Phillip Lucas, Seattle Times, July 27, 2009
The classical music blaring from speakers mounted on the light posts in a Rainier Beach parking lot keeps Richelle Reason walking. She never stops to hear the next song in the storefront symphony.
“It’s kind of annoying,” she said of the music in the Saar’s Market Place parking lot on South Henderson Street.
That’s exactly the point.
In the past, crowds of up to 25 people would hang out in the lot, which became the site of drug dealing, fights and police responses, according to Patrick Senn, store director at Saar’s Market Place.
“But now, people just come and go,” said Donna Fischer, a cashier at the store.
The market started using classical music about three years ago to repel loiterers and vandals from their buildings. Senn said the method appears to be working. Since he began playing the music, Senn said he hasn’t called police to the lot as much, although the Seattle Police Department wasn’t able to confirm that.
Businesses and transportation systems use classical, opera and country music as a crime-fighting tool around the globe.
Several Canadian cities began pumping classical and opera music from speakers in public places, such as subway platforms, to keep people from loitering. London plays classical music in 65 of its Underground stations, drawing compliments from some commuters and transit workers, according to a Transport for London spokeswoman.
{snip}
The reason certain types of music work as a crime deterrent, neurologists say, may lie in people’s neurobiological responses to things they don’t enjoy or find unfamiliar. Production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to pleasure and rewards, is modulated by the nucleus accumbens, one of the brain’s “pleasure centers.”
When people hear music that they like, that stimulates dopamine production and puts them in a better mood. But when people dislike the music, their brains respond by suppressing dopamine production—souring their mood and making them avoid the music.
{snip}
The music, paired with heightened security efforts, helped cut spending on vandalism-related repairs from $3,000 between 2006 and 2007 to $1,600 between 2007 and 2008, he added.
The Paramount Theatre in downtown Seattle, occasionally plays “It’s a Small World After All” through the night, possibly to keep people from hanging around the building. The McDonald’s on the corner of Third Avenue and Pine Street played country music to keep loiterers from getting too comfy. Four blocks north, the Royal Crest Condominium complex in Belltown plays opera to keep people from loitering near ground-level businesses.
{snip}
But Levitin [Dr. Daniel Levitin, professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal] cautioned about being elitist or ethnocentric in linking good behavior with classical music and other fine arts. “I think hip-hop or R&B or heavy metal, in the right circumstances, can make someone feel kind, sensitive or inspired,” he said. Saar’s customers seemed divided on the classical-music offerings.
{snip}
When classical and opera music was tested as an anti-crime utility in Canada, some classical and opera enthusiasts decried its use that way. Bryan Lowe, programming director at classical-radio station KING 98.1 FM, said he isn’t offended by using opera and classical music that way, because it unintentionally exposes people to fine arts who might not stop to listen otherwise.
{snip}
Original article
Email
Phillip Lucas
at plucas@seattletimes.com .
(Posted on July 30, 2009)
Comments
But Levitin [Dr. Daniel Levitin, professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal] cautioned about being elitist or ethnocentric in linking good behavior with classical music and other fine arts. “I think hip-hop or R&B or heavy metal, in the right circumstances, can make someone feel kind, sensitive or inspired,” he said. Saar’s customers seemed divided on the classical-music offerings.(FROM ARTICLE ABOVE)
Why is this guy comparing heavy metal with the degenerates that listen to rap. Most people that listen to heavy metal work in the construction trades. Most people that listen to rap work in the “prison trades”.
Great minds think alike — it seems like music as a diversity repellent came up on one of yesterday’s threads. But Dr. Levitin’s warning I think foreshadows an end to using music this way. I can imagine that, just as some cities and states have to get DOJ clearance before they make voting and elections changes, thanks to the 1965 Voter Fraud Empowerment Act, bars stores and parking lots will have to get DOJ clearance on the kind of music they play.
Funny how the music played is listened to by ——-people. I purchase seats for the season of one of America’s top symphony. the thousand or so seats are filled with ——- people, with some Chinese/Korean people. It is wonderful music. It affects the emotions and the mind.
The mind. The mind. The mind.
Every shopping center in the US and Canada should play classical music.
I was raised like everybody else listening to the usual non-melodic stuff, but I was also exposed to much other types of music being from a rural environment. We had a lot of country and Western music, soft rock, and and goldie oldies.
Though unlike a lot of the soft rock, the other stuff never “took” with me. I heard very little opera or classical music, but when I first listened as an adult it made me feel as if it were somehow familiar, except for many of the songs that I don’t connect with at all.
Heavy Metal, Rap and Hard Rock, can only be music born in the depths of Hell.
I used to live in Seattle (moved a year ago) and every area mentioned in this article is usually overrun with thuggish blacks causing problems for everyone else. I sure hope this works!
One of the reasons I visit Panera is that, in addition to having some very nice food, they also pipe in classical music. It’s so much more conducive to rest, relaxation and thought. Interestingly enough, very few blacks frequent Panera restaurants.
I never can understand how so many establishments can get away with playing rap, rock, heavy metal or other loud kinds of music. I think it would repulse a great many customers. It does me.
I had a similar experience at a Denny’s restaurant several years ago. I stopped while on a trip, walked in and noticed that country and western music playing.(This was fine with me).
Brilliant! A little Bluegrass and Brahms = non-White repellent!! It only makes sense really.
I’m not surprised that they display such overwhelming antipathy to it that they can’t stay in the same space where it’s being played. Blacks typically have little or no affinity for beaux arts, literature or other refinements of Western culture, although they wish to be free in their depredations of the material wealth which is the technical by-product of Western culture and civilization. I wish our young white people had comparable antipathy to the cacophonous garbage known as “rap” and “hip-hop.”
I wonder how long it will be before the blacks and Hispanics start suing some of these establishments for creating a hostile environment?
“Levitin cautioned about being elitist or ethnocentric in linking good behavior with classical music and other fine arts.”
Well, I wonder where Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Stravinsky, Brahms, Williams, Handel, Grieg, Sibelius and all the other classical composers come from? Surely not the same folks who gave us 50 Cent and Snoop Doggy Dog.
I’ll be elitist and ethnocentric in linking these until somebody shows me otherwise.
Dr Daniel Levitin’s contribution is predictable but classic: “… elitist and ethnocentric…” and suggesting that the music of the crack house, the ghetto would put people - people of a certain kind, one assumes - in the sort of mood where mugging or dealing drugs would not occur to them.
This suggests a Skinnerian experiment on a truly heroic scale. Loudspeakers in the druggie zones of the city playing Mozart and Vivaldi would alter social behavior totally.
True or false? Worth a try, perhaps!
I’m not surprised that blacks are offended by beautiful, white music. I’m white and I’ve always been offended by black music.
“But Levitin [Dr. Daniel Levitin, professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal] cautioned about being elitist or ethnocentric in linking good behavior with classical music and other fine arts. “I think hip-hop or R&B or heavy metal, in the right circumstances, can make someone feel kind, sensitive or inspired,” he said.”
_______________________________________
“sensitive or inspired”? The man is delusional, at best.
I’d enjoy hearing classical music while shopping or in public places but repeated playing of “It’s a Small World After All” would make me as eager to get away as heavy metal, rap, etc.
While we’re on the subject, why is it that whenever a big city (never a rural area) has a “gun buyback” program, that they’re only advertised on radio stations that play Rap, R-B and Hip Hop? I never hear gun buyback days advertised on classical music radio stations, “Brahms for Berettas” could be the tag line. I never hear them on the easy listening stations, either. And more than that, I never hear gun buyback programs advertised on country music stations. Though I would rather be a “lady of the night” and release flatulence while sitting in a house of worship (you do your own translation) than advertise a gun buyback program on a country music radio station.
“Stop the Violence” ads? Always on the rap, r-b, hip hop stations, never on the classical, soft rock or country stations.
What gives?
I guess maybe this explains why police all have Bagpipe bands at all the parades, maybe they are actually elite anti crime units? If this really works maybe a little Mozart blasted at several hundred decibles across the southern border and we will reverse our demographic displacement?
Just don’t play Beethoven it inspires murderous thoughts in the hearts of young english lads, unless Clockwork orange was just fiction..
My favorite movie theatre does this too, which is why it is my favorite.
It’s a small pleasure waiting for a train and playing classical ‘name that tune’ or ‘name that composer’. I really appreciate the Mozart, Bach, and baroque.
Recently, I want to see the Barber of Seville performed by a new company called Nickel City Opera. There were a few blacks present. After the first intermission, I went outside and watched one of the black attendees get in his car and drive away and I didn’t see him return to his seat. By the way, there were no shootings, stabbings, or fights before, during, or after the performance; only smiles.
Classical music; either you feel it in your soul or you don’t.
One time I was reading through a forum, and someone related a story of how they were at a club. Some blacks came in, and the DJ or whoever changed the music to something blacks don’t like, and the blacks left.
Birds of a Feather has a point though. Watch someone get the bright idea of using music to win the ghetto lottery.
This will most assuredly be a future inclusion at stuff black people don’t like…
www.stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot or www.sbpdl.com
if you have suggestions for that site, send them to stuffblackpeople@gmail.com
This is old news. Certain shopping center property management firms figured this out back in the seventies if not before.
‘Music hath charms that soothe the savage breast’.
That adage was written long before the advent of punk rock, rap, and hip-hop.
In New York City, whites have been the minority group since the mid 1970’s, but there are sancturies there for them: museums and bookstores. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a high “suggested” entrance fee, but if you read the fine print, you can give any small amount you want to and you won’t be denied admission. Although the museum has a large collection of art from all over the world, on any given day, it’s a 97% white crowd (the other 3% being mostly Japanese or other Asian tourists). Bookstores have pretty much the same environment.
Hey, I’m all for this. Most Classical music requires mental participation for enjoyment and this is beyond the realm of most minorities (Asians excepted). A licensing fee and some loudspeakers are a lot less expensive that a whole staff of loss prevention specialists. Maybe your local MSM will leave you alone; if they announce that Classical music drives away the thugs, God forbid you might have more paying white customers who don’t shoplift or loot the place.
Back during the whole Rodney King fiasco, there was a report on TV that some LAPD cops would play Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” while patrolling certain neighborhoods (copying the helicopter scene from Apocalypse Now). To be honest, this was probably the most appropriate way to enter the neighborhood.
I agree with Uniculturalist #6 about Panera. Even if you are in a majority black neighborhood, most will buy whatever and leave the store. The majority of those who hang out and talk or surf the net are white folks. If you have to work out of town, it is not a bad idea to locate a Panera near your hotel.
If Classical is not your thing, but you like rock/heavy metal and would like to be in a pretty white audience, check out a band called Dream Theater. For enjoyment, this music too requires mental participation and you will never hear them on the radio.
It probably would be a pretty funny joke to create a gun buyback program at the local classical music station. Often times these places are run by the “multicultural mavens” who really want you to “enjoy a richer life” even though they live in gated communities and are all for gun control. Offer tickets to the local symphony orchestra and just for kicks, run the print ads in the ghetto. Involve the local “Concerned Ministers” of the area. Then sit back and watch the fun when the 50 Cent crowd shows up for a night with Bedrich Smetana. Especially if you can package it to make Smetana look like a rapper from Europe that is the hottest thing over there.
Here is a potential layout for your print ad (thanks to Question Diversity #15).
“Brahms for Berettas” “Mossbergs for Mendelssohn”
“I think hip-hop or R&B or heavy metal, in the right circumstances, can make someone feel kind, sensitive or inspired,”
Isn’t that actually a backhanded swipe at r&b and heavy metal? Look out mr sensitive. Someone may call the sensitivity police.
Somewhat related is the fact that the U.S. military has used rap/hiphop as a form of torture on Arab prisoners. This is well-documented.
I used to work at a Circuit City in Nevada that had a serious shop lifting problem. They would play rap all day long, under-staff their sales floor, redesigned the sales floor to have lots of blind spots. I told them, numerous times, to change the music if they wanted to keep out the rifraf. They never listened. Now, of course, they are out of business.
And isn’t it a shame that we have to resort to these desperate subterfuges instead of being able to identify and deal with the problem directly, for what it is?
Zoba said:
I don’t hesitate to let a place know — that is, if they appreciate my business and want to see me again. You have to TELL them!
I recently left a comment: “The food was delicious, but the music was horrible.”
I don’t know about this. When you have gangs called the Beetoven boys or the Mozart marauders shooting at each other, you will have second thoughts about this program.
BTW, I always thought that the clockwork orange got it all wrong. A criminal mastermind will never enjoy classical music. He would be listening to horrible pop music.
Who knew the answer was as simple as Good Taste? Now, if you really want to see them run, watch me play the Bagpipes.
My wife bought me tickets to attend an Andre Reiu Concert. I have to say it was a fantastic Concert, and I also noticed there wasn’t a Black or Brown face in the crowd. Yes, it was a Magical Evening.
Blacks seem to like loud noise, and pounding drums. It always has to have drums, and the more insufferable, the better.
“But Levitin [Dr. Daniel Levitin, professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal] cautioned about being elitist or ethnocentric in linking good behavior with classical music and other fine arts . ‘I think hip-hop or R&B or heavy metal, in the right circumstances, can make someone feel kind, sensitive or inspired…’ ”
>> See? Dr. PC knows what’s up. He’s not clueless at all. If he was, he wouldn’t have automatically associated being ethnocentric with European/Caucasian music. He knows most black people don’t like classical, country, easy listening, etc. music. And he knows that people who do like this kind of music (generally speaking) are linked with ‘good behavior.’ It’s a default (and true) position. If it wasn’t a given, he wouldn’t have had to mention it.
For once, a story on Amren that brings a smile. As an inveterate classical music buff, I always thought that Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms were among those beautiful things in life that are simply good for their own sake. Now, I learn that they’re thug repellent. I’m smiling.
>>>“I think hip-hop or R&B or heavy metal, in the right circumstances, can make someone feel kind, sensitive or inspired
Come again? I’ve always considered it TRASH MUSIC, like [c]rap music, for example. But then I am a [reasonably] intelligent White human being. Not dysfunctional or brain dead like some afficionados of that music style.
7 — Lorin wrote at 6:43 PM on July 30:
Lorin,
Now we will find out that NPR is “racist” (whatever that means anymore), and it needs to change to rap music.
Classical music is a highly evolved expression of genius at work and therefore shown to be timeless, never going out of “style”. On the other hand the basis of much black music is mainly just rhythm, the boom-boom, thump thump they seem to like. Probably still not too far from their primitive roots. To each their own but ones taste in music is especially telling. Not as a display of snobbery but as a facet of an evolved being.
While living in my college dorm I was constantly peppered at all hours with freakishly large bass speakers pumping out hip-hop and rap trash music. Complaints about this fell on the ears of the deaf, liberal, apologists who monitored the dorm. Finally, I made my own CD which I played out my window over and over. It started with Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”, followed by “Largo al Factotum” from Barber of Seville, followed by Hank Williams, Jr. singing “Family Tradition”, the Osborne Bros. doing “Rocky Top”, Boxcar Willie’s version of “Wabash Cannonball”, Tanya Falan (of the Lawrence Welk show) singing “Eh Cumpari, the Beach Boys “Little Deuce Coupe”, Dean Martin singing “Volare”, and ending with Sgt. Barry Sadler singing “Ballad of the Green Berets”.
The effect was immediate. Apparently I had discovered an absolutely toxic combination that would blow the synapses of the most simple-minded. Sometime during the third loop of my musical revue, campus security and the dorm monitors, along with several black complainants all showed up to my door and demanded that the music stop because it was “intruding on the privacy of others”. I turned my music off and asked if they heard the thumping and jungle mutterings coming from several other windows. I said “that invades my privacy and I’ll stop when they do”.
It took two more days until we all received the word that the “dorm policy” had changed to prohibit playing music out of windows or in such a manner that it can be easily heard outside an individual’s dorm room. Three years of offensive rap music silenced in two days by Hank, Boxcar Willie, Wagner, and the brave men of the Green Beret!
I love listening to classical music on my radio and any establishment that plays has the effect of causing relaxation in my mind. It somehow makes a business appear upscale even when it’s not.
I live in a town with about 500 blacks out of a population of about 50,000. The local Quiznos plays hip hop music all the time and the place looks like Detroit central during lunch rush. Not only does it attract blacks but also certain Whites and hipsters, the kind of people I didn’t think we had in our town. I’ve stopped patronizing the place as I can’t tolerate the rythmn or the singers voice. All rap music sounds like it has the same persons voice on it no matter who the rapper is.
poster #23 is so right about museums. I live in the DC area and frequent the Smithsonian Museums which in addition to being some of the largest collections of art and historical artifacts (from Rembrandt, to the Hope Diamond, to the flag that flew over Ft Mchenry in the war of 1812) are COMPLETELY FREE. One quickly notices that these museums are completely devoid of the DC “natives.”
Brilliant! This type of music, with its long history of Western ingenuity, artisanry and creative genius - qualities only afforded to the White mind - will certainly repel those races of lower IQ, if anything, by their incapability to grasp the beauty of the genre, but possibly out of hatred and jealousy for this product of such mental and creative White success. As for those who include Asians into the broad groupings of those that appreciate Classical music, I must disagree with your empathy; largely, they appreciate it due to its technical qualities, and for the most part, you find only find proficient Asian classical musicians - allowed to be so by their capabilities of scientific precision and attention to detail and practice - whereas there are little to none Asian composers of note.
aj writes:
I should mention that the big orchestral works of Beethoven as well as Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, and a few other 19th-century heavyweights, can get quite sexual at times. (Particularly, note the last few lines of Beethoven 9th as conducted by Karajan, or the last few minutes of Tchaikovsky 4th.) Might have the opposite effect as intended, like, encouraging loiterers to stick around to hear what’s coming next!
If the loitering punks are white punks, one sure cure is to play Arabic or Turkish classical, in maqam scales. The microtonal intervals will drive them bananas. (Not a good idea to play this during business hours as this music tends to drive *most* white Americans bananas, as being “out of tune”.) Add some wailing Arab women singers and the punks will run away to the tune of their own wailing! Don’t know if this will work on black punks, but it might.
I’ve also found that poorly educated Americans typically react negatively to “La Mystere des Voix Bulgares” (Balkan multiphonic women’s choral music)—thinking it sounds “crazy”—while highly educated people tend to love it.
I opened a bar/lounge in my hometown of 500,000 people. I can tell you that it doesn’t take long for blacks to try to infitrate anything nice that someone else has built. They come in intimidating whites who if they only know how easy it is to smack these thug punks down would be ashamed of their timidity.They force themselves on the white females and soon the white (cashspending) white guys are gone. I knew how to STOP this, I would never play any hip hop or black based music.
A local chain of barbecue restaurants plays country music in the background. Blacks still patronize them (though not many, thank goodness), and a few employees are black. Maybe the music isn’t loud enough.
I wonder what a steady diet of Slim Whitman would do to blacks. Hey, it worked against the Martians!
Note to Simmons (post #35): I think one could add New Age music to the “black repellents” list. Along with being a huge fan of Irish musician Enya, I often listen to this show on the local NPR station. For blacks it’s got to be the aural equivalent of fingernails on chalkboard, or worse (see Slim Whitman vs. Martians in previous paragraph).
I never hear gun buyback days advertised on classical music radio stations, “Brahms for Berettas” could be the tag line.
Well, I suppose it’s more appropriate than “Brahms for Bruthas.”
I guess maybe this explains why police all have Bagpipe bands at all the parades, maybe they are actually elite anti crime units?
Yes, the Blackwatch, Gordon Highlanders and other Scottish regiments marched into battle accompanied by the bagpipes and drums. It scared the beejesus out of the Fuzzie-Wuzzies and other wayward colonial peoples. Maybe the cops could use the same technique today?
4 — Anonymous wrote at 6:28 PM on July 30:
Though unlike a lot of the soft rock, the other stuff never “took” with me. I heard very little opera or classical music, but when I first listened as an adult it made me feel as if it were somehow familiar, except for many of the songs that I don’t connect with at all.
Heavy Metal, Rap and Hard Rock, can only be music born in the depths of Hell.(COMMENT FROM ARTICLE ABOVE)
The only White people I have ever met in my life that had a racial identity have been Whites that listened to Heavy Metal and Hard Rock and even Punk rock. Your comment reminds me of a hysterical evangilical minister on television screaming for money so the sender can be forgiven of their “sins”.
Well I may not be as evolved as some of my brothers and sisters on this site as I do enjoy some of the other types of music mentioned. HOWEVER, if listening to country or classical music will assure me of not having to deal with no-whites, then I am totally on board. Come on Hank Williams.
The world’s on fire and the president wants to buy your old car. Wait until we have bailouts for those that went out and bought a new car.
If you really want to drive the criminal element away, put on music like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faG6c1U_aSg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEs1wtsw_IA&feature=related
ETC.
The only White people I have ever met in my life that had a racial identity have been Whites that listened to Heavy Metal and Hard Rock and even Punk rock. —Howard
Well, this needs some explanation. Because all those forms have their roots in African jungle rhythms.
Sometimes I liked the Carpenters, sometimes I didn’t. But, unlike “cool” white folks (like Howard?), I never had anything against the idea of the Carpenters (clean white folks aiming to please other clean white folks). Don’t try to explain this to the Howards, though. Somehow, the less black-inspired your music, the less authentic you were.
If Howard’s friends are so proud to be white, why are they slumming?
The African element in Rock has been somewhat exagerated-it also based on the English Ballad. And Heavy Metal also has a “glory” element that can come from no place except classical. Much of it far too disordant for me, but now and then you get some beautiful guitar and keyboard solos. Like it or not, it is the music of young, White Warriors. I can’t see anything positive in punk or rap, even though many punks are racially conscious. One can only hope they will grow out of it. Like rap, it seems to be a music of hate. But even they have branched out into ballads. So is it still punk? I’d say no, but the artists in question don’t want to sacrafice their “street cred” so they would never give up their genre.
Reg,
Does rock really have its roots in African music? We hear this from the “experts” but the real African music I hear sounds nothing like rock - and certinly nothing like hard rock or heavy metal. By the way, I am not really a fan of hard rock or heavy metal, but to me it sounds nothing like traditional African music.
The myth that blacks invented American music is just that - a myth. At most, they inspired some forms (blues, R&B, jazz). But then again, why aren’t these types of music found among African tribes? Why did blacks have to “invent” them in America? Could it be blacks were influenced by white singers, musicians and, perhaps most importantly, gospel and folk hymns that originated in England?
49 — Reg wrote at 3:15 AM on August 1:
Well, this needs some explanation. Because all those forms have their roots in African jungle rhythms.
Sometimes I liked the Carpenters, sometimes I didn’t. But, unlike “cool” white folks (like Howard?), I never had anything against the idea of the Carpenters (clean white folks aiming to please other clean white folks). Don’t try to explain this to the Howards, though. Somehow, the less black-inspired your music, the less authentic you were.
If Howard’s friends are so proud to be white, why are they slumming?
Imagine the Scots that marched with William Wallace. Do you think that they would listen to Mozart and Bethoven(Not THAT I HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST THAT STYLE OF MUSIC)? They would be listining to HArd Rock and Heavy Metal. Aggresive music that often times denounces materialism, conformity and the government. “Black Metal” would be a perfect example.
I found the comments about Panera Bread shops interesting, and went to their site, to find the one nearest Jackson, Mississippi (“The City With Soul”), well, we may have ‘soul’, but we don’t have a single Panera. Not one in the whole state (The blackest state, BTW). Nor does Louisiana (the second blackest state) have even one.
But we do have a mall in the Metroplex, and it stays in business by playing beautiful Classical music inside, and near any outside seating. It works. I’ve only been harassed by black ‘mall goers’ once. We also have two dead malls. As I remember, they played Muzak renditions of top-40 songs, which apparently broadcast the wrong message. Classical works, and it creates a very uplifting, reassuring experience.
29 — flyingtiger wrote at 12:25 AM on July 31:
I must make comments on these two statements:
“I don’t know about this. When you have gangs called the Beetoven boys or the Mozart marauders shooting at each other, you will have second thoughts about this program.”
I agree, I think that Beethoven’s Fifth has intense enough chords to inspire violence. If I understand correctly, Beethoven said that it was composed to describe a very agitated state that he personally experienced. Mozart’s Requiem is also dark enough for the inspiration of violence. If youth went just one generation without Rap and fed only Classical, they would find enough violent emotion in Classical music to serve them, because it is there. I recal the use of “Ride of the Valkyies” in Apololapse now. I understand that this has been done more than once by U.S. troops since then.
“BTW, I always thought that the clockwork orange got it all wrong. A criminal mastermind will never enjoy classical music. He would be listening to horrible pop music.”
> I completely disagree with you here. Hitler hated popular music of his day and preferred Classical, Wagner in particular. I think “A Clockwork Orange” made Classical popular amoung youth for a time - including me. I still take a day or two every year to indulge in an orgy of listening to that soundtract - it is as incredibly brilliant, as the movie was over most heads. I listened to bands like Led Zeppelin and Beethoven, and Mozart, Wagner and everyone else since youth and could see the way that at least early Heavy Metal like LZ often used the Classical form and also folk forms as the basis of their productions. Actually, it was brilliant. The Who wax Classical in their rock operas as well as songs like “Won’t get fooled Again.” Cream (perhaps the first “Hard Rock” band created a lot of really brilliant productions. In the ’60s The Beatles used Classical music within their own productions. George Martin their technical adviser was a Classical production expert. And there are many more examples.
What is entertaining to me is how CW music has become so much like 70s hard rock and metal. Both would repell the thugs equally, IMO - those types hate classic rock as much as they do CW or Bluegrass or folk or Classical. I don’t think they’d like Rockabilly much either - but I sure do.
“Could it be blacks were influenced by white singers, musicians and, perhaps most importantly, gospel and folk hymns that originated in England?”
Many scholars do think this. The black practice of chanting back and forth at each other during church may actually have its origins in British culture, particularly in a form of singing known as “lining out,” which is still practiced in this country by an Appalachian denomination known as the Old Regular Baptists. This group has published a CD of their hymnody, available from Amazon.com and perhaps a few other outlets. It’s well worth listening to, both for its own sake and for what it contributes to our understanding of the development of American music.
I would guess that great great
As Lonnergan writes, such black music forms as jazz couldn’t have been “invented” in Africa, but neither could they have been invented by whites in America. The earliest jazz, that of New Orleans, was heavily influenced by French and Spanish music, as well as British folk and religious music, and by the availablility of European musical instruments.
The black American “inventors” of jazz applied their African rhythmic and melodic styles to these elements and came up with something new and different which whites and Asians could also play and enjoy. It’s sad that so many present-day blacks have turned their backs on an aspect of their culture of which they should be proud.
I don’t like heavy metal, but I do get a sense that the young Whites who listen to it are, along with the skateboarders, more open to White interests than fans of, say, Michael Jackson. They seem to be castoffs, alienated from mainstream culture, which is liberalism. They could have chosen hip hop, but they didn’t.
From number 37 above, about coping with “vibrant” life in a dorm:
“I made my own CD which I played out my window over and over. It started with Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”, followed by “Largo al Factotum” from Barber of Seville, followed by Hank Williams, Jr. singing “Family Tradition”, the Osborne Bros. doing “Rocky Top”, Boxcar Willie’s version of “Wabash Cannonball”, Tanya Falan (of the Lawrence Welk show) singing “Eh Cumpari, the Beach Boys “Little Deuce Coupe”, Dean Martin singing “Volare”, and ending with Sgt. Barry Sadler singing “Ballad of the Green Berets”.”
—Mr Brigand, you are my hero! That was inspired!
I’ve thought about doing something similar from my car, if I had one of “their” over-the-top sound systems, and I pulled up along the usual tinted-window SUV busily enriching the neighborhood with, uh, vibrant “music”.
It surely would be a hoot to return fire with ‘Ride of the Valkyries’—but my own choice of ammo would be the finale from ‘1812 Overture’, with the cannons, of course. And imagine the hilarity if it were mistaken for a ‘drive-by’.
