# KISS # 1: Stealing their thunder



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid.*

Thought I might try this. A series of threads with this sort of format. You respond to a topic, and just say what comes to your mind upon reading it.

This comes from 'icebreaker' type activities that are used widely now in various settings - schools, corporate meets, speed dating, group interviews, many things like this. Its testing you but also has an element of freewheeling freedom to it. Its been in the communication literature for ages, under various names.

Rules are:

1. Don't think too much, just speak your mind.

2. Make your response brief (around 100 words is a guide, a paragraph or so, depending on how long your sentences are, 5-10 sentences).

3. You aren't responding to what others say, you are responding to my topic piece.

4. It has to be your words, no quotes.

5. You got one bite of the cherry, that's it.

6. Try not to read the responses of others before you make your own response.

NB: I won't come back here to comment on what people say, just read your posts. Its less a matter of what I or others think, its more about what you as an individual think and then seeing the responses side by side. The more different they are the better. Perhaps after we have had a good number of responses, I'll facilitate a discussion based on all your contributions, but that's a possibility for later.

*Topic 1: Stealing their thunder*

Do you think classical music has been stealing the thunder of other musics? First it was folk, then jazz, then world, then rock and so on. Is this the same as what R&B musician Louis Jordan said about white man stealing black man's music to _invent_ rock n'roll? Is it about the Occident stealing from The Orient and then calling it _innovation_, _progress_ or _liberation_? More contentiously, is it about other traditions propping up the ailing carcase of Western classical music? Has Western classical been living a parasitic existence?

*Speak up and K.I.S.S.!*


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I think each and every premise is a whine from those raised in the climate of the culture of complaint, it is negative, used to bring attention to some individual or their particular limitations or wants, with the expectation, for some reason, that the whole world should capitulate to their tastes and limitations and be expected to instantly accommodate them merely because they are entitled to the response they want, whether it is for sympathy sought, or agreement with that limited spectrum of thought and taste.

Beyond a tempest in a teacup, and not worth a moment of anybody's time.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Music borrows. Music steals. Get over it. But if CM with its <3% listener share is engaging in any really harmful larceny, I just can't see it. I mean, is this a serious question? 

CM might do well to steal more rather than less.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I'm not sure I have any idea what the real question is. Is CM causing people not to listen to other musics? Are other musics causing people not to listen to CM? Is it derivative? Are they derivative? Forgive my obtuseness. Huh?


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

I am not sure I fully understand the point, sorry.
For most of the cases, at least in Europe, is it not the other way around?


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

How about, All music steals from other music. Or, all music _evolves_ from other music. The medieval music that we now lump under "classical" - chant, troubadour songs - didn't just appear from nowhere. Most classical has evolved from other classical, but it's inevitable that influence will bleed in from elsewhere. Sometimes in overt "movements" like the use of folk tunes in the later 19th century. But folk musics steal from each other all the time. And rock 'n' roll can trace its origins much further back than white people stealing music from black people. Etc.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Sid James said:


> *KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid.*
> 
> Do you think classical music has been stealing the thunder of other musics?
> 
> More contentiously, is it about other traditions propping up the ailing carcase of Western classical music? Has Western classical been living a parasitic existence?


No to the first. no to the second, no to the third.

Exchanging ideas isn't stealing. Music always draws on (and influences) ideas from beyond the artificial confines of a genre

Western Classical Music isn't an ailing carcass. Not many people live in caves and paint on their walls any more, but the Lescaux cave paintings still have the power to move us many thosuands of years later

WCM isn't 'parasitic' as that suggests a one way relationship that benefits only the parasite. Symbiotic relationship might be more accurate (and less derogatory) :tiphat:


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

No, if Classical music seems boisterous to some its just because one has to be loud to cut through the constant noise of the ruling mediocrity!

/ptr


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

I love the American-style edge of the post , in the good sense of the word. I think classical music has been stealing the thunder of some musical forms, such as hip-hop, in the sense that hip-hop is becoming less popular. I have the sense that the classical music community is devoted and growing and that more classical listeners buy records, which helps the musicians. Not to say that the only form of quality music is classical, though.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Copyright law has it that you can not use two full bars of another work before you are indebted to that work. Simple things like setting it in another meter, changing the barring, and you're home free. Most everyone also recognizes a direct lift and insert vs. another's use of the same material while making something else, and new, of it.

There is some consideration I think should be made about lightly appropriating music from another culture which has profound social or religious meaning for that culture, but ideas floating about, use of another scale, instrument, once associated with a particular place or culture is also in a constant drift and exchange of ideas.

If you do not want anyone, ever, to take and modify something you've made, or a cultural icon, don't ever make it public or broadcast it. Once you have, other than direct plagiarism, you can not complain that another has sprung an idea from your idea.

_Dies irae_, for centuries used by devout composers in other religious works, used in supposedly devout works by non-devout composers, and used wholesale by anyone who cares to play around with that old chant whether in a sincere religious piece or a pop number. Ditto _L'homme arme_, and so much and many more.

Things like this are like the proverbial penny which passes through millions of hands -- coin of the realm and no big deal. The big deal is how you spend or use that penny, not who held that penny last, not the penny itself.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Classical music HAS thunder. It doesn't need to steal it from anywhere else.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I haven't read the other replies yet. 

The statement is confusing parasitism with symbiosis. They are two entirely different things. Symbiosis is beneficial. The colliding of cultures is a fertilizer for creativity.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Sorry, but the topic is an incoherent mess. Not one of its premises makes enough sense to be worth addressing.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

This is right in line with that whole concept of cultural appropriation, and like that it is obscene bullocks of the worst kind. It is stupid, completely short-sighted, and ironically full of prejudice. It shows a lack of understanding of how culture works.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Contemporary classical music is certainly parasitical and that's not a bad thing. I hold other traditions in high regard (Gamelan, Hindustani/Carnatic, Gagaku , etc.) but the European/Western model is by far, the most innovative and unsentimental musical tradition on the face of the earth.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> I love the American-style edge of the post , in the good sense of the word. I think classical music has been stealing the thunder of some musical forms, such as hip-hop, in the sense that hip-hop is becoming less popular.


You are aware that even the best of pop music, a set genre, has a shelf life of about five years, ten at the outside, in which time it has usually morphed considerably and spawned several sub-sets of that genre? That Hip Hop is waning in popularity seems to me more of that sort of phenomenon than its having been 'pushed out of place' by any sort of music, classical or pop.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> You are aware that even the best of pop music, a set genre, has a shelf life of about five years, ten at the outside...


Funny how a lot of that stuff is still being played after a half-century, huh?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks to all who took part, especially those who followed my directions, however I am pulling the plug on this thread. I think that this concept works better face to face, basically. I remember it used in school many moons ago, however in the last decade its taken off in various other settings, as I mentioned in my opening post.

Thing is that on TC we like to talk right? Conversation is a two way street, so I should have done this topic the usual way. But no harm in experimenting.

The area that I got some of those ideas from is post-colonial studies. Think Frantz Farnon and Edward Said. Various sources within classical music have had things to say about Western music taking from _the other_. I must note that Louis Jordan made those remarks at the end of his career in the 1970's, but up till then he had been happy to collaborate with musicians of various genres, including white musicians.

Basically I didn't get into putting academic or other sources or quotes into my opening post, how can I do that, when I am asking you to respond without them?

We have also had a thread recently about how classical music fed off folk music, that too triggered things off, and I did a few long posts there: http://www.talkclassical.com/30951-romantic-nationalism.html

I was certainly trying to do a thought provoking topic, but not anything inflammatory or overly polarising. Perhaps this sort of topic is not appropriate for the format? But I will mull over it and maybe do some sort of similar series of provocative topics. I certainly think this one I did a while back went well, there was no trouble or misbehaviour and we got a diverse amount of responses:

http://www.talkclassical.com/27175-can-mere-thought-idea.html

So this is closed and I am asking the mods to lock the thread. Thanks again to all, but it just doesn't work online as it seems to in face to face situations. Given the recent situation on this forum with various threads getting heated, I completely want to avoid this thread becoming a platform for that sort of thing. I would rather be cautious about that then coming here in a day or two and finding a train wreck - one I had engineered!


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## Rhythm (Nov 2, 2013)

Deleted more than 15 characters.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

I actually saw KISS on their Stealing The Thunder tour, and let me tell you, they sucked. 

No, Classical hasn't been parasitic. You can borrow, provide you do something interesting with it. In pop, the good stuff is often watered down, and no talent bums reap the success that others deserve. But that shouldn't be an argument against borrowing.


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