Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Regional and national music/Definitions

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I applaud this effort, but I am concerned that much of this constitutes original research WP:OR unless we can come up with some good references. There are some already to be found in the articles under consideration here, but I would like to see a more critical discussion of what these categories really mean before such a major reorganization. I'll try to do a little digging on my own, but I welcome suggestions from others. Nposs 01:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Here's one Traditional music reference. I think most of the changes I'm suggesting centre around "Traditional music" being defined as in the Ellington link just given.
I agree it'd be great to have references for all this; OTOH, the existing Wikipedia pages mostly don't have references already, so I don't see that it makes any difference on those pages. Sure I'd like to see more discussion; we'll see what happens.
-- TimNelson 04:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I can see the possibility that some might consider this WP:OR, but since we are currently working on a project subpage, I don't feel we need to worry about that yet. The editors who come here and work on this can contribute their ideas towards organizing a new structure for the set of articles we're addressing, then later when the schema crystalizes, we can then go and seek references before making the changes in the main articles and how they interrelate. In other words, I don't think there is any conflict with WP policies for us to do a behind the scenes exploration of what the best forms of the pages will be. When we are ready to formalize them, we'll need references. Even if we have trouble finding references, we can request help with that. The existing articles vary widely from how well they follow the Wikiguides too. There is plenty of unreferenced material already and a lot of confusion, because the interrelations of genres is a difficult subject. --Parzival418 Hello 07:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] multi-dimensional genre approach

There's been some discussion of similar issues on Talk:New Age music, Talk:Ambient music and Talk:Space music. It seems that to understand how music genres relate and connect, we need two (or more) persepctives. One is the familial or derivative perspective - ie, that music evolves as it moves through cultures from place to place, picking up influences and combining them over generational time. Then there is also the "fusion" perspective, more common in modern times, wherein musicians combine elements of cultures widely separated, in sometimes surprising ways. With computers this is becoming more common and faster, though it's been part of popular music at least since the early 1900's and accelerated in the mid to late 1900's.

I like the mention of fusion forms in the section on the three kinds of music, but I wonder if maybe the fusion forms should be split off into a separate section and also include even more modern forms such as use of traditional music samples in pop or electronic music. This was considered unusual and new ten years ago (ie, Deep Forest), but now is almost routine (ie, Madonna, Ray of Light - a modern dance album that includes traditional India music), or Moby's sampled Blues singer with computer loops of acoustic guitar. I don't mean to tilt the discussion towards electronic elements - clearly there is much traditional and "roots" music that has nothing to do with electronics at all. I merely suggest that we include a tip of the hat to these new forms and then link to those other articles.

The important part of this is not that it's done with computers or electronics, the important part is the fusion of the cultures into new kinds of musics, and that these new forms have a side-effect of preserving and extending the experience of the roots forms, allowing the roots music to reach more people who might otherwise never have heard it. --Parzival418 Hello 07:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Re: Fusion, I agree, the fusion stuff needs to be on its own page. I'd say the fusion page needs a "Traditional/Popular fusions" section, and could well include all this sort of stuff. Since I know nothing about it, I'll leave the actual inclusion to others, but I agree it belongs.
-- TimNelson 10:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I find the "fusion" terminology problematic. It does seem to be a popular term, but it seems to have more to do with categories within international music industries than history or practice. "Fusion" (or musical borrowing) has of course been going on since the beginnings of human culture. Separating it out into another category (e.g. Fusion of traditional and art music) reinforces incorrect assumptions about authenticity and the unbroken transmission of culture. For example, all popular music is a fusion of something else: Rock and roll has been seen as a combination of country, blues, and R&BB. Even older forms of popular music like Lieder or minstrel songs were combinations of folk music and genres from high art. Often, there are more specific terms that are useful for describing what here are presented as "fusions": the use of "folk" music in the compositions of Western composers in the 19th- and 20th-centuries can more accurately be thought of as "nationalism." The blurring lines of popular and art music in 20th-century Western music is part of "Post-modernism." At any rate, the fusion categories seem like unnecessary distinctions. It could be that they would be useful in discussions of contemporary world music that self-consciously fuse the musics of two disparate cultures. Nposs 15:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that, since all music is just music, whatever categories you define, there will be elements (songs, musicians, whatever) that cross over between categories. I guess that I'm not so keen on the categorisation we have here of fusion, and not even on the name fusion, but the idea that :
  • People take elements of different genres, and combine them in the one song
  • If enough people do this in similar ways at the same time, it can be considered a different genre
I agree that all genres are originally fusions. Hmm. What this means, then, is that the genres I've been intending to relegate to the "fusion" page could be defined as "genres that aren't well known, but can easily be described as a combination of well-known genres".
What this probably means is that, as far as dealing with "fusion" goes, we should:
I don't think any of this affects what I want to do with the Traditional/Folk/World/Roots music pages, except that they'll be linking to a different article
-- TimNelson 03:48, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] reorganization of multiple articles

After reading the ideas this on the main page here, I like the new direction. It looks like a lot of work, but I think it's a good idea to approach the subjects in an integrated way. I'm not sure about a couple of the terms though:

"Geographically-based music" - this is a clear title but a bit awkward to read. Also, historical time is a factor as well as place. Are there other alternatives that might read more comforably, such as "Music of Cultures" , "Music of the World", "World Music Cutures"...? I don't know, just some ideas...

The other article title: "Fusion (music)" could be fine, though some consider that term to specifically apply to Jazz/Rock fusion and that could restrict the topic too much. Perhaps something like "Fusion of Music Styles" or "Multi-Cultural Music". Again, maybe the original term here is good, I'm just exploring possibilities. --Parzival418 Hello 07:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Geographically-based music: This is to cover WikiProjects that want to focus on "Music of Canada" or something like that. I know in discussion about the proposed new "Australian Music" WikiProject on the proposals page (which I've discussed, but am not planning on joining), they want to cover all Australian music, whether popular or folk (do we have art music here?  :) ). The problem with the other titles that you've suggested is that they're ambiguous. I'm suggesting it only for the name of an overarching WikiProject, not an article. Possibly "Music by Country" might work, except that people might think it's about Country music :). Hmm.
The article fusion (music) already existed; I'm just looking at adding to what's there. As for Jazz/Rock fusion, see fusion, which is a disambiguation page.
-- TimNelson 10:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I think "Regional and national music" might be a better title for the Wikiproject since it would cover articles like German music, but also Music of Central Asia. "Region" should be vague enough to include a large or small area. Nposs 15:20, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. I'd tend to associate the terms "national", and especially "regional", with traditional music. I'm trying to get a clear distinction between that project and the "Traditional music" project. Still, I like it better than the "Music by Country" :). Hmm. I think I still think "Geographically-based" is clearer than anything else I've seen here.
-- TimNelson 03:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
I think one difference is that "traditional" music tends be associated with one culture whereas "national" or "regional" music could include musics of many peoples. For example, "American music" could include African-American, Latino, as well as rock and jazz. "North Africa" includes many diverse cultures, many of which have been strongly influenced by Arab music, so we can still talk about relationships between the musics of these cultures while recognizing that they are dissimilar in other respects. (I realize that "regional" on a smaller level would tend to be associated with a more specific cultural group: "Music of the Mississippi Delta". Nposs 15:14, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm happy with the "Regional and National" one, if we can include the phrase (or meaning) "Geographically-based" in the lead paragraph for the WikiProject and the Goals/Scope/whatever
-- TimNelson 04:05, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
That sounds good to me too. " --Parzival418 Hello 04:31, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

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