Posted on 03/30/2021 5:40:02 AM PDT by NOBO2012
I see that Oxford has gone all in on the woke/white guilt curriculum.
The University of Oxford is considering scrapping sheet music for being 'too colonial' after staff raised concerns about the 'complicity in white supremacy' in music curriculums.
Please, in the name of all that’s good and holy, make it stop!
I believe The Supremes – Flo, Mary and Diana, not Joe, Brett and Amy - would agree with me.
Sure, they were just 3 black girls from the ghetto projects who made good, but they sort of liked that supremacy thing. And apparently they had nothing against slapping their name on a really, really white product in order to make a few extra bucks.
The Supremes Special Formula White Bread from Schaffer Bakery
Of course today the woke crowd would never allow that endorsement to stand. The gals would be shamed into not only removing their name from the product but apologizing profusely for their insensitivity to The Cause.
But back to Oxford and their colonial guilt complex:
Professors are set to reform their music courses to move away from the classic repertoire, which includes the likes of Beethoven and Mozart, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.
It claimed that teaching musical notation had 'not shaken off its connection to its colonial past' and would be 'a slap in the face' to some students.
And it added that musical skills should no longer be compulsory because the current repertoire's focus on 'white European music' causes 'students of colour great distress'.
By all means remove the requirement that you have any musical skill in order to get a degree in music from a formerly prestigious British University. Art talent was long ago waived in the art schools so why not? Besides, who needs symphonies in this day and age anyway?
I Hear A Symphony
For one thing they are so old school; today we’ve got hip-hop/rap, techno/electronic and alternative/steampunk to fill the gap. Clearly classical music belongs in the colonial trash heap of history. And if you don’t believe me, just watch this video on the the evolution of dance, which likewise showcases the evolution of modern music:
If nothing else it will allow you to pinpoint the precise moment in musical time that you became irrelevant. For me it was right after the Macarena.
Posted from: MOTUS A.D.
‘Cancel Culture’ has become institutionalized. At this point the insanity is spread far and wide, like a metastasizing cancer. Which it is.
I’ve been banned from four sites in the last five months for my position on Rona. No rules being broken, but they just don’t like what I’m saying. I back up my opinion with lots of links to both text and video.
But the reason for banning is always the same: Trolling.
They’ve basically added this definition to “trolling”: Disagreeing with too many people’s opinions.
Basically they are making you the equivalent of a black man crashing a KKK meeting, or a conservative crashing a BLM meeting. i.e. if you are in the minority and share your opinion, you are trolling.
This is quite literally an attack on western civilization.
Music is supposed to be the international language. For crying out loud, the notations are in Italian.
But these people are against the international standard. This is such blatant dumbing down that it is hard to take seriously. I understand some drunk in an inner city bar proposing this. But actual educated people?
Ridiculous.
I was not surprised when our supposedly top universities bent over and said “do me”. After all, Harvard let the Kennedys in, Yale let Bubba and the Hillabeast in, so we know what their standards were and are.
But Oxford?
For shame. Hopefully, they’ll regain their standards.
I hereby declare the age of Impressionist Music.
(It just need the impression that it is music.)
You don’t need to read music today or even any ability to play an instrument. You just cut and paste bits and pieces together into a loop and try some effects to make it seem rilly rilly weird like a video game or horror movie.
It’s life on random and the art of the swipe. Nothing below the surface.
The night of the Grammy Awards I turned on my T.V. and was ‘treated’ to the sight of an overweight black woman twerking her way up a set of stairs. I switched the channel to a local PBS station that somewhat ironically was showing a Lucy Wolsey documentary on Elizabeth I’s influence on church music.
Talk about a contrast! Instead of lyrics to a song whose name cannot even be said on broadcast TV they were explaining musical technicalities of 16th century hymns glorifying God. The music director of the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court, a Mr. Carl Jackson, happens to be a black man who apparently has no trouble at all reading sheet music.
I don’t know. On the one hand, yes sheet music has a long history and before recording was the only way to “transmit” music from one place to another, one generation to another. On the other hand the vast majority of the people professionally making music today can’t read sheet music, and it’s been that way basically since the rock and roll era began. This was a constant lament of Frank Zappa’s, he was a sheet music guy and frequently the first thing he had to do with a new player was teach them to read. And the situation hasn’t gotten better. Tabs are the most common notation out there, and those are mostly used to “instruct” amateurs who want to play at home (I put instruct in quotes because legendarily most tabs you can buy are wrong).
Also you’ve got the problem that sheet music really hasn’t kept up with technology. With all the pedals and effects there’s not really a method, short of lots of written notes, to say “turn on your echo chamber here, now turn that off and turn on the fuzz box”.
I guess it really boils to what are you trying to teach? Are you trying to teach them to make music? Well we’ve got a lot of history showing you don’t have to read it to make it. Are you teaching appreciation? Again, you don’t have to read it to appreciate it. Are you teaching music history? Probably need to be able to read it for that. Although with over 100 years of blues history maybe not. Or are you just trying to teach people to read music? That seems to be the best reason to teach people to read music.
You have to ask yourself, “Do we really need to know how to read and write?”
After all, we have video and sound recodings and they capture facial expression, body language, and emotion much better than the written word.
Wouldn’t it make ignorant people feel better about themselves if nobody knew how to read or write?
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