"Music that's You" vs. "Music that's Them"

I didn't participate in the B&S thread but I just don't like that whining, 'indie' sound of theirs.

I never bought the argument that hip-hop was violent/abusive. The way I saw it at the time is that it was a way for people to make money and get out of the situation that they were put into (ie living in sub-human conditions), and anyway, music is quite safe way to explore the darker thoughts a lot of us have abt, er, things.

By the way, I've only heard hip-hop on the radio and I 've never bought one of those records since I haven't got the concentration to listen to words in music.

The majority of the music I love has a connection emotionally but it's never mood music (example= if I feel sad I'll put x and if I'm happy I put y on the record player).

That's as far I've got- I'm still trying to figure it out.

I don't begrudge personal connections to songs/musicians, even if they're groups I can't stand (cf. Staind as a representative recent example -- and it'd be interesting to see if a 'typical' B&S fan accepts a Staind fan's own feeling of connection or rejects it...). But I don't really *look* for music that way, so it's hard for me to comment -- as Nitsuh noted, this isn't a question of musical appreciation but something else, and it's precisely because of the sounds that I'm interested in something first and foremost. But this I think is important -- the emotional connection can and for me most often does come from something that's not verbal, not language-based. It is a feeling as a result very, very hard to describe.

The question isn't so much whether it's bad that hip-hop is violent or misogynistic -- which it is, at least relative to a Belle and Sebastian lyric sheet. The question is about, say, a Scottish indie kid ignoring hip-hop because it's emotional content just doesn't resonate with or seem relevant to his experience of life -- and conversely, a Brooklyn b-boy ignoring Belle and Sebastian because it's emotional content just doesn't resonate with or seem relevant to his experience of life.

It's also a question about that Scottish kid loving, say, Jadakiss precisely because it allows him access to ideas that aren't a part of his emotional life; or that Brooklyn kid loving Sigur Ros for similar reasons.

The question is how you negotiate that, and how much you fault other people for negotiating it in ways you don't approve of: e.g., listening only to music that is about their own emotional lifestyles. As much as IL* knocks indie kids for this, my guess is that hip-hop fans are the absolute worst about not wanting to hear from anyone who's not one of them.

Why do I keep inserting apostrophes in possessive "its"s? Have I gone insane?

perhaps you are a secret greengrocer, nitsuh

Dude, you just named my next band: the Secret Greengrocers.

I do a lot of reading, and I encourage others to read, for this very reason... to observe or form an emotional connection to different people and different times.

So much of the influences that affect us in our western lives is american pop culture. Which isn't all bad, it's just the sometimes we need to see there's lives being led outside of that.

In the music I listen to, also, there is this quality that you're talking about. Beyond "furniture music", the artist reflects their character in their music.

I want both a and b. I want to experience music from artists that describes parts of my life, and I also want to experience music that is largely or completely divorced from my world view.

I think either reason is a valid reason for listening to a particular kind of music. Also, neither is a valid reason for criticising someones listening habits. BUT a is essentially "comfortable" and b far more "challenging".

I'm always surprised that you still seem to mostly listen to song- based vocal music, Ned.

Actually, the last few days have seen me listening to things like Landing, the Surface of Eceon and my housemate's incredibly good techno mix (I love the fact we have a permanent DJ setup in the front room now; all ILx visitors should bring vinyl). But I think the common canard about listening more for the grain/sound of the voice than what the voice is itself saying applies to me pretty darn well, actually.

I mean, it exists outside of lyrics, I should say: I consider a post- rock instrumental to be like how I perceive or want to perceive myself (considered, polite, mellow) whereas a grindcore instrumental (aggressive, reckless, Dionysian) is not.

Oh, we may not all want to *be* a grindcore instrumental, but it's so fun! Guitars that sound like they're simultaneously eating and vomiting themselves, gotta love it. Post-rock instrumentals from Chicago too often make me think of stale biscotti.

Why does every argument for post-rock seem to confirm my biases against it?

(Anyone remember how Chuck Eddy preferred Axl Rose to Lou Barlow because he lives Lou Barlow everyday?)

Why does every argument for post-rock seem to confirm my biases against it? There must be a better case for it somewhere. I can't imagine that anyone is actually inspired to create polite music. (Chicago post-rock does make me wonder though.)

Remember how Chuck Eddy preferred Axl Rose to Lou Barlow because he lives Lou Barlow everyday?

Gar. It told me it didn't get sent so I added a bit and sent it again. Gah. Watch this appear twice.

AARG I should have known better than to offer up post-rock to be beaten any pulpier.

And Ned, I do enjoy hearing grindcore, at times. But I was only using it as an example of how two types of non-lyrical music can possess very clear "personalities" which may or may not match our own. Sundar's Chuck Eddy paraphrase takes a clear stance on exactly what I'm talking about: Chuck, at least in that case, chooses different, and he chooses it specifically because it's different.

Whereas I, as a kid who got into music mainly because first hearing bands like the Smiths made me feel less alienated, probably still tend to like things that Speak to Me, etc. I'd probably love it if Stephen Pastel and Kevin Shields did a double concept album about working at an academic press and the writings of Italo Calvino.

Sundar's Chuck Eddy paraphrase takes a clear stance on exactly what I'm talking about: Chuck, at least in that case, chooses different, and he chooses it specifically because it's different.

Though I'm sympathetic with Chuck's vision (why wouldn't I be, after all! ;-)), I think it's weirdly limiting. Surely no music *really* captures exactly what one's exact life is like perfectly -- it's all got to be tourism.

I wonder what it would sound like if Colin Newman and Maryanne Amacher made a concept album about working in a call centre.

There's also the attraction of not only relating to the lyrics or music, but how they can dramatize your own life. The first band I fell in love was Nine Inch Nails, and I know a big reason was that it made feeling alone and miserable in high school somehow sexy and dangerous. And I still cling to music today that has an immediate emotional resonance like Bright Eyes or Ryan Adams. It is very self indulgent, I'd have to admit. It is all about me me me. Of course this isn't always the case as I listen to a lot of music with no lyrics and a more mercurial atmosphere. I mean, certainly some post-rock feels sad, but take something like idm. It doesn't seem to fit into a clear emotional context as well.

So to answer your question, I'd say I'm guilty of listening to songwriters I can relate to. Do I make an effort to listen to those I can't relate to? Nope. Do I listen to those I can't relate to for Ned-esque reasons? Yes. Somehow I sense this is more a question about culture then emotional lyrics though. In which case I must defend myself and say I am much more open minded when it comes to art and film and literature than with music.

What if, for better or worse, you don't lead much of a distinguished emotional/social life? I'm not sure I can say that's me.. but I've always felt everything was foreign to me. Every type of music I've gotten into, from alternarock in 8th grade to hip hop throughout high school and IDM and indie and pop and etc. etc. etc. has always been pretty selfconsciously imposed upon my initially nonexistent tastes. Everything feels like a window to emotional/social lives that I don't live... I don't know of any "resonance" or "connection", I just like to see what all this music stuff is all about.

The ideas of comfort and challenge aren't absolutes - in a sense the supposed 'challenge' of listening to music with a radically different worldview is limited because you're not a participant in the moral choices that worldview makes neccessary, i.e. listening to hip-hop I can switch from emotional participant to documentary observer pretty quickly if I hit a moral 'speed bump' so to speak. Listening to indie pop (or just 'pop' for me) that kind of distance isn't available and as I get older I do find myself asking a lot of questions about how my kind of people behave, particularly in terms of relationships, and how much of that is shaped by the shared worldview of the songs.

(Incidentally the attacks on 'indie kids' here, mine at least, are usually to do with how they approach other genres on indie terms i.e. looking for something sonically different but with an ideology they can be comfy with. They are usually considerably more open-minded about listening to other stuff than fans of almost anything else, which makes it all the more baffling that they are unable to justify why indie rock remains at the centre of their listening universe...this is a side issue though.)

Is it possible to like music for what it is even though you don't relate to it as such./ Or by liking it do you automatically relate. The only music I ever really feel connected to, though I may be taking the term too strictly, is the dance stuff I like because I relate it to countless nights out actually dancing to it and having fun. I suppose albums I really love that I've listened to alot have certain memories and connections like that. But I guess I'm still wondering about what I asked in the first line.

I do look for music which has an emotional resonance with me and my experiences. However, emotional resonance is not something which is only communicated by lyrics, hence how I can listen to music of which the lyrics are totally foreign, and still feel an emotional connection with the music.

My objection to Belle and Sebastian is not so much the music or lyrics (which is mostly OK, with occasional flashes of brilliance or perception, which I will admit) but that very lifestyle. It seems like so many B&S kiddies are attracted not even so much to the music as to the cult-like fandom. It's the same way that I love the music of The Smiths, yet I would never identify myself as a "Smiths Fan" or want to be part of the subculture. I don't like cults; I don't like defining my identity by someone else's terms, it seems an abnegation of personal identity: Lets All Be Different Together. I'm sure this is probably just as endemic in hip-hop culture, and would probably annoy me just as much if I were aware of it.

Hip-hop is something that only occasionally makes sense to me. Not because it is necessarily foreign to me, and not even because I believe it's a violent and misogynistic cult (even though yes, that concerns me) but because the *music* itself doesn't carry the emotional resonance. As I've explained before, the most important things to me in music are texture and harmony, and the least important are the beats and the lyrics. Hip-hop is ALL about beats and lyrics, and therefore most of it flies under or over the radar of things that will affect me emotionally.

I can find joy in things that are alien- the joyous textures of Indian or West African music delight me, even though they are totally foreign, and the gorgeous and strangely familiar vocal harmonies of Southern African music. It may be alien in concept, yet the emotional effect is there.

It's not about a "window" on an alien culture. How can that be? Something along those lines would seem to me to be the ulimate in Pretension. It would be cultural tourism for me to pretend to see something in hip-hop, that's the pretense, and *pretense* is sillier to me than to engage in something which others view as silly or sad.

What if you spent a good deal of your past as a shifting cultural tourist, and one day somebody snapped their fingers and you woke up? I sorta feel this way in that my forays into past music never reflected any experiences or lifestyle of mine (not conventionally anyhow). The only difference now is that I don't genuinely believe I'm a participant of any culture (hip hop namely) by listening to the music. However, my tastes today are now largely determined by past "pretentious" directions, so I find myself stuck with some sort of accidental intuition. Maybe this is everybody's story, in some shape of fashion... i dont know... but I certainly was never a Scottish indie kid or a Brooklyn b-boy. The search for emotional resonance, maybe?

two thoughts:

isn't everyone here a musical tourist to some degree or another? it goes beyond being well versed in a subject - even a subject which is more "them" than "you"; i know a lot about reggae but i'm not going down to the kingston dancehall on friday night; i know a fuck of a lot about jungle but i never went to rage or awol or speed, bought white labels from specialist shops, or even went to that many raves in america when i was younger. is this musical tourism? (or i guess a better way to phrase: isn't it?) i love this music, i am knowledgible about it. i do not engage in it's culture. it's by no means an "alien" culture to me, but i have never practiced it's codes and mores, contracts and traditions. even if i was chillin with the yardies on the weekend isn't it more colonization than integration? (because i wasn't born into the culture i'll never understand it innately, the way someone who was introduced to a music as the wallpaper to his/her life as a child was.) does this make me more or less qualified to comment on it? will it forever be White Boy Aspirationalism (capitalized to suggest the fact that it goes beyond white or black or asian, rather than the accpeted face of a cross-cultural desire to be "down" with any given music)? or this a way to appreciate "outside" music which doesn't smack patronizing or (obv. i know my own feelings on these questions, but merely playing devils advo until i hear yours. of course this ties into all sorts of issues, re. the "melting-pot" approach to music which has flowered in the 90s, fusion vs. faction, the Spam taste of one-worlders.)

second, can the "feelings" expressed in any music (this is assuming that you take music to be a vehicle for the artists inner-life at all times) be alien to another human? this is gonna sound like smug hippie bullshit, but at a level of ultimate reduction, aren't we all dealing with the same basic wants/needs/desires/pains?

I did compose an extremely facetious reply, but then erased it as being racist, classist and otherwise offensive.

But, no. I can't relate to the emotional impact of music that is about violence, or about misogyny, or even just about deprivation and poverty, when you really come down to it.

I can relate to themes of joy, of sorrow, of heartbreak, of love, etc. I *can* relate to the emotional impact of music that is about bored, over-educated, whiney, spoiled, middle class youth, which is probably why I will still continue to put my oar in on the indie side.

Is that so wrong? Should I pretend to be and understand other than what I am? I'm not saying that you are employing a pretense if you enjoy other music for other reasons. I'm saying that it would be a pretense for me.

Music is "yours" when you claim it -- when you and your friends sing it to one another, or along with it, and laugh with it, and discuss it, and quote it appropriately &c. When it becomes part of your social existance, you have as much right to it as anybody.

I'm not sure I have ever found any music that has directly reflected my emotional and social life at a particular time. I've found lots of tracks that have matched my mood for a fleeting moment (such as uplifting dance tunes or mournful ballads) but I've never discovered an artist whose worldview chimed perfectly with my own.

When I was a teenager I believed that the songs of the Smiths "spoke" for me, but now I can see how mistaken I was. Back then, I was self- consciously dramatising my own life as if I was a character in a Morrissey lyric. Now I know how different life and art really are.

As a teenager I could describe the cultural themes of songs such as "Still Ill" with some accuracy, but when I tried to describe the "themes" of my own life I was just deluding myself. Life isn't "about" anything in particular, life is something that happens without a clear purpose. I had no real idea about the true nature of my own feelings and motivations because I was too wrapped up in my own situation to have any sort of overview.

Nowadays I don't listen to albums in order to analyse the specifics of my existence. I listen to music (such as jazz, reggae, electronica) because I like the textures and the rhythms.

Kate just got at exactly what my question is:

I *can* relate to the emotional impact of music that is about bored, over-educated, whiney, spoiled, middle class youth, which is probably why I will still continue to put my oar in on the indie side. Is that so wrong? Should I pretend to be and understand other than what I am? I'm not saying that you are employing a pretense if you enjoy other music for other reasons. I'm saying that it would be a pretense for me.

I lean toward the belief that we can't mock or blame Kate for wanting to hear primarily music that seems to reflect what's going on with her -- we can only mock or blame her if we think it's bad music, musically. (And we could maybe try to point out to her where music mainly addressing topics "foreign" to her maybe do overlap with her life, in terms of those universal human experiences mentioned above.) I equally don't think you can blame Ice Cube if he's not particularly interested in Hank Williams, although you could try and convince him of some connections ("Country's about cultural alienation and poverty and attacking the power structure, too!").

Tiffany's "We're Both Thinking of Her Tonight" = song I have most related to, ever. And to understand it requires the suburbs.