“The song has been redefined from being melodically derived to becoming a beat-driven form.”
The “Africanization” of music. All rhythm, no melody or intellectual structure.
The article’s author was just too polite to state that — and had to dance around it with a symphony of words.
No intellectual structure in today’s “music” is SO RIGHT! Zero intelligence with a hundred percent belligerence!
I disagree with your re-definition of what the OP has written. It’s not “Africanization”, which implies that you see it as a ‘racist rant’, which it is not!
Music used to be about MUSIC! NOT crimes in the street, how low the girls wear their jeans, how much they wiggle their ‘yes, yes, yes’, how much the guys hate old people, etc.
Music used to be written, composed, rhymed, with meaning. Nowadays, with the electronic aids available, frogs can sound off with a baritone voice! The talent is NOT THERE ANYMORE! Originality and content are not there anymore. The music industry has become the General Motors cookie-cutter with different name brands of today.
If THAT is what you define as “Africanization”, then say so!
I’ll just sum it all up for ya .... it stinks!
I’ll buy my $% cd’s at the big box store, of the bands and music I USED to listen to, and pay my internet radio fee to listen to that and much else, including fife and drums ... they haven’t learned how to make a mess of THAT yet!
When I need a fix of good music I either listen to Frank Sinatra, opera or big band music or favorite rock and roll bands, whatever fits my mood at the moment and possibly all four. I agree music today is just noise...no more. Even rock and roll has shining moments in composition and melody.
‘The “Africanization” of music. All rhythm, no melody or intellectual structure.
The article’s author was just too polite to state that — and had to dance around it with a symphony of words.’
I’m afraid you didn’t really understand me at all. You obviously have your own opinions, but I don’t agree with him. Rather than taking my meaning, you read your own meaning into what I wrote. I am not dancing around anything. The so-called “Africanization” of music in America is what produced Jazz, a uniquely American form of music, which I happen to love. Any musicologist who has studied Jazz will tell you it is a highly developed, intellectual form, which employs sophisticated melodic and harmonic elements, in addition to rhythm.
Let me add also that I do not automatically hate music that has a driving beat. I like a variety of musical styles and forms, including music with a strong beat. My comment that song has become less melodically derived than beat-driven doesn’t mean I am opposed to music with a beat. Apparently, some readers have little use for critical thought. They simply jump to their own conclusions, without regard to what a writer has actually written.
I happen to love the musical influences that came from Africa. The contribution of many timeless “Africanized” melodies, particularly in the pentatonic scale, have deeply enriched popular secular music of the mid twentieth century. And the “Negro Spiritual” has greatly influenced sacred choral literature. Though I am not black, I have sung in a black gospel choir, and frankly found that musical and spiritual experience to be as profound as any classical choral music I’ve ever sung.