Why is there no Canadian music tradition?

[KrazyHorse]

I can hear them, and so can anybody else who takes a moment to listen.

Perhaps you can find me a reference to EVIDENCE linking the blues' tonal structure to SOMETHING in Africa?

[Drake Tungsten]

Why would I need to provide evidence? I'm supporting the consensus position against your revisionist stance. The burden of proof is on you.

[Boris Godunov]

That's why I embedded them. Even a musicologist could figure out how to play them.

That response is a non-sequitur. The question clearly was asking if I had heard them before you provided the examples...

So how is that "distinctively" Canadian? Sounds pretty much like mainstream rock to me. That's not saying it's bad by any means, just doesn't seem to be different from American rock bands.

[Tuberski]

**** you *****es. 6 years of piano training from my neighbour. And 8 years of self-taught guitar.

BOOYAH.

I had 3, almost 4, weeks of recorder training in the fourth grade.

TRUMP.

ACK!

[KrazyHorse]

Revisionist? The link from blues back to spirituals of the early 19th century is well-established.

From the Wiki entry on spirituals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_%28music%29#Terminology_and_origin

Although numerous rhythmical and sonic elements of Negro spirituals can be traced to African sources, Negro spirituals are a musical form that is indigenous and specific to the religious experience in the United States of Africans and their descendants. They are a result of the interaction of music and religion from Africa with music and religion of European origin. Further, this interaction occurred only in the United States. Africans who converted to Christianity in other parts of the world, even in the Caribbean and Latin America, did not evolve this form.[8]

Are you seriously attempting to claim that spirituals are purely African in origin?

[Asher]

That response is a non-sequitur. The question clearly was asking if I had heard them before you provided the examples...

So how is that "distinctively" Canadian? Sounds pretty much like mainstream rock to me. That's not saying it's bad by any means, just doesn't seem to be different from American rock bands.

You must not listen to much rock these days.

It just sounds Canadian. To me, when I think of modern Canadian music they come to mind. The subject matter helps, but there's a distinctive feeling of Eastern Canadian/Celtic music in there and folk music also.

[Drake Tungsten]

I'm feeling generous...

Nearly all forms of Afro-American music in North America, including worksongs, hollers, ballads, spirituals and hymns, chanted sermons with congregational response, blues, jazz, and rock contain pitches that are inflected by performers in ways quite foreign to regular melodic practice in Western art music.

Blue Notes and Blue Tonality by William Tallmadge

[KrazyHorse]

Yes, congratulations Drake: the blues ISN'T Western music. But neither is it African. It's an innovative blend of two very distinct traditions. That's what makes it so awesome.

The very fact that the author of that piece goes to the trouble of pointing out the tonal DIFFERENCES with European music should tell you where the strongest tonal influence lies.

If blues music was mainly African in tonal origin then there would be no point in doing so. It would be like saying that Asian music contained elements which aren't in Western music.

[Drake Tungsten]

Is it really so bad being Scots-Irish and Canadian that you have to try to steal a unique music tradition from someone else?

[Asher]

To be fair, white men owned the men who made the Blues. So they own the Blues also.

[KrazyHorse]

The very article Drake links to describes how the black musicians being described "play" within the tones. They're adding their own distinction to a Western (specifically, a pentatonic Celtic) tonal structure.

[Drake Tungsten]

To be fair, white men owned the men who made the Blues. So they own the Blues also.

Now this makes sense.

As a side note, I miss easy JSTOR access through a university.

[KrazyHorse]

By the way, Drake: I'm Scottish and Irish. I'm not Scots-Irish.

[Drake Tungsten]

DVDA

[Drake Tungsten]

By the way, Drake: I'm Scottish and Irish. I'm not Scots-Irish.

I don't make distinctions. You're all Celtic scum to me.

Got access to the whole article. Turns out that the tonalities KH thought were Gaelic are actually African-Muslim in origin. The fact that the English and Scots-Irish had similar tones in their folk music helped preserve this tonality in African-American music in spite of later waves of non-Muslim slaves, however. Interesting.