to me. I quite like the brazillian jazz funk though, well bits of it.
I was thinking of this kind of sadness. goes right the fuck in.
and this kind of dance.
ban on hotels.
alright gonna read now.
"Under the name
of an apparently harmless aesthetic preference we re-introduce the advantage
of money and the surplus value of leisure. Those who service the apparatus
of such harmony--by for example working in hotels and restaurants--are
humiliated by the wearing of meaningless and servile uniforms; while those
who work in factories or in rural agriculture see very little harmony directed at
them."
This is what im sayin.
of an apparently harmless aesthetic preference we re-introduce the advantage
of money and the surplus value of leisure. Those who service the apparatus
of such harmony--by for example working in hotels and restaurants--are
humiliated by the wearing of meaningless and servile uniforms; while those
who work in factories or in rural agriculture see very little harmony directed at
them."
This is what im sayin.
luka
Well-known member
"Stockhausen’s mystic exaltation of science and space, Cage’s embrace of Eastern spirituality and surrender to the operations of chance, were both evasions of the present and therefore ultimately complicit with capitalism and the post-colonial order. For Nono, the purity these composers sought was neither possible nor desirable: the conscious composer must respond to the historical moment in all its messy urgency. To do any less would be to fail the test of your time."
"Hegemony,” Gramsci’s key concept, referred to the output of media and cultural institutions, but also a wider “common sense” of values and norms that conditioned a people’s sense of what was possible and “natural.” Before they won power, radicals had to conquer hegemony: changing minds and hearts, consciousness and desires, they could displace one consensus-reality with another. "
"
“They are subjected to the bombardment of escapist consumption through the radio and pop songs,” Nono observed in a 1966 interview. “But for their own lives and work they are required to be technically avant-garde: new technical means of production and labor… The process of work and composition in the electronic studio, and the phonetic and semantic analysis of the text in relation to its becoming music, is easily understood by them.”"
"listening to this music composed with our sound-noises and with our words, we become aware of our alienated state in the factory. We work like mechanized robots, almost no longer realizing the violence of the human sound situation. Now we are rediscovering it and recovering awareness of it even through music.’”"
Some quotes from the Nono piece third might want to pick up on.
"Hegemony,” Gramsci’s key concept, referred to the output of media and cultural institutions, but also a wider “common sense” of values and norms that conditioned a people’s sense of what was possible and “natural.” Before they won power, radicals had to conquer hegemony: changing minds and hearts, consciousness and desires, they could displace one consensus-reality with another. "
"
“They are subjected to the bombardment of escapist consumption through the radio and pop songs,” Nono observed in a 1966 interview. “But for their own lives and work they are required to be technically avant-garde: new technical means of production and labor… The process of work and composition in the electronic studio, and the phonetic and semantic analysis of the text in relation to its becoming music, is easily understood by them.”"
"listening to this music composed with our sound-noises and with our words, we become aware of our alienated state in the factory. We work like mechanized robots, almost no longer realizing the violence of the human sound situation. Now we are rediscovering it and recovering awareness of it even through music.’”"
Some quotes from the Nono piece third might want to pick up on.
blissblogger
Well-known member
bringing it back to black music specifically and apologies if points similar to these have been made earlier
"soul" as a concept contains the idea that there's more to us than bodies
(interestingly "heart" - as a word for the center of emotion, romantic love etc - doesn't actually contain that idea: it keeps the idea of love as physiological - blood pumping, circulation speeding up in dizzy excitement - body as a hydraulic system, desire as a set of physical reactions, the chemistry between two people)
but "soul" did point to something transcending the physical - residues from gospel, Christianity etc
but some point in the 80-90s - with nu-R&B and 'new jack swing' - that reference with soul to the non-physical plane, that dropped away - it became entirely physical
a friend of mine at Melody Maker and later at Spin and Village Voice - Frank Owen, great writer about black music, hip hop, house - wrote a really good review which i don't have to hand, and can't remember what it was about specifically or where it was published (Voice? Vibe?), in which he noted how explicitly carnal and sexual the black love song had became during the course of the 90s (figures like Bobby Brown being key), and how it was no longer soul music but a pure body music - with no reference to some transcendent realm - he noted how religion-derived words had dropped out of song lyrics in R&B.
i think that shift was matched in changes in vocal style - the very last residues of raspy, gritty, Southern, Baptist cries torn from the body type testifying, these disappeared, and R&B singing become completely slick and kind of... lubricated.... a lot of legato.... slippery, slightly oily even...
before that sixties and seventies R&B had blended the two things - soul and body - that was what was radical about it - the spiritual embodied (in grand tradition of black protestant christianity in the USA - holy rollers, shaking and shimmying in the aisles, going to church as actual fun experience), the body spiritualized - the sexual act as sacred etc
hence Al Green shifting very seamlessly from singing peerless erotic-yet-ethereal songs about married love, to being the Reverend Al Green and singing of a higher love ("Belle" being a transitional moment - "you're the one that I want but He's the one that I need" - possibly misquoted from memory that)
so yeah "soul" as concept and ideal uniquely merges the earthy and the ethereal, the physical and the transcendent
"soul" as a concept contains the idea that there's more to us than bodies
(interestingly "heart" - as a word for the center of emotion, romantic love etc - doesn't actually contain that idea: it keeps the idea of love as physiological - blood pumping, circulation speeding up in dizzy excitement - body as a hydraulic system, desire as a set of physical reactions, the chemistry between two people)
but "soul" did point to something transcending the physical - residues from gospel, Christianity etc
but some point in the 80-90s - with nu-R&B and 'new jack swing' - that reference with soul to the non-physical plane, that dropped away - it became entirely physical
a friend of mine at Melody Maker and later at Spin and Village Voice - Frank Owen, great writer about black music, hip hop, house - wrote a really good review which i don't have to hand, and can't remember what it was about specifically or where it was published (Voice? Vibe?), in which he noted how explicitly carnal and sexual the black love song had became during the course of the 90s (figures like Bobby Brown being key), and how it was no longer soul music but a pure body music - with no reference to some transcendent realm - he noted how religion-derived words had dropped out of song lyrics in R&B.
i think that shift was matched in changes in vocal style - the very last residues of raspy, gritty, Southern, Baptist cries torn from the body type testifying, these disappeared, and R&B singing become completely slick and kind of... lubricated.... a lot of legato.... slippery, slightly oily even...
before that sixties and seventies R&B had blended the two things - soul and body - that was what was radical about it - the spiritual embodied (in grand tradition of black protestant christianity in the USA - holy rollers, shaking and shimmying in the aisles, going to church as actual fun experience), the body spiritualized - the sexual act as sacred etc
hence Al Green shifting very seamlessly from singing peerless erotic-yet-ethereal songs about married love, to being the Reverend Al Green and singing of a higher love ("Belle" being a transitional moment - "you're the one that I want but He's the one that I need" - possibly misquoted from memory that)
so yeah "soul" as concept and ideal uniquely merges the earthy and the ethereal, the physical and the transcendent
luka
Well-known member
You see why I think it's relevant. This needs to be communicated. No one has understood this point yet. Please explain.
this is what I was trying to get at with my discussion of the folk revival in Turkey. It is history from the perspective of people who have been to adopt the folk culture as their possession. technically the music is better than it always has been. rhythmically the instruments have more potentials to do things. It's never been better for folk specialists and compilers. we live in a golden age. the notation systems have been institutionalised. no real slippage is necessary. we can compose music according to an academic and geometric conception of nature. we can realise the cosmological ottoman art music. more and more recordings are being unearthed. in the late 20th century there was trepidation that that history was lost forever. Most of it was intelligentsia scaremongering.
But a golden age for whom?
But a golden age for whom?
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luka
Well-known member
This will help with your studies too Simon. Gobble it up.
This is my fundamental engagement with music. I am less interested in it as an ordering principle or as a high mark of a civilisation or a country or as a culture or even a religion. But for me, I see music as fundamentaly sound poetry. And of course art itself is not a separate realm to messy labour. In fact, work songs, ritual invocations and all those forms of vocal and drone technique, blowing on the pipe, the drum, these were all mechanisms used to express the bonds of communities. In this sense these were the original poets. just in the same way that in old turkey the mark of a good bard was the ability to sing. Now the material has changed. Now we must write poetry in new ways.
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pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
China? Even though they somehow blended it with capitalism?
For me that is 100% soulful. There's playfulness, humanness, and also explores the dark side, which I'm not sure why but you dudes seem to think that I think is not part of the soul spectrum. Of course it is! And yes we are getting our wires crossed, a lot.
Its not about underground vs pop.
Clinton was a deep dude who said a lot of profound things in his lyrics. Which brings me back to the first thing I said in this thread: soul's the truth. Ring around the bathtub. There's no ring around Carly Jepsen's tub. What is not soul is a dishonest expression of emotion. And I'm not talking about Aretha's planned oohs and ahs, I'm talking about music which is genetically modified to trigger precisely the exact receptors to generate the desired response whilst being completely void of any substance.
Haven't heard it, sorry.
I lived in London for 9 years. Don't forget what I wrote in your are we scared thread man. I'm definitely a pessimist and maybe even a misanthrope for the most part. But one of the few things that still gives me joy is letting go completely to music and dancing and feeling alive. As I'm writing this I'm reminded of my first year in London. Maybe 2002. I was studying drums in Acton amd had a weed dealer called Glen who was from West London or some posh city nearby. Good guitarist. Great taste in music. One day he asked me if I wanted to go and see Maceo Parker at the Barbican. We go, and it's the Barbican so all seated. But it's fkn Maceo Parker and it just felt weird sitting there staring at this powerhouse funk band. Eventually a few people from the front rows started to stand up and dance or at least clap. I looked over at Glen who was this very dry witted dude. He'd have fit right in here. He was looking down at the dancers and I could see he was fighting an urge. I asked if he wanted to go down. He was like nah and kind of chortle through his nose. He did want to, but he was being held back by whatever that force is. He was older and cooler than me so I didn't do anything for a while.. Until I couldn't take it anymore and blurted out 'well guess its just me then' and set off down the stairwell. Him n his mates sniggering. I got right up near the stage, clapped, danced shared smiles with their others doing the same and one of the band and it was brilliant. But I look back up at Glen and he's giving me the stink eye. I was like fuck that, turned around and carried on for the rest of the show. When it was over and we left they were making sly digs about someone wishing they were black. They had to knock it down. I didn't give a fuck, I'd just had a ball.
Cmon man. That isn't it at all. I'm all of the 2nd half. Money is an issue. I'm depressed (once again, pessimistic about the future, misanthrope etc) I just have a release valve. It gets me through.
And anti dissensus?
How can you be anti anti? Surely a place with a name like that should be all about exploring ideas that do not fit wihh your own? Mark Twain said that the true mark of intelligence is being able to entertain ideas opposite to your own as if they were your own.
Yes wihh the right sequence of tracks leading up to it. Give em a little bit of what they like to get em loose and then drop whatever the fuck you want. If it flows it'll work.