The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality)

I guess I understand, although I will never agree with, the prevalent mistrust and dismissal of rap on this forum. Maybe it reflects the aging white demographic that is many of the members here, but to write off a brilliant art form with so many gifted and talented artists has rap and hip-hop has seems short-sighted.

I am too old to like rap music in general , but i am enough young to appreciate the real poetry, and rythmic rethoric.... Then it will not change my musical taste but you were right about the ignorance linked to the complete dismissing....

Like for any musical form in considerations, there is "rap" and there is rap.... I already listened sometimes to some very beautiful rap artistically done....

It is like free jazz; there is indeed "free jazz" and free jazz.....And some free jazz is truly genius....Like some rap....

Music in all his manifestations are only many perspectives takes on the human soul, and most of us can only take a short part of this pie....

How many in america feel love for classical chinese erhu music? Or japan koto? Or Persian tanbur? Or arabic Oud ? Or Bulgarian folk voices?




History of mathematic is for me a part of the  history of the human spirit...
History of music and poetry  is part of the history of the human soul...
How many portion of these pies constitute also a part of our own spirit and soul journey in our less than one  century visit  on earth? Not so much....

Great Post....

I concur with you on all points...

And why not? Could it be that the pharmaceuticals might be less than favourable to anything that challenges germ theory?

They are 2 points in one here and very important one...

By lack of education most have forgotten that science is never and never will be anything else than an history of science...Dixit Goethe :

«History of science IS science» Majuscules are mine...

And techology power and technocratic authoritharism with money power combined is the absolute negation of science.... Transhumanism is a religion of the worst kind....

It will be easy to deconstruct it entirely with a Cassirean analysis of the symbolic form, like the one Cassirer himself did about Nazism in his days and under it exiled in the US...



Music being also a symbolic form, the analysis of the decline of music must be an analysis of the decline of all the other artistic forms in the repolarization of the values dominating european and Occidental culture and civilization...

This forgotten values origin and source explain the drying up of the blood life of Occidental spirit and his freezing up under the techocratic refrigerator....

I dont give a dam about the communist chinese party....History will condemn it completely for killing millions....

BUT

When an American diplomat or any Occidental diplomat speak to a chinese diplomat does he know that after the great historian school works for 70 years now of Joseph Needham that:

Time between discoveries in China and the West (source: Joseph Needham *)
(ex: 800 years passed between the discovery of vaccination in China and its discovery in Europe)

Agriculture

Row cultivation, intensive weeding: 2200 years
Iron plow base: 2200
Harness trait: 500 - collar: 1000
Rotary tarare: 2000 Multi-row seed drill: 1800

Astronomy
Sunspot observation: 2000 
 Solar wind observation: 1400
Engineering arts Cast iron: 1700
Crank: 1100
Cardan suspension: 1100
Cast iron / steel transformation: 2000 -
Siemens process: 1300
Suspension bridge: 1800
Technology Oil and gas use: 2300
Paper: 1400
Wheelbarrow: 1300
Caliper: 1700
Porcelain: 1700
Umbrella-Umbrella: 1200
Matches: 1000
Printing: 700 - movable type: 400
Paper Money: 850
Seismograph: 1400
Navigable canals at levels: 1900
Rudder: 1100
Watertight bulkheads: 1,700
Medicine Blood circulation: 1800
Circadian rhythm of the bodies: 2150
Endocrinology: 2100
Diabetes / Urinalysis: 1000
Thyroid hormone usage: 1250
Vaccination: 800
Maths. Decimal system: 2300
Zero square: 1400
Negative numbers: 700
Magnetism Compass: 1500
Declination of the earth’s magnetic field: 600

Education
The first draft of the examination dates back to an edict of 134 BC. AD under Emperor Han Wudi who founded a school to train future civil servants in Confucian classics. One of its most important reforms is the establishment in 134 BC. J.-C. competitive examination for the recruitment of civil servants. The system of exams is fixed under the Sui Dynasty (581-618). In 606, under Emperor Sui Yang, the Jinshi was established an advanced examination system for the selection of civil servants *

Joseph Needham, author of the great encyclopedia on Science in China of which Wiki says: One of the pioneers in the field, he contributed to the recognition of China’s scientific past with, in particular, the publication of the monumental Science and Civilization in China (en), an encyclopedic collection that addresses all the developments in Chinese science. 





What do you think cross the mind of any chinese listening to the complete arrogant ignorance of history at large of most  Occidental people and nowadays even of their own history?

Incredible..... Without history people are pathetically lost about societal issues...How easy it is to manipulate the brain of someone knowing no history....How difficult it is to try that with an educated man....

There is only one problem in the actual decadence of occident it is the subordination of education to money....Nothing else...

No surprize that the leg of occidental history dont make no more sense...

Techocracy now will replace money.... We are going to the The "better world" of Huxley....

You speak about Empire and wars....Technocratic and economic empire...Usa liberating Europe... Perhaps but not without Russian tremendous effort against all the German forces....

I was speaking about spirit and culture....Take a written journal, or a TV news in america now; what is the content?

Almost nothing about world events and culture....An invisible censorship is there coming from where?

Freedom is not about being in jail or not, first and mostly..... Freedom is in the consciousness nowhere else....It takes naivete of popular culture to associate freedom with guns....That remind me of those fearing death and believing in technological immortality now...

Both of which exist in their current state simply and precisely because the U.S. permits them to do so.

The power of America empire comes from the Us dollars and the money system after the war...This is what you spoke about....The real america is not that, it is the creativity and the idea of freedom and possibilities given to men...

I spoke about the spirit and it is what we see in the cultural world...I spoke about values not domination....Values are directly relative to our link to the rest of the world and has nothing to do with money or power...

For culture power or money dont even exist.....😁Not knowing that is absolute ignorance....

This was called with a word that has no more meaning now: the " soul"

Where is the soul in Hollywood now? A rarity indeed....

But there is great number of giant souls in America, they are not in the TV nor in politic, nor in sight....My example was Chomsky the Einstein of linguistic, and a great historian, taken in the invisible jail of the censhorship like Soljetnitsyn in soviet Russia, apparently free unlike Soljenitsyn, but silenced by indifference and powerful censhorship...I dont like Trump but who has the power to silence him few days ago?

Dont take my remark an attack against the soul of America but an attack against the new materialist power dominating us all in Occident now and breaking America and the world at the worst hour......Especially now this year.....Eyes are made to see....

How can we oppose Chinese dictatorship in this way? A war is not the way to go....Except if we stay so weak spiritually....Then the guns will be the only answer.... Idiots prepare wars which are the business of others way more powerful, was saying the general Smedly Butler a great american soul 80 years ago....

Ignorance is closure of the mind in itself for people or countries....

There is a way....

One of he first great anti British revolutionary and patriot for the liberation of India before Gandhi , was Sri Aurobindo Ghose...

The British jailed him like many Indians....

In his captivity he decided that he must liberate the world and not only India.... He then pacifically spend the rest of his life meditating, writing the biggest metaphysical spiritual poem in all english litterature,Savitri, and become one of the truest spiritual man of his century...

He never was impeded by hindsight....He recreated yoga.... And spoke truly in advance of all we actually sees around us....


«Seing is not hindsight nor foresight, it is touching the center or putting a veil on our head, calling it red or blue dont change the fact that it is a veil»- Anonymus Smith


«You remind me of my wife asking why i dont like the green bow tie and not the red one she give me at the same time the day before...I dont like bow tie anyway»- Groucho Marx

Culture is driven toward the top or toward the bottom....If money drive culture guess where it will go?

An example: how for a century Hollywood was never able to tell a story about the most extraordinary visual show there is on par with Chinese emperors history, and an essential piece to understand occidental history, the one thousand years story of the Byzantine empire? No Ben-Hur is NOT about Byzantium and dont count at all....Nor crusades film which are mostly about Europeans going against Islam...It is very instructive that crusaders films never speak of the remnants of Byzantium either... They go acting like Byzantium empire never exist at all... 😁 Hollywood was and is propaganda masquarading in art....Chomsky wrote about that...Where is Chomsky in american TV?  the most influential linguist is unknown in america and he is also one of the most interesting historian of the American empire...Nowhere to be seen.... 

Not a single movie about Byzantium  i can remind of.... is it not extraordinary? An ignorance so deep?

The first comic book i read young at 6 years old was a comic book about Trebizonde and Byzantium but it was written in french.... It alert me immediately....Ay 6 years old.... I take greek course and latin for years that was helping for sure...I only learn to read but that serve me for life and it was later my job main point....It is another story. 😊

How can you distinguish head and tail in your life in north-america with a so abyssal ignorance?

How can a democracy can ever exist? For sure appearance of democracy is important but it is not a really working democracy...Anyway no empire can be a democracy sorry....

History is the only tool box of critical thinking , there is NO other...

Then so go with music what has begins long ago with the forgotting of history....Music is sounds selling industry....I am almost unable to listen to 95 % of what is made commercially or popular in the last 30 years...Classic, jazz, Indian and Persian music and a bit from others cultures made my night and day...



«Music is the only way to touch the soul with your hand....»-Anonymus Smith

«Music is history whistling in the ears or only ears buzzing»-Anonymus Smith

Lucky childs.....

Congratulations....