Total Members Voted: 24
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 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.
What about china? Isn't most western music restricted, banned or frowned upon, except for classical music?
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.