Noli Me Tangere

how to have a good summer:

-1 book-heavy class to keep the mind sharp
-1 practice-oriented class with immediate career benefits
-1 touchy-feely class that values "discussion" and "diversity" over "studying"
-make a raawknroll CD
-ride your bike to school

While they both are recommendable in their own ways, GSU and CSU occupy very opposite ends of so many spectrums. I cannot adequately describe, in the space I have here, the difference between them, but if I had to try...

CSU______________GSU
small town--------------urban
white-bread-------------multi-grain
perm-----------------------dreadlocks
diet pills------------------weed
rednecks------------------panhandlers
duck droppings--------pigeon poop

Assuming I don't lose too many credits, I'm leaning towards making GSU my permanent home after this summer. One reason to love it is the setting. The music school is located NW of the rest of campus, in a sea of clubs, cafes, and eatery patios. If the scruffy urban dives scare you, there's also Starbucks, Smoothy King, and Dunkin Doughnuts on the same block. I invite you all to come down and have lunch with me.

Woodruff Park is like having an alternative universe next door. Today, I saw a middle-aged white man in an Open Door t-shirt holding a protest sign and screaming at the local law enforcement officers patroling the park, declaring injustice for the homeless. We also had this guy, who's probably best described as a transvestite baton-twirler.

After a week of classes, I think I've got one class that will take a lot of study, one that will take a lot of practice, and one that will take a lot of B.S. The latter, World Music, is taught by a woman who somehow fits every preconceived notion I had of what a World Music prof would be like. We sit in a circle--including the prof--and listen to her read passages from books. Occasionally she'll toss out a question and then the arguing begins. We are not allowed to use such ethnocentric words as "primitive" or "weird" when describing any music. On the first day of class we tried to define music. Does it have to be pleasurable? Does it differ from noise? How? I said it had to be auditory, but then someone brought up John Cage's 4'33" and described the things you "hear" when you are "listening" to it. It's a bold idea, but it's not something I'm really interested in studying, Erin.

Speaking of which, thanks to everyone who suggested topics for my fieldwork project. After declaring that I wanted to study the African origins of popular American music, I asked my prof if I could change my topic and she agreed. I've decided to study aesthetics and associations. Specifically, how do aesthetic values vary across culture? The Nazis outlawed "negroid excesses of rhythm". A man at my parent's church once theorized to me that you could praise God with pretty much any music except rap or heavy metal. I don't "get" rap. The folks in Woodruff park don't "get" folk. Japanese pop, for reasons I can't fully explain, strikes my eardrum as somewhat less pleasant than nails-on-chalkboard. The associations and the aesthetic sense they form are fully intertwined, and I want to unravel them a bit.

This topic also has bearing on my life outside the politically-correct classroom. The role of aesthetics is one that I wrestle with all the time in my work for the church. Every time we choose a note we are making an aesthetic decision, but at face value it's a purely humanistic choice: "What sounds best to me?" The less self-absorbed church musician might ask, "What music will most effectively communicate to this congregation?" I never ask myself what note God prefers, yet I hope and claim to make this music for His glory. There's a strange disconnect there, but I fall back on the idea that our most fundamental ideas of beauty are inherited from our Creator, not our parent's record collection. We may disagree as to what's beautiful, but beauty is beauty. And for the Christian, beauty is reflective.

So I think I'll enjoy this class. Fundamental questions about the essence of music are ultimately theological ones, in my view. The continued presence of music in a culture that is increasingly rational, imaginationless, and obssessed with efficiency requires some explanation, and I hope by August to be able to offer a better one.

Posted by aokie at June 20, 2005 09:47 AM | TrackBack