>They are named after population groups, but who were the Aeolians, the Lydians, and the Phrygians?
>They were slave groups, conquered by the Greeks in Asia Minor.
This is incorrect. Each of these were separate civilizations and not names for a "group of slaves". This can easily be verified by a simple search so I don't even understand where such a misattribution comes from.
Also, Lydians and Phyrgians spoke IE languages and Aeolians were a Greek-speaking people themselves despite living in what is now Turkey, so none of them seem particularly "non-Western". I totally agree that there is no hard and fast line between Western and non-Western cultures, but these groups in particular don't seem particularly exotic.
Yeah someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it makes more sense to continental Europe was on the edge of the Mediterranean culture rather than saying that that the Mediterranean sea was at the edge of the European culture.
And this has to do with it being faster and easier to travel on water than land back then. So it unified people rather divide.
The contemporary view of the Mediterranean is distorted by all manner of historical events that had yet to happen. The East-West Roman schism and subsequent fall of the western empire, the early Islamic conquests, and later the sprawling Ottoman empire added a lot of cultural distance between the European Mediterranean, Asia Minor and MENA that did not meaningfully exist earlier.
> I totally agree that there is no hard and fast line between Western and non-Western cultures
There is no line because there is no western culture, civilization, values, anything. It's a political term invented for superficial political goals. Just like the idea of 'the west'.
Ancient greek civilization based around the greek language, culture, religion, etc. Yes. What exactly is the language, culture, religion, etc of 'the west'. There is none.
If you think there is a 'west', then try defining 'the east'. It's an artificial designation that changes depending on one's political biases.
I wouldn't go that far. There were certainly interactions going on between cultures in Europe and the Middle East in ancient times, and Greek culture was certainly influenced by Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Persian cultures (which are often not considered "Western"), but for example China and the Americas had no direct contact with Europe until much later and developed in isolation to each other.
> There were certainly interactions going on between cultures in Europe and the Middle East in ancient times
Sure.
> and Greek culture was certainly influenced by Egyptian, Mesopotamian Persian cultures (which are often not considered "Western")
No doubt about it. Especially ancient egyptian civilization. The ancient greeks themselves have said so.
> but for example China
There was some contact, but certainly not as much between mediterranean peoples. That's obvious.
> the Americas had no direct contact with Europe until much later and developed in isolation to each other.
Who cares?
What's your point? Your comment didn't address what I wrote. I said there is no such thing as western civilization. Just like there is no such thing as eastern civilization. Not sure what the point of your comment is.
The point is some cultures are clearly not part of Western culture, and some (such as the pre-Columbian American ones) had absolutely no contact direct or indirect with the West until the colonial period. So it does make sense to make a distinction even if the boundaries are blurry.
> The point is some cultures are clearly not part of Western culture
That's my point. No culture belongs to 'western culture' because there is no such thing as 'western culture' or western civilization.
> So it does make sense to make a distinction even if the boundaries are blurry.
Yes. It does make sense to distinguish between say Egyptian civilization and Hebrew civilization and Greek civilization and Chinese civilization and Indian civilization and Mayan civilization and so forth. But there is no distinguishing 'western civilization' from anything because it simply doesn't exist.
Not sure if you are being intentionally dense but my point was clear. Maybe you should go back and read my original comment that you replied to.
Tell me what western civilization is. Even if the boundaries are 'blurry' try giving us the broad strokes. What is the language or culture or ethnicity or religion or customs of western civilization. It doesn't exist. That's my point.
On Spain, flamenco itself it's fusion based music before the 'fusion genre mix' was even a concept.
It mixes iberian, Gypsy, Arabic and who knows more genres under a very complex guitar tune (Paco de Lucia would be either the Alan Turing or Knuth of guitar players) with even more complex singings.
The rest of the country had jotas/aurreskus/muñeiras and so on, a kind of dance with hops, jumps and kicks to the sound of flutes/tambourines and drums, very different to flamenco and a far simpler structure, pretty common across Europe.
Nowadays, I'd recommend Medina Azahara, a group which mixes flamenco with progressive and psychodelic rock. But it wasn't the first one to do so; Triana did it before.
There are a lot of arguments of authority and _0_ empirical evidence, apart from "I've spent 30 years of my life on it"... There are no sources!?
And then, there are things that jump out to me as false, that could be true, but because the author cites ZERO sources, it's unclear if he's ignorant after 30?! years of research or has an interesting insight.
It's so unscientific, and it's sloppy useless writing like that that makes some people say that the social sciences aren't sciences.
That some ancient Greeks {allegedly, disputed} named modes after slaves is completely irrelevant today; we have a 12 tone system with a diatonic scale in which we just start/end on different notes to make modes. Their names could be anything. The underlying scale is related to the harmonic series, which is a universal that transcends humanity. Music history shapes how instruments are made. There are some tunes that are taught, usually no older than a couple hundred years at most, and beyond that, people just use their ears. Mostly, people tell their own stories with music in their own way, not stories from past generations, let alone distant cultures from centuries or millennia ago.
This is an interesting article but there’s a certain smugness in the presentation that’s off-putting. I’d love to see more citations and fewer claims of shocking originality.
I do not mean to take anything away from black musicians, but the music people say started with blacks was massively changed by the music-executive types before it went mainstream.
The people who enjoyed the modified music would not recognize the pre-music-executive versions.
EDIT: I like the Lead Belly interpretation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fii6PX0-VXs because it sounds like you start to swing the hammer on the beat, but it has enough inertia to land on the spike off the beat.
I'd argue that despite the change in pace and instrumentation the original form and song can still be recognised and appreciated, the first version of this I heard was Lead Belly in about 1982 or so .. not a lot of TV in my part of the world growing up and not much time for that in the 'big' smoke at uni.
Going back to the GP assertion I still argue that people that enjoy modern modified forms of music can still recognise and appreciate the earlier forms.
I am saying that there are formulas that make music widely popular, and the Hollyweird types knew those formulas before we started recording music. Everything you will ever hear is heavily influenced by them.
What can be described as “Western Civilization” is a much bigger cultural zone than we define it. Historically people also never really divided the world this way. It’s just modern academics that screw these concepts up completely, have obvious agendas and lack context. Europe, North Africa and Middle East are all part of “The West”. The regions were only ever divided at various times by empires, language groups and religions. The author of this article is disingenuous with their argument at its core as a result. Musical traditions from Baghdad are still western. This is why music could influence other music because these were all western musical styles.
Edit: Wanted to add that the alphabet is a western linguistic concept that’s common to all western languages.
>They were slave groups, conquered by the Greeks in Asia Minor.
This is incorrect. Each of these were separate civilizations and not names for a "group of slaves". This can easily be verified by a simple search so I don't even understand where such a misattribution comes from.
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