The Middle East/Islam as a trope in electronic music

[zhao]

the truth is that there is no ABSOLUTE objectivity, like with science (but even that is questionable at times it seems), but working, practical objective criteria DOES most CERTAINLY exist.

for some activity these sets are more obvious and clear: a pair of jeans that falls apart after 3 days is shit, everyone agrees. And in 2013 everyone also *mostly* agree on what is a good looking pair of jeans (different from what we all thought 10 years ago, but similar to what we thought 20 years ago. lol)

whether Rothko made significant contribution to modern painting is a LITTLE harder to "prove", but certainly is provable, or at least close enough to provable as to be useful for all intents and purposes.

 

[baboon2004]

but if there were no objective criterias, and it's "all personal taste", then why the hell does ANYONE EVER talk about music or art???

Because it's interesting to do so, and to learn from speaking to people who have a different opinion (may be slightly different, or radically different). Not to have their preconceptions validated and then declare the conversation dead when someone disagrees in any measure!

 

[zhao]

question:

do you lot think it is demonstrable, in an objective sense, based on form and physical attributes, that Burial's first album is above average in terms of originality, in terms of emotive power, in terms of quality, compared to most of the UGK coming out at the time?

 

[baboon2004]

the truth is that there is no ABSOLUTE objectivity, like with science (but even that is questionable at times it seems), but working, practical objective criteria DOES most CERTAINLY exist.

for some activity these sets are more obvious and clear: a pair of jeans that falls apart after 3 days is shit, everyone agrees. And in 2013 everyone also *mostly* agree on what is a good looking pair of jeans (different from what we all thought 10 years ago, but similar to what we thought 20 years ago. lol)

whether Rothko made significant contribution to modern painting is a LITTLE harder to "prove", but certainly is provable, or at least close enough to provable as to be useful for all intents and purposes.

ok, we're making a little progress here.

you're confusing two different things here, for starters - objects with a generic use value (i.e. jeans), and art. CDs that break are shit, jeans that fall apart are shit, yes. That's not the issue here. Art is inherently more problematic.

Secondly, whether Rothko was 'important' or not, and whether he's good, are two different things. There would be much more consensus on the former question than on the latter.

 

[baboon2004]

you all know i'm right. and the bourgeois housewives are wrong. lol.

ironically, your point of view reduces to something incredibly bourgeois, even if it's not coming from that place originally. Your view here is essentially, like my dad's view on everything, except you apply it to different things*. I have sympathy with wanting desperately to be right, but that's all it is.

And quite what 'housewives' have to do with it...

* he will state that it is objective fact that classical music is superior to pop music, and that it is objective fact that the Ancient Greeks were the most civilised people of all time. he won't listen to other people's opinions at all because he has already decided what is 'objectively right', and what you're saying suggests that you would be the same (although in real life you may be very different - what happens if a friend of yours disagrees with your music taste...do you tell him/her s/he's objectively wrong??!)

 

[Mr. Tea]

( or, rather, the opinion of the majority of a designated 'more cultured' group of people, those who know, hip hop heads or whatever)

Your use of "designated" implies that the criteria that make someone knowledgeable about something are arbitrary, but this isn't the case, is it? I mean, someone who owns crates and crates of hip-hop LPs and has been massively into hip-hop culture for many years unarguably knows more about it than someone whose knowledge of the genre extends to a couple of Eminem singles. And someone who's travelled extensively in Italy and worked with loads of top chefs unarguably knows more about Italian food than someone who occasionally orders from Domino's.

Buuuut...what about someone who's really into contemporary hip-hop vs. someone who thinks no-one's made a good rap album since 1994? What about someone who thinks Ligurian cuisine is the bollocks vs. someone who reckons Sicilian is the only Italian food worth bothering with? Does it make any sense to say someone has better or worse taste than someone else based not on how much knowledge they have of a certain genre, but on which (sub)genres they enjoy in the first place?

 

[zhao]

Because it's interesting to do so, and to learn from speaking to people who have a different opinion (may be slightly different, or radically different). Not to have their preconceptions validated and then declare the conversation dead when someone disagrees in any measure!

well if someone tells me that Pink is a more important artist, a greater vocal talent, than Nina Simone, they better have a pretty fucking good, or at least amusing, argument, or else, yes, i am afraid the conversation is very much dead!

 

[zhao]

question:

do you lot think it is demonstrable, in an objective sense, based on form and physical attributes, that Burial's first album is above average in terms of originality, in terms of emotive power, in terms of quality, compared to most of the UGK coming out at the time?

please answer the question, Dissensians.

 

[zhao]

ironically, your point of view reduces to something incredibly bourgeois, even if it's not coming from that place originally. Your view here is essentially, like my dad's view on everything, except you apply it to different things*. I have sympathy with wanting desperately to be right, but that's all it is.

And quite what 'housewives' have to do with it...

* he will state that it is objective fact that classical music is superior to pop music, and that it is objective fact that the Ancient Greeks were the most civilised people of all time. he won't listen to other people's opinions at all because he has already decided what is 'objectively right', and what you're saying suggests that you would be the same (although in real life you may be very different - what happens if a friend of yours disagrees with your music taste...do you tell him/her s/he's objectively wrong??!)

the mistake your dad is making is one of context: you can not say Hemingway is a better writer than Brancusi is a sculptor. you can not say Debussy is a better composer than Ludacris is a rapper!

 

[baboon2004]

I'd agree with all that. You could start off searching for objectivity with the criteria you mention in the first paragraph, but as you say in the second, it would quickly lapse into absurdity - e.g. 'I'm right because I've listened to more albums than you have"....it all becomes very teenage, and tends to lead towards very fixed opinions that neglect the opinions of others. And that's a shame (I particularly think so cos I'm guilty of it a lot; getting better though!)

Your use of "designated" implies that the criteria that make someone knowledgeable about something are arbitrary, but this isn't the case, is it? I mean, someone who owns crates and crates of hip-hop LPs and has been massively into hip-hop culture for many years unarguably knows more about it than someone whose knowledge of the genre extends to a couple of Eminem single. And someone who's travelled extensively in Italy and worked with loads of top chefs unarguably knows more about Italian food than someone who occasionally orders from Domino's.

Buuuut...what about someone who's really into contemporary hip-hop vs. someone who thinks no-one's made a good rap album since 1994? What about someone who thinks Ligurian cuisine is the bollocks vs. someone who reckons Sicilian is the only Italian food worth bothering with? Does it make any sense to say someone has better or worse taste than someone else based not on how much knowledge they have of a certain genre, but on which (sub)genres they enjoy in the first place?

 

[baboon2004]

the mistake your dad is making is one of context: you can not say Hemingway is a better writer than Brancusi is a sculptor. you can not say Debussy is a better composer than Ludacris is a rapper!

No, he'd say that Mozart is a better musician/composer than any other composer/musician you'd care to name.

Anyway, leaving my Dad aside (though it's amusing how much you remind me of him here), then who is, objectively, the best rapper, and why? Who is the best writer?

 

[Mr. Tea]

please answer the question, Dissensians.

I haven't got the faintest interest in garage so I couldn't say. But I could give you a fairly in-depth analysis of why the first four Black Sabbath albums are so important and groundbreaking.

But then who has better 'taste': a garage fan or a metalhead? Or, since there plenty of people here who like both garage and metal, a trance fan? Is it possible to have 'good taste' in trance?

 

[baboon2004]

question:

do you lot think it is demonstrable, in an objective sense, based on form and physical attributes, that Burial's first album is above average in terms of originality, in terms of emotive power, in terms of quality, compared to most of the UGK coming out at the time?

So popular = good, then (you've obv taken Burial as the most popular producer of that side of dubstep)? I don't know which artists you particularly loathe, but lots of people genuinely think they're good! How to explain this?

And there're lots of artists of various kinds that you or I think are dealing in emperor's new clothes, yet a whole load of 'respected' people think they're great. Suddenly it's the insistence upon objectivity that seems a bit dull, if your argument means that we must defer to these 'experts', our own opinions meaning little.

e.g. lots of well-respected literary types people apparently think Martin Amis's book 'London Fields' is good. To me it is one of the worst books ever written. I'm sure you have things you feel similarly about.

 

[zhao]

No, he'd say that Mozart is a better musician/composer than any other composer/musician you'd care to name.

Anyway, leaving my Dad aside (though it's amusing how much you remind me of him here), then who is, objectively, the best rapper, and why?

well if he can come up with very good arguments for the superiority of Mozart, great. it would be nice to listen to it. and perhaps counter with an argument. these conversations and different arguments are not testament to the fact that no objective criteria exists, but they are ONLY POSSIBLE when some more or less objective criteria exists.

rap is so easy to objectively rate... speed, dexterity, use of language, originaliity, emotive power, charm...

see? that is what a set of objective criteria would look like. and people don't think it "exists"? lol wut

more difficult than figure skating but not by much.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

rap is so easy to objectively rate... speed, dexterity, use of language, originaliity, emotive power, charm...

this reminds me of the time nomad said she would annotate a remarc tune

 

[baboon2004]

well if he can come up with very good arguments for the superiority of Mozart, great. it would be nice to listen to it. and perhaps counter with an argument. these conversations and different arguments are not testament to the fact that no objective criteria exists, but they are ONLY POSSIBLE when some more or less objective criteria exists.

rap is so easy to objectively rate... speed, dexterity, use of language, originaliity, emotive power, charm...

see? that is what a set of objective criteria would look like. and people don't think it "exists"? lol wut

more difficult than figure skating but not by much.

I agree with the beginning of your first paragraph, except that you yourself are already lapsing into 'more or less objective criteria', thereby showing that holding on to objectivity is doomed. And you're now talking about generally accepted scales of measuring something, rather than the objectivity of the measurements made according to that scale. So, to take the ice skating, it's the difference between the question of whether we measure on criteria of technical excellence and artistic merit or whatever, and the question of who wins according to those criteria. Two different questions, no?

who's the best rapper then? and who judges? should we defer to some 'rap experts', and how should we choose those experts?

I gotta go. And that is objective!

 

[Mr. Tea]

Pah, as if there's even any competition!

 

[Mr. Tea]

although...

 

[Slothrop]

rap is so easy to objectively rate... speed, dexterity, use of language, originaliity, emotive power, charm...

see? that is what a set of objective criteria would look like. and people don't think it "exists"? lol wut

I agree that it's (sort of) possible to break down what makes you love a piece of music, but at some point you have to accept that some people are going to place different values on different aspects of that - eg one person might care a lot more about originality than another, one person might place more value on emotive power than dexterity and use of language while another might think the opposite.

I don't think this makes it a useless discussion, it's just that we're breaking down and comparing what things we both respond to and what we don't respond and trying to get at a deeper structure to our tastes than just a list of our favourite pieces of music, rather than demonstrating that one person's opinion is objectively riight and the other's is objectively wrong via some sort of musical Top Trumps....

FWIW, a lot of my Sardinian in-laws think that mainland Italian food is far too rich and will give them the shits if they so much as look at it, whereas I'd imagine that to some Neapolitans (say) the Sardinian style of cooking would seem rather plain and limited. This doesn't mean that either of them are wrong, just that they value different stuff...

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

but it is similarly crazy cos, like of course you can't use those criteria to "objectively" rate a rap song. like, are bone thugs better than tupac because they rap faster? and "use of language" can mean anything. how do you compare a complex internal rhyme scheme to, like, a Wiley non sequitur? or GZA to ODB? and how do you rate charm? or emotive power, especially because the emotions something evokes are so deeply tied to the (subjective) experiences of the listener?