Why is there no Canadian music tradition?

[KrazyHorse]

This whole discussion displays how ridiculously simplistic Drake's cultural worldview is. According to him there is linear descendance of every cultural form from a single earlier form.

[Boris Godunov]

Boris, I'm actually shocked at your ignorance of this. There is no evidence that the tonal structure of blues music comes from ANYWHERE other than celtic/gaelic influence in the US.

I've never professed to be an expert on music outside of classical/opera, and even then only to fairly traditional scope of Baroque to Early Modern.

I didn't say you were wrong, I just said I never had heard of the connection. And given the relative paucity and obscurity of the sources for the Wikipedia article, I think that's fairly understandable (meaning that most people probably don't know there's a connection).

[Drake Tungsten]

It's not ONE contrary opinion.

Yes, it is. I actually followed the wiki cite, you massive dumb****.

For years the accepted wisdom has been that gospel music was born during the period of slavery in the Deep South. But Professor Ruff conceded that his findings have startled a number of elders in black churches.

"They have always assumed that this form of worship came from Africa," Professor Ruff, an Afro-American professor of music, said. "Black Americans have lived under a misconception. Our cultural roots are more Afro-Gaelic than Afro-American. Just look at the Harlem telephone book, it's more like Edinburgh or the book for the North Uists.

Ruff himself admits that his is a contrary opinion! And look at his convincing evidence...

He began researching at the Sterling library at Yale, one of the world's greatest collections of books and papers, where he found records of how Highlanders settled in North Carolina in the 1700s.

"Scottish emigrants from the Highlands, and the Gaelic speaking Hebrides especially, arrived in parts of North Carolina in huge numbers and for many years during the slavery period black Africans, owned by Scottish emigrants, spoke only the Gaelic language. I found, in a North Carolina newspaper dated about 1740, an advertisement offering a generous reward for the capture and return of a runaway African slave who is described as being easy to identify because he only speaks Gaelic. There is no doubt the great influx of Scots Presbyterians into the Carolinas introduced the African slaves to Christianity and their way of worship," he said.

But it wasn't until Professor Ruff travelled to Scotland that he became convinced of the similarities after hearing psalm singing in Gaelic. "I was struck by the similarity, the pathos, the emotion, the cries of suffering and the deep, deep belief in a brighter, promising hereafter.

"It makes sense that as we got our names from the slave masters, we carried the slave owners blood, their religion and their customs, that we should have adopted and adapted their music. There are more descendants of Highland Scots living in America than there are in the Highlands - and a great many of them are black.

"I have been to Africa many times in search of my cultural identity, but it was in the Highlands that I found the cultural roots of black America."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/gospel-truth-hebrides-invented-church-spirituals-580565.html

OMG! He found one slave who spoke Gaelic, noticed that some blacks have Scottish last names and thinks Gaelic hymns sound familiar! I'm totally convinced by this!

Good lord man, stop embarrassing yourself...

[Drake Tungsten]

According to him there is linear descendance of every cultural form from a single earlier form.

Now you're just making stuff up. I pretty clearly said that blues derives from multiple earlier forms. Multiple earlier African forms.

[Boris Godunov]

It must also be noted that Sowell is in no way a musicologist, so I'm not sure what his credentials are for making his observations.

[Asher]

Musicologist

[Drake Tungsten]

Musicologist

Sexologist

[Boris Godunov]

Musicologist

You don't think music can be studied in a scholarly manner?

[Drake Tungsten]

You don't think music can be studied in a scholarly manner?

Conservatory students

[KrazyHorse]

Drake, I'm going to forgive you because you obviously have no formal musical training, and very little ability to at all think clearly.

The blues as a musical form can only be distinguished separately starting near the end of the 19th century. At this point, most African families in the US had been there for 150 years or so. They'd been forcibly converted to Christianity, and had been exposed to hymnal music in church. The heartland of the blues was in an area strongly populated by scots-irish immigrants who had brought much of their own folk music with them. Now, the blues comes out of this and is based clearly on tonal structures identical to Celtic music. Drake's contention is then that despite the lack of any African music with which the blues shares these structures, the blues is purely African in origin.

Way to go, ****.

[Asher]

You don't think music can be studied in a scholarly manner?

I took four university courses in Music History which were taught by "Musicologists".

I know they try, and by most liberal arts disciplines I guess it is pretty rigorous. But the concept is very amusing to me.

[KrazyHorse]

According to him there is linear descendance of every cultural form from a single earlier form.

Now you're just making stuff up. I pretty clearly said that blues derives from multiple earlier forms. Multiple earlier African forms.

Please, find me examples of the forms that are tonally more related to the blues than the blues are to Celtic music.

[Drake Tungsten]

Drake, I'm going to forgive you because you obviously have no formal musical training

And you do?

The heartland of the blues was in an area strongly populated by scots-irish immigrants who had brought much of their own folk music with them.

You don't even have the basic history of the blues down. The Scots-Irish settled most heavily in Appalachia, while the most influential early heartland of the blues was in the Mississippi Delta. You're clearly wrong, you massive ****.

[Boris Godunov]

I know they try, and by most liberal arts disciplines I guess it is pretty rigorous. But the concept is very amusing to me.

However, you have to admit that someone who has formally trained in music theory/composition and has a lot of experience studying music history would have more credibility discussing the development of musical styles than someone who was largely if not completely unschooled in such matters, right?

[Asher]

However, you have to admit that someone who has formally trained in music theory/composition and has a lot of experience studying music history would have more credibility discussing the development of musical styles than someone who was largely if not completely unschooled in such matters, right?

Yeah, but that's an academic distinction. <-------- Did you see what I did here?

Someone who has not been formally trained in music theory/composition would not necessarily be worse in terms of discussing the development of musical styles.

People who study music academically have the advantage of getting paid (or subsidized) in their studies, and that's pretty much it. It doesn't really mean much other than that.