Category: music

Evading state censorship made some music extra cool – and risky: “Bans on Western genres such as boogie-woogie, jazz and, later, rock ’n’ roll, as well as other styles deemed threatening to the political order, extended not only to public radio waves, but to private listening too. This prohibition, and the subsequent demand it created, gave rise to a black market of banned records carved into used X-ray film – contraband items colloquially known as ‘ribs’ and ‘bone music’.” – Aeon

Musicians get paid 75 percent less – yes, 75 percent, not a typo – for playing on soundtracks and songs for streaming services. And they’re fed up. They get a base wage for playing on streaming shows, “but residuals generally account for 50 to 75 per cent of a musician’s overall compensation for performing on a score. Actors, writers and directors, even singers, all currently receive residuals on streaming projects. … Score musicians and the AFM aren’t upset with their creative partners; they’d just like to be considered on a similar level, as fellow creatives.” – CBC

Because of the music, Lauderdale “had become the de facto social director of Portland’s underground political scene, staging rallies, parties and functions at coffeehouses, private homes and auditoriums citywide. In 1994, he called a vocalist he had met at Harvard named China Forbes and the die was cast to improve the quality of political rally music in Portland.” And that is how the now-ubiquitous Pink Martini came to exist. – Monterey County Weekly

“A lucid example of the Western music aesthetic versus an indigenous one would be to consider the concert hall experience and that of a powwow. In the concert hall, the quality of the sound becomes the preeminent value, conceptually superseding the players and the audience. In a concert hall, the audience and orchestra are kept in separate spaces, and the flow of activity is directed from the orchestra to the audience, which remains seated, silent, and motionless. The performers all wear black to hide any individuality, and concerts are typically appraised on the “ugliness” or “beauty” of their collective sound.” – NewMusicBox

ECM is one of the greatest labels in the history of recording. Manfred Eicher, who founded ECM and remains its sole proprietor, has forged a syncretic vision in which jazz and classical traditions intelligently intermingle. ECM’s catalogue of some sixteen hundred albums contains abrasive sounds as well as soothing ones, clouds of dissonance alongside shimmering triads. – The New Yorker

“To arrive at this conclusion, researchers spent five years painstakingly creating a database that features music created by people across the globe. They dubbed it the Natural History of Song.” – Newsweek

“Musical systems around the world and across historical eras have been diverse, but octaves are commonly a feature of them. The acoustic structure of octaves is always the same: The frequency of a note in one octave is half the frequency of the same note in the octave above,” and that fact of physics has led to the general assumption that “octave equivalence” is universal. But research with an indigenous Bolivian ethnic group that has limited outside contact indicates otherwise. – Quanta Magazine

“Current research implies — implies, not concludes — that studying music can help children develop spatial reasoning and listening skills and improve their concentration, but more study is needed to fully understand this relationship.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette