perfect melodies

william_kent

Well-known member

Sunset Four Jubilee Singers– Wade In The Water

melody as function, melody as a path to liberation

In 2002, Maryland Public Television in collaboration with the Maryland Historical Society and Maryland State Archives, produced "Pathways to Freedom: Maryland and the Underground Railroad" as a teaching guide, which included a section on how songs that many slaves knew had "secret meanings" that they could be "used to signal many things". They cited the example of Harriet Tubman using "Wade in the Water" to "tell escaping slaves to get off the trail and into the water to make sure the dogs slave catchers used couldn’t sniff out their trail. People walking through water did not leave a scent trail that dogs could follow." Certain songs were believed to have contained explicit instructions to fugitive slaves on how to avoid capture and the route to take to successfully make their way to freedom.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
i don't think I really know what a melody is if I'm honest.
I was thinking the other day that 'melody' is one of the more abstract, difficult(?) concepts that the general public understands. Like if most people had an intuitive understanding of 'dialectics'.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
maybe not complex actually but it is a word with a direct, uninterrupted relationship between the word and the thing itself. like 'color.' you cant describe what the word represents with other 'easier' words
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
As I was mulling it over at the time I was thinking about culture in relation to complexity and how I once heard a lacan scholar say that in europe lacan is more easily understood than hannah ardent but I didnt get past that
 

luka

Well-known member
I was thinking the other day that 'melody' is one of the more abstract, difficult(?) concepts that the general public understands. Like if most people had an intuitive understanding of 'dialectics'.
i dont think they understand it. anything i dont understand is ununderstandable by definition.
 

luka

Well-known member
if people were choosing tunes like this with a clear and obvious repeated tune you could whistle if you could whistle that would be one thing
 

woops

is not like other people
to complete the picture, should anyone demonstrate an understanding you lack, the thing they understand does not exist. checkmate nerds
 
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