Segregating sound and genre

November 27, 2018

I believe it is foolish to try to segregate music by sound and genre. I say this because all forms of music derive from each other one way or another. No genre is special in a sense where they only have one single sound and are completely isolated from the others. Take the song we used in class as an example.  Duke Ellington wrote a song about the watermelon man. This one piece was then used by other artists as a backtrack or beat to their songs. 

Herbie Hancock wrote a song called watermelon man as well. This is slightly more popular. Watermelon has a lot of minstrel stereotypes behind it. He worked with Mongo Santamaria conga player and that band did a cover of it giving it their own flair. Johnnie Taylor did a cover of watermelon man and added lyrics to the piece. And slowed it down and added a made it more soul by singing slower than the beat. It was played in England by Manfred Mann and sped it up, reminding me of some of The Beatles’ works. Madonna has a similar baseline in her music, as well as LL Cool J. Who owns that song? And the cultural heritage of it.  Music Travels if a song is good people with use it and incorporated it into their styles and lives. It is our job to know where it comes from and become their own historian. Find the facts but we have the obligation as a society to think about regulation.

The same goes for the Tango in Argentina and how it is used in movies such as James Bond. The use of Conga lives in many songs we hear on the radio today here in VA. How does that happen? Artists listen to each other’s work, decide they like it and then birth a piece using the traits and techniques. Thus making it silly to try to segregate sound and music into genres.

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