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Book idea: culturally meaningful and ubiquitous songs from major cultures.
One of the channels for my procrastination is to get lost in Spotify, following 'appears on' and 'discovered in these playlists' to find hitherto unknown to me music, preferably with names written in characters my computer does not even have support for :D these times we live, there is endless, literally endless possibility to just keep discovering whatever specific content one desires, it's a wonder anyone gets any work done. I could easily spend the whole day just listening to music and sorting it into my various folders << this sorting thing is really important! Yesterday spent an hour and half going through 60s to 80s schlagers/enka type music from Thailand. I try to retain my appreciation and amazement for the fact that this is possible. I'm sure there have been people in earlier ages who would have gladly sacrificed an arm or a leg to have access to all this information.
Chinese traditional inspired pop / cheesy synthesiser versions of traditional tunes is a sort of guilty pleasure (I don't really believe in guilty pleasures, but let's say I meet a musically gifted someone from China, I'd be a bit embarrassed to admit my go-to music from their country is a synthesised pan flute rendition of Girls from Ali Mountain instead of one played with sophistication and skill on real instruments).
Well anyway. Just through this 'research' (can't think of a better word and the quotes do not adequately express that I really don't confuse what I'm doing with actual research) I've discovered for example that the song "the moon represents my heart" made famous by Teresa Teng is apparently not only super popular but like a basic block of modern Chinese culture, everyone knows it by heart just by osmosis. To me the song does not sound that remarkable tbh, but of course I miss the lyrics.
Every culture has these ubiquitous songs, that even if you learn the language, you miss a lot of cultural shortcuts if you don't know certain phrases etc. So it would be interesting and fun to pick a few songs from each major culture sphere (let's say American/English, China, India, Japan, Spanish Latin America, Portuguese Latin America, Francophone Africa, ok don't really know how to meaningfully split Africa into language / music spheres but anyway you get the idea) and try to explain why these songs are classics.
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I get these ideas because the eco book I'm writing is seriously stressing me out, I dream that my next book will be something fluffy and happy.
One of the channels for my procrastination is to get lost in Spotify, following 'appears on' and 'discovered in these playlists' to find hitherto unknown to me music, preferably with names written in characters my computer does not even have support for :D these times we live, there is endless, literally endless possibility to just keep discovering whatever specific content one desires, it's a wonder anyone gets any work done. I could easily spend the whole day just listening to music and sorting it into my various folders << this sorting thing is really important! Yesterday spent an hour and half going through 60s to 80s schlagers/enka type music from Thailand. I try to retain my appreciation and amazement for the fact that this is possible. I'm sure there have been people in earlier ages who would have gladly sacrificed an arm or a leg to have access to all this information.
Chinese traditional inspired pop / cheesy synthesiser versions of traditional tunes is a sort of guilty pleasure (I don't really believe in guilty pleasures, but let's say I meet a musically gifted someone from China, I'd be a bit embarrassed to admit my go-to music from their country is a synthesised pan flute rendition of Girls from Ali Mountain instead of one played with sophistication and skill on real instruments).
Well anyway. Just through this 'research' (can't think of a better word and the quotes do not adequately express that I really don't confuse what I'm doing with actual research) I've discovered for example that the song "the moon represents my heart" made famous by Teresa Teng is apparently not only super popular but like a basic block of modern Chinese culture, everyone knows it by heart just by osmosis. To me the song does not sound that remarkable tbh, but of course I miss the lyrics.
Every culture has these ubiquitous songs, that even if you learn the language, you miss a lot of cultural shortcuts if you don't know certain phrases etc. So it would be interesting and fun to pick a few songs from each major culture sphere (let's say American/English, China, India, Japan, Spanish Latin America, Portuguese Latin America, Francophone Africa, ok don't really know how to meaningfully split Africa into language / music spheres but anyway you get the idea) and try to explain why these songs are classics.
-----
I get these ideas because the eco book I'm writing is seriously stressing me out, I dream that my next book will be something fluffy and happy.
