| Singer Willie Nelson is so prolific the he even at times forgets that he has another record coming out. For example, at a recent show with Bob Dylan, Nelson performed a long list of hits, but not a single song from his new and long awaited reggae record. He admitted that he just keeps forgetting. He began working with other musicians on the reggae album in 1995 for Island Records. The project was shelved after Universal bought Polygram and Island founder, Chris Blackwell, left the company. Finally, the album saw the light of day when Nelson went to Lost Highway Records.
Music in the cultural system:
In general, the relation to the end of the 20th century is changing. It stopped being considered by Europeans as an event standing in line with other European arts, but considered as a part of culture (youth, public, farmers, city, mass, elite, European, American, African, Japanese, eastern, Russian etc.). Traditionally the European understanding of music is formed within the frame work of the study of art musical esthetics, theory of music and history of music, musical ethnography (folkloristic), and a new understanding about music appeared in new scientific disciplines comparative musicology, musical anthropology and musical cultural science.
The analysis of a specific nature of understanding of music in traditional cultures of world nations found significant differences in answers to the question: "what is music?
Answers to this question from representatives of different cultures are different. What is music for some people, for others it is not music at all. For example for the Berlioza city the singing of Chinese people in a traditional opera, where a ladies character is executed by men singing with a high falsetto, is intolerable and worse than cat howling. For the Muslim, the singing of the Koran in a mosque is not music (In Arabian. musiki), at the same time for Europeans, this is a music, which can be analyzed as other types of "musical art" within the scope of music science. The existing variety of types of music in European culture also gives birth to a variety of tastes within the musical followers. For some people only classical music is music, and rock music not music.
The conception about music, as a term itself in European culture, has not always been present in other world cultures. For example, for the nations of Africa, Oceania, and American Indians, it traditionally differs from other areas of life. Here the musical presentation as a rule is not separable from the ritual actions related to hunting, ceremony of initiation, weddings, military assemblies, worship to the ancestors etc. The conception about music for some tribes is absent; there is no term music and its analogues. While attempting to highlight especially musical events and describe that, which is for Europeans obviously music the banging of sticks, the jingling of hunting bows, playing on drums, flutes sung together or single motifs etc natives, for example, in Oceania explain, as a rule that it is myths and different types of fairy tails. They explain the origins of different musical events, which appear in some other world and have come in to this world from super natural forces (gods, spirits, totem ancestors) or sound events of nature (thunderstorms, sounding of tropical jungle, singing of birds, shouts of wild animals etc.); often indicated by the birth of musical instruments and the musical abilities of human beings in the world of spirits or genies (spirits of forest, dead people, gods).
In those countries of world, where the westernization of culture influenced significantly, generally the term music itself and the European understanding of music is accepted. Ensembles of public (folklore) music are being created, musical festivals are being organized, and musical educational institutions (institutes, conservatories), symphony orchestras and national composing schools are being created in cities of Africa and Asia.
An individual understanding about music, which generally has a specific level of professionalism but finds a syncretism nature and does not highlight as in the system of European culture, is appearing in ancient cultures and medieval cities of Asia, in court traditions of China, India, South east Asia and Islamized nations of the Middle east. Like that, in China, where the Greek concept of music was not known, music was traditionally linked with a palace ritual, in which it was determined by common term; in ancient India with theater and pantomime (Sangita), with presentations about feeling (Rasa) and color (Varna); in Islamic culture with author literature poetic tradition, with the art of the singing of rhymes (as-sana).
Similar to the ancient Greek and medieval Europe, in many civilizations of the East, their own studies about musical elements appeared. In this case, ancient and medieval musicians and thinkers have designated the same musical structures, which are the basis of western European musical theory, with special terms. As the basis of some musical sciences of Asia, basic concepts evolved.
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