SanKofa Byrne

                                                                  SANKOFA

Byrne suggests that a classical composer gets a strange look in his or her eye and begins furiously scribbling a fully realized composition that couldn’t exist in any other form. Or that the rock-and-roll singer is driven by desire and demons, and out bursts this amazing, perfectly shaped song that had to be three minutes and twelve seconds — nothing more, nothing less

I believe that we unconsciously and instinctively make work to fit preexisting formats.

African Folk Music was meant to be heard outside and aloud. Medieval European music was to be heard in doors mainly in a church.

  In order to keep a popular section continuing longer for the dancers who wanted to keep moving, the players would jam over those chord changes while maintaining the same groove. The musicians learned to stretch out and extend whatever section of the tune was deemed popular. These improvisations and elongations evolved out of necessity, and a new kind of music came into being.

   The style of music may have emerged from dance-oriented early hip-hop (which, like jazz, evolved by extending the breaks for dancers), it’s morphed into something else entirely: music that sounds best in cars. People do dance in their cars, or they try to. As big SUVs become less practical I foresee this music changing as well.

   Classical audiences were no longer allowed to shout, eat, and chat during a performance.

            Ross hints that this was a way of keeping the hoi polloi out of the new symphony halls and        

            opera houses. (I guess it was assumed that the lower classes were inherently noisy.) 

            The introduction of recorded music and radio on the sense of place.The live venue, and the 

            device that could play a recording or receive a transmission. Socially and acoustically, these 

           spaces were worlds apart. But the compositions were expected to be the same! An audience who 

            heard and loved a song on the radio naturally wanted to hear that same song at the club or the      

            concert hall. 

            With the advent of  headphones on, you can hear and appreciate extreme detail and subtlety,         

             and the lack of uncontrollable reverb inherent in hearing music in a live room means that 

             rhythmic material survives beautifully and completely intact; it doesn’t get blurred or turned 

            into sonic mush as it often does in a concert hall.