Music as Languages (And Other Cultural Debates)

As some of you may know, I've been taking Human Geography in school, and it's changed my outlook on everything. Geography has to do with everything. It explains history, it explains politics, it explains culture. Whether it's the lack of cultural diffusion due to large mountains, or the border disputes in Africa, or the psychological effects of the sizes of countries on a map, if the reason for an event taking place is unclear, it is often either geographically or culturally related. That being said, I'm going to talk about languages and it's not going to involve much geography.

The other night, I was reflecting on the experience that I had writing a song for Brian's workshop. Even though the workshop never took place (perhaps we will experience it later), I viewed my project as a learning experience, as I view virtually all events in my life. One thing I noticed when I was writing is that I felt like my music had no basis. As in, I was working from scratch. I had no intentional musical style, no framework, and no purpose. It wasn't very good in my opinion, and that's probably why.

I pondered this for a while. For centuries, musicians have been working off the music of their ancestors, developing techniques and traditions that created a more complex system over time. All of these music genres have a framework. This may be a somewhat prejudice statement, but I feel as if much of pop music has no structure. Either that, or it's structure is very simple, based only on chord progressions and theoretical musical ideas.

Then I realized, perhaps music is similar to language, which I've been learning a lot about in Human Geography. There are two types of languages. Natural Language is defined as a language that has emerged and evolved within living or historic human communities. A language is a complex system that develops overtime, based on the needs of a group of people. Words in some languages do not exist in others, like Farpotchket, the Yiddish word that means "to make something worse when you were trying to fix it." Languages can also be diffused, so some languages contain similar words to others.

There are also Artificial Languages, although they are not very common. An artificial language is one that is invented by humans and did not arise organically. For example, J. R. R. Tolken invented Elvish for his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Also, there was once an attempt to create an international language, with simplified grammar and common vocabulary from many languages. This is known as Esperanto.

Another thing to note about culture is the difference between Folk Culture and Popular Culture. Folk culture can be summarized as the local culture of a small area, based in traditions that have logical justification but no identifiable origin. Popular culture is widespread, mainstream culture, where phenomenas are spread without much purpose other than widespread appeal.

I feel as if you could categorize music as a language under these terms, folk music could be considered natural while pop music is artificial. In fact, perhaps much of modern art, rebooted in 1913, could be considered artificial. At that point, art stopped following traditions and began inventing a new set of rules and expectations which are constantly being expanded upon.

Now this may not be the case. That would assume that modern art and pop music are complete reinventions of what came before. And as we know, art is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Another hypothesis I considered in the development of the language metaphor is perhaps pop music is a Pidgin Language. A pidgin language is one that "combines the vocabulary and/or grammatical practices from two or more languages that have come in contact." That would imply that pop music is a simplified mix of everything. A great example of a pidgin language is our own language, English. It incorporates aspects of French and Germanic language, simplified of their complex grammatical structures.

I don't know much about the history of modern pop music, but one would believe that it emerged from a few genres, such as blues, jazz, and before that, other things. Now, it has become it's own genre. This could be considered a Creole Language, "a language that develops from a pidgin language and is taught as a first language."

Of course I'm using pop in a very broad sense. There are many subgenres, but in a way, they all have great similarities. Perhaps we could consider rock, metal, generic pop, and alternative different kinds of Dialects, or "A variety of a language characterized by distinctive vocabulary, grammar, and/or pronunciation."

I believe if we can't see our art in the larger system, it will be empty and devoid of meaning. In the scope of the world, one person is not important. Great cultures are not invented by one person. That is, unless you're Tolken or J.K. Rowling. Even so, isn't it scary to think that only one person can invent a universe used by many? What I mean to say is, we should study the past and reuse what has been used for generations, joining in the cycle of life and the universe instead of working from ourselves as our only source.

My favorite pop music is often rooted in folk culture, whether it's the Beatles or crossover Balkan. To me, a lot of pop music is dull and insipid, and I feel like what I've explained above is one of the main reasons why.

On that note, I think it's time for me to return to one of the books I happen to be reading at the moment, "Music in Ireland."

The perks of having a musicologist mom, this stuff is great!