music the universal language?

[Tash]

i don't think it is. i hate all the blah comments of randoms who are like oh music connects the world together blah blah blah, but it is like a langue- you can hear it but that doesn't mean it makes any sense to you. there are so many different types of music and each culture has their own purposes and ideas of what music actually is i don't think that everyone can understand every other cultures' music. maybe in the western world it is...comments?

[henrah]

ehehehhehee muffinbug


I think you are right in saying that it's like a language in that not everyone can understand it, and each culture has their own music. All I can add to it is chocolate chips
Henrah

[gorbee natcase]

I think it is weather or not you can understand it or not is another question. Music is not a deffinitive language as it doesn't communicate (i.e. the price of tomatoes in a market on a tuesday afternoon) but does communicate universal ideas of what we consciously or un consciously consider beauty aggression journey turmoil, it leaves the immagionation to fill in the detail, Thats why people have different responses to a piece of music, simmilar to poetry

[donjuan]

music is culture.. If I dont know anything about the culture of some African tribe, how can I understand their music??

I voted no.

[prometheus]

One who realises music is very powerful has the natural instinct to answer 'yes'.

But music, of course, isn't a language, just a byproduct using many of the systems that evolved because of the evolutionary need for language.

But most importantly, while all music is largly the same, people experience it as very different. Just as all human real languages are basicly the same. But this difference is a cultural difference. People that have never heard indian music have problems listening and enjoying it, let alone understand and make sense of it. So one cannot say music is barrierless. Yes, it is very similar and very possible to enjoy an alien culture through their music. But people are just very much the same. It isn't music that connects us, it is that we are all humans that connect us.

So if you think people of different cultures are very alien to each other and have nothing in common, then music will change your mind, if you take some time. Maybe this is because musicians are ready to accept music because it is music. And of course music is abstract, so it has nothing to do with anything else. So for a musician it may be a very easy way to connect with, or enjoy something from, a totally different culture.

So, sure. Music is universal, but many other things are also universal.

[pianistimo]

would be interesting to hear what portions of the brain that musicians use (and compare it to language) and also what portions we use when we listen to music.  seems that i read somewhere about the ability now of certain machines to indicate active portions of the brain.

to add to many things that prometheus pointed out - music is a sort of representation of our culture and so what type of music we leave behind sort of reflects what our society is like and how we interpret 21st century life.  maybe the reason some of us like the 18th and 19th century music is that the way of life was slower (yet much busier physically) and reflected more of nature itself.

to me, the music i like the best is always augmented with the sounds of a garden (birds) and water feature.  i love garden music - if you can call it that.  seems that music can be a sort of 'therapy' and that one of it's universal applications is to bring peace.

[ahinton]

This may be a little off-topic to be considered an answer per se to the question, but readers might nevertheless think it worth considering as part of their own conclusion forming exercise here.

By "language" I think we generally tend to infer a recognisable - even if not necessarily specifically definable or explicable (as in the case of music) - communicative force of some kind.

An interesting article by Ivan Hewett in the Arts and Books section of a weekend edition of the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph a few weeks ago addressed the recent reimposition by the Iranian government of a Western music performance veto in that country. Mr Hewett referred to the similar instance of the outlawing of Western music performance in Iran following the 1979 revolution there; he then noted how the fervency of its imposition gradually dissipated over the years to the point where it once again became legally acceptable for there to be, for example, a working symphony orchestra once again in Tehran.

He came to three conclusions as to how we in the West might respond to this new stricture.

The first was one of outrage at such a curtailment of the individual personal freedoms of expression and reception of Western music.

The second was the more pragmatic and less emotive one prompted by past history that assumed that it would soon pass as before and the performance of such music would again become lawful.

The third, however, was the most interesting and is, I think, of the closest relevance to the topic under discussion here; it centered on the evident, though carefully unexpressed, fear of the sheer power of Western music that must be felt by those who imposed the veto and which prompted their denunciation of certain Western music as some evil kind of mind-altering drug that risked undermining their own control of the populace. Sentiments not dissimilar to this have also recently been expressed elsewhere in the Middle East by certain similarly oriented fundamentalists; instance of this have been noted even as far west as Tunisia, (which may be a rather worrying fact for some of those living quite close by in southern Spain).

Should we concur with Mr Hewett's final conclusion - and I see no reason not to do so - we would thereby accept that even those fundamentalists who oppose its practice must regard Western music as a kind of language that communicates things that they want to preclude from communication, otherwise they would not feel the need to ban it.

Best,

Alistair

[jas]

Should we concur with Mr Hewett's final conclusion - and I see no reason not to do so - we would thereby accept that even those fundamentalists who oppose its practice must regard Western music as a kind of language that communicates things that they want to preclude from communication, otherwise they would not feel the need to ban it.

I read the article you're talking about, and my initial reaction was not that they had a certain respect for the power of music, but that they see in it just a Western influence that they wish to squash. I had a hard time reconciling what I know about Western classical music and what they say they think its possible influences are. I don't believe that they really feel that it seriously undermines or threatens their own culture; I think it's mindless extremism and nothing more.

It would make more sense if it was nationalist music they had a problem with. But the music of Mozart or Beethoven, who are mentioned in the article, is not. Beethoven's 9th - if you wish to take a message from it - conveys brotherhood, equality, etc., a positive message for people of any faith. Everyone should be able to listen to if they want to, but the Iranian government either won't or can't accept its universal and autonomous nature simply because of where it comes from.

It does make an interesting parallel with how, for example, rap is viewed here by many who believe it encourages violence and sexism and glamourises gun culture. It's only ever non-musicians and non-rap listeners who make such claims.

To the original question, I think it could be seen not so much as a language, but a form of communication (though some might consider communication in any form to be a type of "language", I suppose) that can bring people together, but only within certain cultures. As donjuan said, we in the west might not be particularly moved to feel anything by listening to African tribal music. But a performance of Beethoven's 9th under certain circumstances almost certainly will, evn by those who don't listen to classical music at all. If anyone has seen V for Vendetta in the cinema, its use of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture is a good example. (It's a really good film, incidentally. I'd recommend it. )

Jas

[prometheus]

What about china? Isn't most western music restricted, banned or frowned upon, except for classical music?

I don't think we should say that people from the middle east, asia or any other continent, should listen to western classical music when we don't want to listen to their classical music, which often has a much deeper and richer history.

[jas]

I don't think we should say that people from the middle east, asia or any other continent, should listen to western classical music when we don't want to listen to their classical music, which often has a much deeper and richer history.

I said, "everyone should be able to listen to it if they want to."

What difference does the music's history make?

[galonia]

What about china? Isn't most western music restricted, banned or frowned upon, except for classical music?

No.

In January, I was sitting in my dorm room in Beijing, preparing for my end-of-semester examinations, and I had the television on, tuned to Channel V, and at one point, I was struck by the irony of sitting in communist China, watching a video clip of a rapper named 50 cent, performing a song called Window Shopper.

[invictus]

Music is the universal language, next to math

once i was next to this sweden dude, he doesn't speak anything else besides sweden, and he did something that i strongly disagree, so i wanted to stop him, knowing that he doesn't speak english, i attracted his attention and played lots of dissonance notes, and he stopped!

[ahinton]

I read the article you're talking about, and my initial reaction was not that they had a certain respect for the power of music, but that they see in it just a Western influence that they wish to squash. I had a hard time reconciling what I know about Western classical music and what they say they think its possible influences are. I don't believe that they really feel that it seriously undermines or threatens their own culture; I think it's mindless extremism and nothing more.

I understand your viewpoint here, but I'm not so sure; I can imagine that such people would persuade themselves to believe that music imagined, created and performed by people not only from quite different religious and cultural backgrounds to themselves but also with quite different intent and purpose to that of the classical music of Iran is in fact somehow heretical and dangerous; one has only to understand the sheer power of Beethoven, Wagner. Mahler, Shostakovich in full flight and the effects upon their listeners to accept that it can thus be seen as a threat to the security of the kind of authoritarianism essential to the present-day Iranian administration. Probably the most inflammatory music imaginable there today would be that of Sorabji, given his ancestral roots in that country but his non-Islamic faith...

Best,

Alistair

[prometheus]

The persian culture has it's own old religion that was partly destroyed by Alexander the Great a thousand years before Muhammed. I am not sure if arabs now dominate the persians or if the persians just turned arab. I am not sure if Sorabji was a zoroastrian.

Western classical music would just be really strange and alien, which its chords and sublte structures and strange effects. It is not that easy to understand the sheer power of Beethoven 'et al'.


My point was that we as westerns should listen to their classical music instead of ranting about how great 'our' classical music is. If we do that we will understand what problems someone may have with understanding our music.

Also, our western culture is dominant because of our economic power. Those people get McDonnals, KFC and even 50 cents, so it seems, shoved down their throat. That being the case I wouldn't be so receptive to western classical music culture either.

And this all is ignoring political tensions, religious bigotry, military and economical wars, etc.

Also, their classical music is much weaker than our classical music. They need all the resources they have to make sure their classical tradition survived. That being the case they cannot affort to focus on our classical music, which doesn't need them.

[Tash]

interesting...i'm bizarrely impressed at how many people have voted for muffinbug


muffinbug!!

[ted]

Music is not a language at all in the sense of communicating precise meaning. The brain imposes whatever meaning it likes on it. Sometimes there is general consensus that a piece of music expresses a certain state of mind, or emotion perhaps, but mostly, as we can see from the disparity of views expressed on our forum, agreement is the exception rather than the rule.

Mathematics, as one poster says, is probably the only completely precise and unambiguous universal language. However, pure mathematics cannot talk about anything except its abstract self, which is a severe limitation if we wish to tell somebody we are happy or angry or even express happiness or anger to ourselves.