tomaskovarik:
Of course, you find some great classical musicians among them. Yo Yo Ma is a good example and there are many others. But these people have the training, they developed “their ear” so to speak. Ask people in villages about Mozart, play it to them and they will run away.
The same way, play their music to us…the music they consider beautiful …and most of us will run away.
Well, yeah.
It’s the difference between being
educated – exposed to culture more broadly than what comes over the transom, whether that transom is the TV or the village gathering – and not being educated. Culture is learned, and music is part of culture.
Heck, most “modern” Americans don’t even find classical western music appealing – much less non-western music. But that’s because they’re culturally bereft, mostly by their own choice. These are the same people who reject serious exposure and consideration of ideas (for instance, biological science!) as well as art, music, etc., etc., etc.
I don’t find it particularly hard to understand why so many Americans are so functionally illiterate, about science, about art, about music, about…well, you name it. What I find hard to understand is the way that so many Americans absolutely
glory in their ignorance…the extent to which they consider ignorance some kind of badge of honor (even as they ridicule and demean those among them who value learning – especially those who value learning for its own sake, rather than as a means to “getting ahead.”)
I’m pretty cynical about American culture, I’m afraid – and that encompasses both its rejection of moral values, and its rejection of intellectual pursuits. Sadly, many Americans who are concerned about our society’s rejection of morality are oblivious to (or even supportive of) its rejection of intellectualism. At the same time, many who worry about our anti-intellectualism are indifferent to our abandonment of moral values.
Both are important. Deliberately choosing immorality is wrong. So is deliberately choosing stupidity.
But you can be moral, and thoughtful. And you can reconcile Original Sin, and God’s creation of man, with evolution. You have to be able to separate mechanisms from causes. That’s not that hard, if you think about it.
**Music! I hear music in the background! ** Give me a passionate acoustic guitar, strings and choral exotic Pacific Pan flutes, miniature maracas and beaded gourds from Santa Fe and what do you have? Stevan Pasero, chamber Nouveau “Seasons”! 
A must read:
