source file: m1587.txt
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 21:50:43 -0700

Subject: Indian music harmonized

From: Neil Haverstick <stick@uswest.net>

In regard to Judith Conrad's report of ecstatic Indians hearing
their music on the piano...is it possible they started drumming so loud
because they were trying to drown out the piano? Perhaps they were not
quite as ecstatic as the white folks thought...wouldn't surprise me.
Indian music is about as far removed from European musical concepts as I
could imagine, and to harmonise it would add nothing, as far as I can
see. Their music was (is) intimately tied into their whole cultural view
of life...to remove it from it's context robs it of it's deeper
meanings. It's not "supposed" to sound like white folk's music because
it isn't...but often, throughout history, white's can only relate to
other cultures by trying to make the other culture over in the image of
the white guys. It' s like when Gershwin wrote "Rhapsody in Blue;" after
it's performance, one critic remarked that Gerswin had made a "lady" out
of jazz...what a crock of nonsense...Hstick