gibbous wrote...
razama wrote...
I agree that music does contain a strenght in describing more things in it's own language more "ambiguously". However, that music evokes emotion upon social and cultural aspects is not completely true either. Among all cultures - and even all individuals - there is a universal understanding of certain musics such a "scary" music in a horror film or celebratory music like a parade or wedding. Even different cultures can recognize another culture's music that is meant to envoke "fear" or "celebration" - so culture and sociology does not answer all aspects as to where or what music taps into when we hear it.
That's not entirely true.
If you present radically different cultures with music from your culture, they may react differently than you'd expect.
One of the great basins for anthropological research is the Amazon jungle, because there's many tribes in it that have had little, or even no contact with the outside world at all. Now, anthropologists such as K. Hakami (1988) found that when presented with music that is accepted as calm and pleasant not only in western, but even in eastern countries, these tribes (such as the Pi'au'che) don't react with delight at all. They regard it as infernal, threatening noise, and in more than one instance went as far as swiftly destroying the playback device to put and end to the suffering.
The reason why music works across cultural boundaries, is because these cultures have had enough contact among each other for certain listening habits to transpire between them.
Somewhat like metal and the mainstream masses, uh? Interesting...
@music discussion:
Music is pleasurable, hence we like it. But like fetishes, not everyone is in the same thing, so there are many genres, or fetishes, for everyone to choose.
Yeah, I totally ignored the 'why is music pleasurable?' question, but im with Tsurayu on that one. We like sounds, they are entertaining. And the rest is history (and music theory xD)