Which civ was the most powerful in all history?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by pumph


Yes! That is exactly the point I was making! You left out Benny Goodman, who also had classical pieces specially written for and dedicated to him, and doubtless many others. And as to the reverse, all classical musicians can play jazz, how well they do at it depending mainly on how much sympathy they have for the style.

They cannot however play the musics of Islam or India as their instruments cannot handle the tonal systems involved;

...and that there is where you need to look for a unique American contribution. Jazz is all too often trotted out to fulfill this role simply because the last book which everyone has read said so.

As I recall it also disgusted Theodore Adorno, and he was a refugee from said Himmler and Hitler. This "My enemy's enemy is my friend" stuff doesn't work well even in foreign policy, let alone in cultural analysis.

I don't believe it was the point you were making; and I very much doubt all classical musicians could play jazz, although any musician could add a little syncopation, a few bits of ragtime flourishes, and claim it was 'jazz'; rather fewer could give us '*****es' Brew' or Mingus's 'Ah Um'. Freddie Mercury could add a few 'baroque classical' embellishments to rock music, it doesn't mean that baroque is merely a style and not a cultural movement. As to playing the music of India or Islam, I'd say look to Philip Glass and Yehudi Menuhin, two very different Western 'classical' musicians who have both worked profitably with musicians and composers from the Eastern musical traditions.

The reason I believe jazz is looked down upon as a cultural entity has more to do with its roots in slave and working class society; the old high art and popular culture split, compounded by the fact that so many of its originators were either black or Creole. My love of, and abiding interest in, jazz and jazz history, is not a result, as you rather mockingly implied, of reading the last book I read on American history or culture, it is the result of hours and hours of listening to complex rhythms and spiralling sax solos and wondering how anyone could dismiss something so magnificent as either jungle music or indeed, Entartete Kunst.

I believe the reasons Stalin and Hitler disliked jazz to be depressingly similar; both revered a tedious formalism in pictorial art and music, a deadening of creative expression replaced by a chilly death of the soul for propaganda purposes. Adorno's response, strait-jacketed by his Marxist approach to culture, completely misreads jazz:

'primarily that popular music......did not encourage free thoughts. It was one of many methods the industry owners had to keep the working class down and in place. The standardised music led to standardised reactions, and offered an escape from the demands of real life.'

In Adorno's essay On Popular Music, first published in 1941 he proposes that popular music, mostly American jazz in those days, was, to use a modern expression, dumbing down its audience, which he implied was mainly working class. This is why he rejected that music. Jazz, as opposed to good serious (classical) music, discouraged free and creative thinking, he argued, because of two main reasons. It had a "Structural Standardisation [which] Aims at Standard Reactions" (Adorno 1941:305) and it used pseudo-individualisation, or differentiation.

"...the fundamental characteristic of popular music: standardisation." writes Adorno (p.302) ,
"[in serious music] every detail derives its musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece which, in turn, consists of the life relationship of the details and never of a mere enforcement of a musical scheme. … Nothing corresponding to this can happen in popular music. It would not affect the musical sense if any detail were taken out of the context." (p.303)
What Adorno writes here is exactly the opposite of what jazz musicians themselves think. In a leaflet distributed with Miles Davis' Kind of Blue album Bill Evans writes:

"There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment, with a special brush and black paint water in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. … [This has] prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician."
Adorno disregards this when he writes that: "The most drastic example of standardisation … is to be found in so-called improvisations" (1941:308) .

A case of those who can do, those who can't become cultural critics.....

[Fresno]

Originally posted by S. Kroeze
On a side-note I would like to add that History is not over yet! Doubtless some day some other nation will be more powerful than the USA is today. I understand it may be difficult to stomach the truth.

S. Kroeze, I 100% agree with you. Please visit this thread:America isn't old enough to be in Civ3. I think it might interest you.

[LordLynch64]

My 2 cents

I would just like to say that this thred will never have a clear winner. The peramiters of the argument are well enough defined.

I think many people are losing sight of what a civilization is. Some people are argueing a countries military or cultural dominance. Others are talking about nations and their effect on the world.

For those of you who are arguing that the Romans or the Chinese or the Americans or whatever culture or nation you want is better than the others, fact of the matter is going back to the Chinese there are several different nationalities in China. Same as the Romans and the Americans.

Rome at her hieght had over 250 different cultural groups under her rule. If we could take a time machine back then and asked an Eygptian what nationality they were they would say I am egyptian not Roman or they might even say I am from what ever town they are from.

Just like in America you have Japanese Americans, African Americans and Irish Americans. Just like in China you have Han Chinese, Vietnamese Chinese and ect.

The only country that has at most 90 percent pure nationality is Japan they are the only nation that has 90 percent of it's citezens from Japan with japanese roots. The next closest country is so far down the latter I can't even think of it.

If you are talking about culture the greek culture was influenced by Creten culuture the Chinese culture was influenced by the 50 or so different invading cultures.

Fact of the matter is the people make up a civ not a nation not a state but the people. China was not always known as China, The USA is relativly young, and Rome well was defeated by time. So my point is don't lose your temper and don't degrade your self over some thing that is a matter of opinion.

Thank you

[Rasbelin]

So who's now going to win? I don't mean the poll's current figures, but everyone's written opinions.

[Ted Striker]

The United States of America!

USA!

[cavebear]

After I voted, I was not too surprised to see that the top 3 I was considering were the top 3 voted for. I decided that older civs had not had to face some other power centers around the world, so they were out. Rome never contended with China, for example, though both were very powerful at the same time. China deserved some consideration, if only because they have been an important civ for almost all historical time. Still, China has mostly been isolationist and not influenced the rest of the world in that time.

Rome was a good candidate because of local hegemony and influence for many centuries. I really thought about choosing Britain because it was really the first World power, and their cultural influence on the rest of the world was substantial, but the French (especially) and Spanish were too close to being equals for much of that time.

I finally had to select the USA because of the combination of military, cultural, political, and technological influence. I recognize that the USA has not been a power as long as others, but I think the "pace of civilization" has to be adjusted against older civs lasting longer. 500 years in the past is not like 500 years in the more modern times.

It was an interesting question to think about, though...

[reds4ever]

it's got to be england and anyone who votes for a different civ in this language is really voting for england, weve got greeks, swiss, yanks,spanish, aussies etc contributing to this disscussion but what language are we debating in????not american!

[History Guy]

I'm American. I voted English.

[Thunderfire]

The US still has to prove that they belong to to most powerfull
civs in history. Nearly every Civ in Civ3 was very powerfull in
history. But some of them were only a few decades the top
nation of the world the US could be one of them. My vote
goes to the Romans.

[Jusbaummer]

Too long posts here to be read....short:

Rome. It had it all. No Rome, no western world.

[ginzuishou]

Originally posted by reds4ever
it's got to be england and anyone who votes for a different civ in this language is really voting for england, weve got greeks, swiss, yanks,spanish, aussies etc contributing to this disscussion but what language are we debating in????not american!

Isn't this rather specious reasoning? In turn we can trace English back to it's Germanic origins and then back to it's proto-European origins and then, I'm sure, back even further until we end up in Africa somewhere.

So, if we follow the idea that language alone, or some ridiculous idea of cultural purity as what determines a nation's qualifications for an indigenous culture, is useless because if you go back far enough, we're all immigrants at one point. If our species truly originated in Africa and spread from there, it means that we're all immigrants of a sort. We all carry the depth of history with us. Each civ isn't its own sole beginning point but rather something new as an extension of what came before.

So this idea that America doesn't have it's own culture is hypocritical because European cultures have their foundations in other areas of the world just as America does. One of the major differences is that this process of cultural integration and exploration has been quickly accelerated in America due to the technological advancements of our time.

Everything has to start somewhere. Are we to assume, all of a sudden, that ever since human feet first walked the English countryside there's been a prevailing cultural sense of "Englishness" throughout all of history?

I've read some European historians who've said that in the post Roman/Early European era, those who dwelled in England where merely an Extension of the Franks culture and that it wasn't until a later time that differentiation arouse.

PS: Due note that American's don't spell some words the same as Englandish people do. Colour=Color, for example. It's a very minor difference, but none the less, there's symbolic worth therein...

[Fresno]

Originally posted by ginzuishou
We all carry the depth of history with us. Each civ isn't its own sole beginning point but rather something new as an extension of what came before.

So this idea that America doesn't have it's own culture is hypocritical because European cultures have their foundations in other areas of the world just as America does

Well, the difference is that the European peoples build their national identity during hundreds of years. America had to do it in a much shorter period, so their culture (I don't think they haven't got one) still has many roots in Europe.

[pumph]

molly bloom wrote...


I don't believe it was the point you were making; and I very much doubt all classical musicians could play jazz...

...and much else besides.

Faced with such a passionate reply it merely remains for me to say that I respect your position but still beg to differ. Your post did not really answer to my point of the degree to which jazz is merely part of the European musical canon, irrespective of the excellence or otherwise of its musicians.

For me it remains the case that those wanting a contemporary "take" on African polyrhythm are better referred to the music of Ligeti than to jazz. And as to rating the excellence of jazz musicians and the feelings they invoke, I leave that to jazz fans such as yourself. Such is irrelevant to my argument.

[Edited to correct name of composer]

[pumph]

Originally posted by ginzuishou


So, if we follow the idea that language alone, or some ridiculous idea of cultural purity as what determines a nation's qualifications for an indigenous culture, is useless because if you go back far enough, we're all immigrants at one point. [...] We all carry the depth of history with us. Each civ isn't its own sole beginning point but rather something new as an extension of what came before.

So this idea that America doesn't have it's own culture is hypocritical because European cultures have their foundations in other areas of the world just as America does. One of the major differences is that this process of cultural integration and exploration has been quickly accelerated in America due to the technological advancements of our time.

Very very nicely put. I spent a few minutes engaged in a "thought experiment" about what would have happened had the Internet originated in the Common Market.

Before even the first hub or cable was laid down a huge Internet HQ would have been built in Brussels staffed by zillions of Belgian beaurocrats and presided over by members of the French intellectual elite who'd spent the last 20 years studying Marx, Freud, Foucault and Derrida at the Sorbonne for who knows what reason. There would be all manner of rules about compulsory bilingual pages in French, the banning of politically suspect sites, and certainly taxes and more taxes to pay the beaurocrats.

The British would doubtless have done a better job than that, except for all modems being bright red, stamped EiiR, and also taxable, with all emails passing through London via a control hub underneath Loyds...

Seriously, I think only the US could have originated the Internet, irrespective of the role and nationality of its founding theorists, as a force that is so competely beyond the control of any given commercial concerns or governments, so completely destructured. Part of that unique secular culture I mentioned in my previous long post.

I am of British descent and living in a former colony of the Empire now part of the Commonwealth, but I can clearly detect the uniqueness of American Civilization (as distinct from the individual and often still ethnic cultures that comprise it). It may be that this civilization is not easy to describe; it may even be that it is not especially coherent, but then its very secular incoherence is part of what defines it and makes it so uniquely open-ended.

[molly bloom]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by pumph

Your post did not really answer to my point of the degree to which jazz is merely part of the European musical canon, irrespective of the excellence or otherwise of its musicians.

For me it remains the case that those wanting a contemporary "take" on African polyrhythm are better referred to the music of Szigeti than to jazz


Actually, they would be better off going to the source: Africa. A wealth of different styles, idioms, cultures, from the fusion of Spanish, Jewish and African and Arab influences in Moroccan classical music, gnaoua and Algerian Rai, to the soukous of Zaire, the double voiced singing of ceremonial Ghanaian music (similar to Tuvan throat music in some respects) to the almost ur-Jazz of South African gumboots township music, and of course, African jazz itself. Now as to jazz being part of the musical canon of Europe- some of its influences come from there, I never denied that, it is after all a Creole hybridized culture; but the fact of its hybridization means you cannot claim it all for Europe. Now as for its being merely a style: which style is it? Bebop, hot jazz, trad, big band, swingtime, New Orleans, jazz-funk, East Coast, West Coast, Latin jazz, fusion,.....