What About Music?

I was recently talking about the difference between Jazz and Blues to my friend, and I think I just want to share with you guys a bit of my personal views of world's different types of music:

Music itself is an interesting thing... it's not an object, there's no form, it is a combination of sounds, which is generated by vibrations transmitted through an elastic solid or liquid or gas, with frequencies in approximate range of 20 to 20,000 hertz, capable of being detected by human organs of hearing.  Music is made up of melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre. 

If that's true, then dogs and cats are supposedly hearing things that we are not capable of hearing.  This gets me thinking, how genius the Beatles were to make a musical track catering only to the dogs in the Sgt Pepper album... dogs need a bit of rock and roll too right? 

Western/Classical Music: I'd first like to talk about the Western music that everyone should be familiar of.  The earliest official form of Classical music can be dated back to the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and then the well-known Baroque period (1600-1750), Classic (1750-1825), Romantic (1825-1900), Modern (1900-1945), and the present period (what I'd call the Soundtrack period coz all the people who can write classical music go over to write soundtrack scores for movies).  To me, a lot of the Pop elements of the modern music nowadays can be found in Classical music.  I'd also classify Country, Rock (after the British Invasion in the 60s), New Age in the Western Music category.   

Black Music: Jazz would be the first musical form that came to my mind.  But Jazz actually originated from the Blues, which is a stlye of music evolved from southern African-American secular songs.  Blues probably was the earliest officially published form of American music, and I'd believe it's a mixture of African syncopated dance music and Western melodic music.  It can be dated back to early 1800s when the original Africans were enslaved and expressed "their anger against shame and humiliation," according to the legendary BB King.  Believe it or not, our all time Christian favorite hymn "Amazing Grace" is a Blues. 

As mentioned before, Jazz came after Blues and took many different forms including New Orleans, Chicago, NYC, Big Band, Orchestral, just to name a few.  It is also probably the first indigenous form of American music that influence the musical scene in the rest of the world.  There is European Jazz, Bossa Nova (Latin Jazz), Cuban Jazz, and even Shanghai Jazz!  Other variations of African-American music include Ragtime, Funk, Gospel, R&B, Soul, Hip-Hop, etc.  But when Black and White musics came together, Rock and Roll was born in the 50s. 

Asian/Chinese Music: Ancient China dominated a large area of  Asia, so I'd like to talk about Chinese music for this section.  Philosopher Confucius was probably the most well-known musician in the early period of Chinese music (One side fact: American Idol William Hung is a descendent of Confucius!  Sigh...).  Confucius conceived music in the highest sense as means of calming the passion and of dispelling unrest and lust, rather than as a form of amusement.  It is for harmony of the universe and purification of one's soul.  In other words, Chinese music is full of soul.  No wonder I found Chinese Peking Opera sounding so much like Black Soul music!  No kidding, theoretically speaking, the two styles of music actually share lots of similar tones and scales. 

The timeline of Chinese music is as follows: Chinese old ritual music in Chou Dynasty (1027-256BC), the burning of all musics in Qin Dynasty (221-206BC) when music was considered by the First Emperor of the United China outdated, Renaissance of Chinese ceremonial music in Han Dynasty (206BC - 220 AD), Chinese secular music in Tang Dynasty (618-906), Chinese Opera in Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), and then the Modern form.  During the early 20th century, Chinese music was greatly influneced by Western music, including Russian music, Classical and Jazz.  I went to a Chinese Folk Music concert last month, and I was surprised that Sing Jiang's music sounds just like Russian folk music that you would hear when you played Tetris.  But actually I shouldn't be surprised since Sing Jiang is just right next to Russia.  Perhaps because of the size of the territory of China, one can find many different influences from Chinese music.  Oh!  BTW, the most popular form of Chinese music now is Cantopop, created by Hong Kong.  I guess I should be proud being the HongKongese I am! 

That's it for now!  Of course, categorizing different types of music according to the origins is a hard enough job.  Yet, I find it fascinating!  I guess my conclusion is that when you really love something, you'd dig into studying its history.  

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Broken Flowers

Finally saw Broken Flowers.  Enjoyed it all along... maybe cause I didn't have much expectation after seeing the disappointing Coffe and Cigarettes.  Bill Murray, I believe, is arguably the only person who can act without doing anything.  I crown him the King of Minimalism.