nationality and music

[Facetious]

Pakistan is not exactly know for making the most brilliant albums

Some Pakistani artists have become famous (Junoon, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, etc.) but the focus is more on songs and single tracks, not albums. Which is why original albums of artists are really hard to find here.

[Guest]

At the moment, my overall music knowledge is poor but.. as someone born and raised in America (and therefore being most exposed to American music), today I only remain a strong liking to three of their bands/artists: Neutral Milk Hotel, Joanna Newsom, and Liars. I sort of like Sonic Youth, Flaming Lips, and Pixies and listen to them on occasion but it seems that none of their albums will ultimately make my chart. Maybe Sonic Youth.

So far I'm too ashamed to make my chart public but... right now it slightly favors the UK. I've grown tired of English speaking music as of late though, so I'm spending more time checking out other countries. I absolutely love the band Boredoms from Japan. Highly, highly underrated in the overall bands and albums charts.

[junodog4]

I know I'm nationalistic regarding Canadian albums. They are scattered throughout my chart, and I feel all warm and fuzzy when non-Canadians like them. We have this weird fixation on whether America recognizes our music. Sadly, apart from Arcade Fire and the classics (Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen), most of the stuff that crosses the border is shite (Celine Dion, Nickleback, Justin Beiber, Bryan Adams). There's so much quality here beyond Arcade Fire, you can forgive me if I flog it a bit too much.

[Guest]

I think everyone should expand his/her taste of music, but the kind of music which is popular everywhere today, i.e. western pop/rock music, has its roots in a certain culture and these genres are represented better in the west and specially in the English language. So trying to find better albums of these genres in Eastern countries, IMO, won't be so fruitful. But other genres, specially national/traditional music can provide us with great stuff, such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Alim Qasimov.

I live in Iran and I can assure you that there is no album in pop/rock genres worth listening to here, so don't search for it. No Persian rock album can get a 20 out of 100 rating from me.

[Mind Movie]

I listen to a lot of hindustani classical music.

[Facetious]

[RyanF1]

I think I definitely do show some bias towards Scottish albums, I'm one of only 10 people to have High Land, Hard Rain by Aztec Camera on my chart but it's only natural to favour artists from your own country. Being Scottish, there's [;enty of good music to choose from
_________________
No-one writes them like they used to, so it may as well be me.

[Chemical Smile]

[RoundTheBend]

I speak German and appreciate a lot of German music. But I do agree that I don't "gel" with German music on a whole as well as I do with American/British/Australian/Irish/Canadian/Scottish, etc. music.

I would like to take this a bit further and argue that although we live in an age that understands racism as one of the worst paradigms one could waste their time viewing the world from, we have kinda gone back to the days of the 50s when white people listened to white music and well, you get the point.

There is a thread on here about hip-hop being under appreciated, and I think it is because whitey can't play the funky music. I remember going to see U2 with Black Eyed Peas opening for them. That didn't mix with the crowd well because "hip-hop" is black folk music and not on par with U2. We look to artists like Jimi Hendrix and Little Richard and say, oh ya, I like black musicians, but it is more like, I like the white accepted black musicians.

Don't get me wrong- I am sure every white person on here could name a black artist they like. I am not saying that they couldn't. What I am saying is, is I think there is still a prejudice and segregation with "white" music and "black" music.

[albummaster]

One useless fact is that flamenco's roots were from Indian music (from gypsies who settled in Andalucia), if you listen to the rhythms you can still hear the similarity. I enjoy listening to a lot Indian music, particularly the percussion and the interesting beats.