Monday, September 27, 2010

Cultural Wars

Just want to save this quote from Greg Sandow from this post:

In that essay, you'll find AC's passionate belief that art created in the high-culture realm aspires to transcendence, while things created in the realm of popular culture -- however powerful or affecting they might be -- don't have that aspiration. Thus high and popular culture exist in separate aesthetic realms, with the high-culture realm ranking higher in the all-important hierarchies of life.

He's talking about A C Douglas who's long been one of my regular reads. We'll see if ACD launches one of his salvos in response. Whether or not Greg has correctly stated ACD's position, though, this distinction plays right into a conversation I've been having with Jonathan West down in the comments to this post.

When Jonathan is playing Debussy on the horn and I'm playing Dixieland on the banjo, we're both making music, but in very different ways for very different audiences, and my sense is that figuring out that distinction will help me be a better musician as well as music therapist.

As a side note, I made a comment on Greg's post complimenting him for not falling into the trap so many bloggers do of listening and talking only with those they agree with and dismissing the rest.

No comments:

Post a Comment