Is cultural diversity a criterion for chart quality? - Music

benpaco
Who's gonna watch you die?

Age: 27
Location: California

Necharsian wrote:

I suppose I dont get this weird "well id rather it be an honest boring chart than a fake diverse" thing. Who's chart isnt honest??

When I came here, I thought the point was to make a chart of the GREATEST albums ever, so I talked about ones that I recognized as influential, etc, but not ones I was huge on listening to as much. As a result, my chart when joining was basically Rolling Stone's but in a different order and adding Joy Division and XTC.

Eventually I felt that wasn't honest and changed it.

There's my story.
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mickilennial
The Most Trusted Name in News

Gender: Female
Age: 35
Location: Detroit

I love how a productive discussion came out of something particularly nasty. BEA is wonderful.

sp4cetiger

Gowienczyk wrote:

I love how a productive discussion came out of something particularly nasty. BEA is wonderful.

Absolutely this.

Happymeal

I personally dislike the idea that your top 100 albums (AKA chart) has to be determined solely by the albums you enjoy the most. As far as I'm concerned, the point of charts are to introduce others into music you enjoy, but if what you enjoy is Radiohead, Beatles, etc. (good bands with a high amount of acclaim) who is going to be introduced to anything? That's why I adopted the idea that a chart should be composed of 100 albums that one recommends to others which they may not have heard while those albums are also ones that person enjoys to a great extent. I'm not attempting to convince others to adopt this system, but I personally haven't adopted a system where I can properly rank my favorite albums (outside of maybe 2 or 3 which resonate like no other) so it's a good and honest alternative. Plus, if anyone is willing to check out the chart, that person will most likely find something that they might not have heard of and may end up enjoying as much as I do.

Muslim-Bigfoot

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

It bugs me that I'm so oblivious to the music of so many parts of the world. I mean just taking a look at how the word "diversity" has been used in this thread shows that what people call "diverse" isn't actually diverse at all. I mean it'd be nice if people, myself included, asked themselves why they don't listen to music from other parts of the world and answer it truthfully and not come up with some crap about language barrier or sth. You can always treat vocals as another instrument; I think most people actually do this when listening to music they understand the lyrics to. Also I think the more exciting music to come from different parts of the world is actually not dependent on the meaning of the words but on the tradition of musical identity that has led to the product in question.
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craola
crayon master

Location: pdx

Muslim-Bigfoot wrote:

It bugs me that I'm so oblivious to the music of so many parts of the world.

This. Although I think the cultural differences make it harder...

When I first heard Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, I listened to nothing but Nusrat for about a month. I don't listen to him too often anymore though. I had the same reaction when I first heard Salif Keita, Amadou & Mariam, Lunasa, L. Shankar, Gustavo Santaolalla, etc. but it's stuff I seldom return to. There's not much of a local scene here either. If I was in a community where other people listened to those artists and talked about those artists, chances are I wouldn't leave the house without them. And since there's no community, those artists rarely tour near here either. You have to go out of your way to get exposed to their music. I'm not sure what breaks the cycle.
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sp4cetiger

Muslim-Bigfoot wrote:

It bugs me that I'm so oblivious to the music of so many parts of the world. I mean just taking a look at how the word "diversity" has been used in this thread shows that what people call "diverse" isn't actually diverse at all. I mean it'd be nice if people, myself included, asked themselves why they don't listen to music from other parts of the world and answer it truthfully and not come up with some crap about language barrier or sth. You can always treat vocals as another instrument; I think most people actually do this when listening to music they understand the lyrics to. Also I think the more exciting music to come from different parts of the world is actually not dependent on the meaning of the words but on the tradition of musical identity that has led to the product in question.

I can't imagine enjoying an artist like Bob Dylan even half as much if I couldn't understand what he was saying. Obviously, the meaning of lyrics matters a lot more in some genres than others, but most of the music I enjoy from non-English-speaking countries is either instrumental or features minimal and/or ornamental lyrics. This still leaves a lot to explore, though, so I agree with you about the benefits of exploring music that comes from other traditions.

satiemaniac

sp4cetiger wrote:

I can't imagine enjoying an artist like Bob Dylan even half as much if I couldn't understand what he was saying.

So does this mean you focus intently on the lyrics of English-language music at all time? Cool if you do, but I love Bob Dylan as much if not more for the musical elements (shoddy vocal delivery and all). You definitely don't get the depth of the flavor of his songs (or those of any songwriter) without an understanding of the lyrics, for sure, but I feel like the typical listen rarely encompasses reading along with a lyric sheet. Interested in your mileage with Saibou Bungaku and Tomoaki Saito, two Japanese singer-songwriter types (the latter I believe is a member of the former and both have released self-titled albums to which I've listened) with a lot of instrumental atmosphere a la your Neil Youngs, Bob Dylans, what have you. Without knowing a scrap of Japanese, they're some of the most emotionally ravaging albums I've ever heard and serve as a good barometer in my mind for testing your claim. Smile

Patman360
Serenity Now

Gender: Male
Age: 31
Location: Cork, Ireland

Moderator

The main barrier I personally have is actually getting access to albums from around the world, granted I have pretty poor internet which also holds me back a bit, but I'd say it's a pretty safe assumption that there are more albums online from North America and Europe in comparison to those from Africa and Asia for example, I really do try to expand my listening to all corners of the world and I've heard quite a bit of music from Latin America, Africa, Asia, etc., but there's so much out there that I simply haven't been able to get due to the internet (This probably holds me back more than others though...).
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satiemaniac

Patman360 wrote:

The main barrier I personally have is actually getting access to albums from around the world, granted I have pretty poor internet which also holds me back a bit, but I'd say it's a pretty safe assumption that there are more albums online from North America and Europe in comparison to those from Africa and Asia for example, I really do try to expand my listening to all corners of the world and I've heard quite a bit of music from Latin America, Africa, Asia, etc., but there's so much out there that I simply haven't been able to get due to the internet (This probably holds me back more than others though...).

If you know how to look, there's a vast amount of music from around the world that is readily available to western consumers (or would-be consumers, as the case may be). Latin American music blew up in the U.S. in particular in the '60s with the release of Black Orpheus in 1959, and there's no shortage of music from that area available in the west in my experience. Asian and African music are admittedly maybe a bit tougher, but there's tons of crossover and lots of English-language (here referring to packaging, if not necessarily lyrics) releases of major musicians from both continents (particularly those who dabbled a lot in English-language or just Western-influenced musical styles). There are a lot of online archives seeking to show off some of the fruits of Western influence. Awesome Tapes From Africa is a blog with free direct downloads that distributes incredibly obscure (and almost universally delicious) African tapes from Afrobeat to Soukous and beyond. Outside of things that have anything to do with Euro-American influence in either direction, the Smithsonian Folkways record label, for one example, is a massive resource for ethnomusicological recordings of a wide swath of (primarily indigenous and/or oppressed groups of) people from around the world, as are Sublime Frequencies and Dust to Digital.