Slumdog Millionaire, The Darjeeling Limited, Vicky Cristina Barcelona<\/em>).\u00a0 Its funny to think of the array of diversity in the world, though from an American perspective, we\u2019re told to think what isn\u2019t like us is different.<\/p>\nThe term \u201cethno-ambient\u201d, or any word containing the prefix \u201cethno\u201d, really, bothers me.\u00a0 Meaning nation in Greek, something that clearly used to define a seemingly united or singular entity, now separates out everything that lacks a western, specifically an American context.\u00a0 Who are we, the white \u2018majority\u2019, to determine what is \u201cethnic\u201d or different?\u00a0 In actuality, though, most of our customary practices have been directly influenced by the cultures we claim to be primitive.<\/p>\n
What is Globalization, then?\u00a0 To me, it represents the assimilation of seemingly diverse cultures into what westerners have defined as normal.\u00a0 Look at how Americans treat \u201cethnic\u201d foods, for example; we only seem to choose what we like in our own food (too many unhealthy carbohydrates paired with fatty meats) and rid an entire diet of what makes it truly diverse.\u00a0 Everybody knows that the best ethnic restaurants always have two separate menus: for those in the cultural \u201cknow\u201d and for the rest of us fat Americans that refuse to assimilate ourselves.<\/p>\n
But enough about food\u2014I must digress from what we Americans do love most\u2014and on to discuss the Ambient genre in relation to world music.\u00a0 It is clear that the neo-avant-garde musicians attempting to define themselves found inspiration in previously unknown areas.\u00a0 From India, contemporary musicians utilized the harmonization of melodies and vocals; from Spain, the simplicity of classical guitar clearly prompted the resurgence of a minimalist approach to instrumentals; and the energy and electricity of Balkan music undoubtedly encouraged future ambient artists to incorporate electronic sounds into their works.\u00a0 From Latin America, too, heavy beats and off-tempo rhythms can definitely be discerned within many slower-tempo styles.<\/p>\n
Contemporary musicians and artists alike are beginning to realize how useful it is to look to other traditions in order to mold a unique style of music.\u00a0 In doing so, one must remember to appreciate the past for what it is, and to teach its audience to preserve cultural traditions in order to diversify music today.<\/p>\n
by alex case-cohen<\/strong>
\ntune in to ambient transience every friday morning from midnight to 2 a.m.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ambient Transience explores culture diversity in music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":9621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[632],"class_list":["post-9598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-alex-case-cohen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/ambient-world1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}