Search results

Volumes have been written on this of course, but it would be an obvious mistake to not recognize differences between the development of cultures under different conditions: different food, different dress, different customs, different rhythms. What is important is that we do not pre-judge...

Another anecdote... just last week i rode to Fusion Festival warm-up party (Fusion itself being one of the largest and most famous dance festivals in Germany) with a couple in their late 30s, who both work at the festival and had probably been part of the Berlin party scene for i would guess...

Fair enough. Though i maintain that my generalizations remain largely accurate.

Flamenco is Andalusian, Romani, and Arabic in origin, and thus can not be categorized as exactly a European tradition. Also, it is largely done in solo or couple setting, as spectacle, and not exactly communal or social in the ways which concern us here.

To be fair, there is certain strands of techno deep in Bavaria in Southern Germany which are probably more derived from Polka than anything else. but i wish there wasn't LOLOLOL :D

quite well thanks :)

That's quite possible. the Ancient Celts and other earlier cultures may well have had advanced rhythm technology. But enough remnants or traces of these musical and dance cultures most certainly has not survived enough to significantly influence, or indeed be recognized as part of what...

i have no idea if they felt ashamed or not, but they certainly didn't take the development and refinement of social dance music seriously as a worthy pursuit on which to spend a lot of time and energy, largely because of these all pervasive attitudes. Lets not forget what we are talking about...

and if you think saying Europe does not have as developed traditions of rhythm based dance music as Africa = racism ... :D :D :D

yet major cultural institutions have a powerful effect on the culture at large. Needless to say African cultural institutions have never held anything akin to the attitude that social dancing is not respectable. Glastonbury weekend. :D lol are you serious? You really do not realize that...

There is no arguing with me because i am right. Even today, the major cultural institutions of Europe make a hard distinction between "serious music", and "entertainment music", guess which one dance music falls under. Grants and funding exist amply for the former, but none for the later --...

My original sweeping generalization remains for the most part accurate. In the European tradition, social dancing has largely been looked down upon by members of the culture establishment as fit for fools, the uncouth, the uneducated, the poor, and drunkards. While the respectable form of...

well sure. the point here is the false perception that African music is about "the heart", "the soul", and "nature", while it is actually largely about science, discipline, intellect. The design of rhythms according to and for the particular speeds and proportions of the body, this is a...

you are demonstrating very clearly your own biases and baggage here. For rhythmic traditions in Africa are very much about pure mathematics, rationality, and cold, hard, precision, quite the opposite of the false narrative of "instinctual" or "natural" impulses that you espouse. Personal...

False. Rhythm focused music was PERCEIVED, by the establishment, by cultural norms in Europe, to be characteristic of primitives, the uneducated, the ignorant, the under classes, and the animal kingdom. Thus development of music based primarily on rhythm was discouraged.

lol all the defensive white people: we are just as funky as anyone else! we can dance just as well! our traditional music is just as rhythmic! :D ^ and that about sums up all the voices against David Toop's proposition.

if you are suggesting that European traditions focused on the development of rhythm in music just as extensively, and social dancing was every bit as important an activity, as in cultures from the African continent, might i suggest that no, you really should not be posting in this thread, and...

In Europe: "rhythm based music (was largely perceived to be) "animalistic" and "primitive", "characteristic of the lower classes" "the only respectable form of dancing was as spectacle rather than participatory communal activity" "(the musical establishment) condemned rhythm based music as...

It is a familiar and dishonest tactic in today's discourse: to accuse those who expose Eurocentrism and its historical, cultural causes, of "reverse racism".

I did not say rhythm based music did not exist in Europe, i said: I did not say social dancing did not exist in Europe, i said: These cultural differences are irrefutable. just look at any dance floor even today in Europe, and compare with, say Ghana: white Europeans ARE stiff. There are...