<p>“So Usher, Ludacris, Tony Braxton, Whitney Houston-- these are all bad influences on the culture??”</p>
<p>Yes. Indeed. You know, I was watching a video on Youtube by some kid who went by the name “Soulja Boy” wherein the kid was shouting some very indistinguishable words (I guess they were words. I figure, what with my being black, I ought to have understood them, but the fact is, it was just so much nonsense I had no clue what the kid was saying). I did manage to get the main point, and I found it most destructive. The song made light of doing poorly in school and showed the kid with a bad report card begging the teacher to just “Throw Some D’s on It”. Rather than scorn the failure, it trivialized it and even made fun of asking for “some D’s” (as if even D’s are acceptable). We blacks, in my opinion, do not need this. This is the sort of thing we find in a lot of our music, if not with academics, then with sex and violence.</p>
<p>“It doesnt matter whether or not you like their music (I don’t usually blast Rap in my car ont he way home, but I don’t listen to the classical station either) - the fact of the matter is, there is plenty of “art” int he south.”</p>
<p>I agree. I just think it is inferior to the art in the North. I have been party to the arts in both the North and South. The North is the place to be. I think since Northerners have moved South, much of the South is improving. But it is still quite a bit behind the North and will be for sometime.</p>
<p>“As an aside, I find it ironic that you are touting the Jewish guy from Brooklyn, and I am mentioning the R&B guys from the hood!”</p>
<p>I am not touting the guy. I am just saying he basically represents a lot of what has taken place in the South.</p>
<p>“I demand that anyone who’s ever heard of peanuts in the Coke report in about this matter right now!”</p>
<p>I have. Grew up doing this. It really is not all that great, but interesting.</p>
<p>As for Houston’s orchestra, The point is that the culture came not from the South, but elsewhere. When it comes to a comparison of only the South and North, the North wins – and handily.</p>
<p>I am no snob. I can’t afford to be. I am telling it exactly as I see it. And I think it is valid and not like rejecting people based on their race. That is the overall point. I am countering the claim of this thread.</p>
<p>“So whats your point, dross?? That these are inferior because they came from despair?”</p>
<p>No, that the culture causing them created such despair that it is inferior, and that it defends its behavior makes it even more inferior.</p>
<p>“How many of the world renouned artists created masterpieces that depicted despair. So what-- art is art-- regardless of its foundation.”</p>
<p>It is not just the art, but its cultural context I am talking about. You can’t very well appreciate Negro Spirituals as an art form without knowing the utter wretchedness from which it came. I am saying that wretchedness was wretched, and that Southern Culture was it, and that vestiges of it still hamper the development of the South.</p>
<p>“I guess there is one more thing about the north that I forgot- there seem to be a higher concentration of supercilious snobs there. I am glad I left.”</p>
<p>I guess it is true that we tend to live where we belong. I am glad you found your place.</p>
<p>So, calling out an entire group of people as being ignorant, uneducated, inferior, uncultured, unable to express or enjoy artistic pursuits without help and guidance, etc. based soley upon the region from which they come, is just fine and dandy in your opinion - you’re just telling it like you see it ;).</p>
<p>Now, tell me cc members, how is that different from racism/sexism/ageism/ and all the other ism’s? </p>
<p>Just because you don’t have alot of money doesn’t mean you can’t be a snob. Your posts reek of snobbery and condescension. It must be interesting and quite liberating to be so insensitive to how insulting you are. Self-aware much?</p>
<p>Okay! That’s what I’m talking about ag54. Drosselmeier is setting a bad example for students on this forum and I’m glad someone is willing to say so.</p>
<p>“So, calling out an entire group of people as being ignorant, uneducated, inferior, uncultured, unable to express or enjoy artistic pursuits without help and guidance, etc. based soley upon the region from which they come, is just fine and dandy in your opinion - you’re just telling it like you see it.”</p>
<p>Yes. It is just fine and dandy. It is the culture I am most interested in. Culture can and does change.</p>
<p>”Now, tell me cc members, how is that different from racism/sexism/ageism/ and all the other ism’s?”</p>
<p>Because race does nothing at all. It is not a behavior. It is just an appearance, like hair color. Condemning a color is necessarily ridiculous. Condemning a behavior is not. Behaviors can and do change, and they actually DO things, unlike race. They MUST be fair game for criticism, else we are all lost.</p>
<p>”Just because you don’t have alot of money doesn’t mean you can’t be a snob. Your posts reek of snobbery and condescension.”</p>
<p>I am terribly sorry you feel this way. But you still have failed to address my contention that criticism of culture is NOT the same as criticizing a race.</p>
<p>And you would characterize being born in a specific part of the country “a behavior”? I would characterize it as a “chance occurance”.</p>
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<p>So, condemning a child as an illiterate ignoramus strictly because he had the misfortune to be born to parents who live in the south is not ridiculous.</p>
<p>I would say that your contention “that criticism of culture is NOT the same as criticizing a race” has been disproven by your very own posts.</p>
<p>You can’t blame/credit the South for the origins of rap music.I thought most of the original rappers were from the NYC boroughs ie Grandmaster Flash et. al. Then came the West Coast rappers came into prominence and then finally crunk rap from the South. The old school original raps were either grandiose bragging about who was the better MC(haha, just dug out the old EPs to refresh my memory) or political in nature. It was the West Coasters’ raps that were truly misogynistic and violent. </p>
<p>I was in junior high and high school when rap started to be played on the airwaves and in college when it went truly mainstream. I really liked rap when it was clean. Once NWA and their imitators hit the airwaves, I was done.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier - Your arguments are just strange. All blacks _______ insert your favorite behavioral stereotype here___<strong><em>. All Southerners </em></strong><em>insert your favorite behavioral stereotype here</em>___. Neither is fair, is it? You can quote your experiences, statistics, and on and on to support either one. It is not fair and not appropriate on this forum. You are part of what keeps this country from being as it should be. If a certain person or group is doing a specific thing, such as flying a confederate flag, go ahead and condemn them. But I want to know who they are and not just be told that an entire region stinks of rot. Just as you would not want an entire race condemned by the actions of certain elite athletes or musicians.</p>
<p>Zoos, it’s funny you should mention that. I’m currently reading a book that takes place in South Carolina and one of the characters loves peanuts in Coke. I had never heard of it but I have a feeling that I’d enjoy that combination of salty and sweet. :)</p>
<p>Not sure what Chess Pie is. Anyone care to share? One of my favorite southern things, well, it may just be Virginia, is peanut soup. Yum.</p>
<p>I’ve always found the people in the south very friendly and hospitable, but then, I think most people I know in the north are like that, too.</p>
<p>Motherdear: A mom who’s familiar with rap history! Why aren’t the moms I know as cool? </p>
<p>There is art in certain forms of gangster rap. “Affirmative Action” (which is full of hidden metaphors about drug dealing and nothing about actual affirmative action) is enjoyably crafted, if only if they didn’t make Foxy Brown’s last part so asymmetric. I used to be part of the “I liked rap in its younger days” sort of school, but I’ve since realised that the younger days of rap happen to be from a time when it was pre-mainstream. There is a huge infiltration of junk into any genre when it hits the mainstream, but that doesn’t mean the genre has “degenerated,” for I suspect that the rate of gem production still remains the same as before.</p>
<p>The good thing is, If I were to need to move back up north, I would be perfectly comfortable there. I am equally comfortable and would be equally happy in the south as the north (as long as the area is not extremely rural or remote and if I had an adjustment for the difference in the cost of living). Sadly, poor Dross sounds like a cultural self-loather, and as such, would find the “inferior” south intolerable. That is pitiful. Self loathers tend to put down everything and everyone associated with the background from which they are trying to distance themselves. Several years ago we went to a presentation given by an admissions officer from a well known NE school. He spent most of the time talking about how he was a rural southerner by birth but moved to the NE to correct that geographical error. By his description, in the south he felt like the world was a tuxedo and he was a pair of brown shoes. He just didn’t fit in. While I think his intent was to talk about the cultural opportunities in the NE, the acceptance of people with different orientations , etc, instead he came across as a pompous jerk who must have been bullied as a child, who had a large chip on his shoulder and lots of unfinished emotional business to process. It was a real, REAL turnoff to my s and many others in the room of SOUTHERNERS. His attempts to talk the students into getting out of the oppressive h-e-l-l-hole of the south was offensive and ignorant. What a fool. An angry fool.</p>
<p>I am no scholar of history, and especially music or art history, but I imagine that music and art have been influenced over the centuries by the pogroms, the inquisition, then the renaissance, etc. Sorry, but slavery did not originate in the southern US, and many groups have suffered blights, droughts, sandstorms, religious oppression, you name it. And I would expect that the art of the day (visual, musical, etc) was influenced by the events of the time. So is true for the US citizens in the past few hundred years. It is another “fill in the blank” as preironic pointed out. The residents of the old south don’t have a lock on despair. Sheesh.</p>
<p>So now we sit back and watch our words get minced while some posters continue to duck and weave, and keep on swinging (which really is, in truth, shadowboxing). Ding. Round 3. Or perhaps we should take out our pads and pencils to take notes on the next part of the lecture we are about to receive. Any of you northerners got any good pastries I can munch on while I watch and listen? I do miss the northern pasteries.</p>
<p>OK, I missed a big part of this party… but Jym, your post #84 seems to sum things up pretty well! I have always lived in the north, but all my relatives are in the south and my parents have retired back at “home” in the south, so I’ve spent several weeks per year there and my southern-raised parents always tried to make sure I knew not to violate Southern cultural nice-ities.</p>
<p>I always found it odd that our next door neighbor in NJ made fun of me when the occasional “y’all” slipped out, while I could cut her Brooklyn accent with a knife and she used the phrase “youse guys” every other sentence (no, I’m not kidding). </p>
<p>I think Drosselmeier and attitudes like his are precisely why so many Southerners distrust/dislike Northerners. No one likes someone who looks down their nose at you. I think Hillary was perceived by many in the South (even Arkansas) as looking down her nose at them, and that’s why so many have such a visceral negative reaction to her.</p>
<p>But… anyone here read the book “Confederates in the Attic”? Some really scary stuff in there. Starts out with the author trying to find out why so many men are so fanatical about their Civil War re-enactments, but his travels lead him to some towns and people whose views on race, etc are seriously warped.</p>
<p>I miss walking around Charleston after midnight, the restaurants in Atlanta, sunsets over the gulf, all of Florida prior to 1970’s development, Athens/UGA, drives through cypress swamps, uptown NOLA, the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia Beach, eastern and central Tennessee, and the pre-Katrina Gulfport beaches. But what I miss most is being twenty years old and traveling with Army buddies to where ever they lived (even San Angelo TX, in August).</p>
<p>FWIW, To correct some historical inaccuracies, 1945 was not the beginning of the Atlanta symphony orchestra. Apparently the ASO had its beginnings in 1923, according to the ASO’s website
Yes, the original conductor was from NY- but he was BROUGHT HERE, he didn’t just jump off the train and exclaim “let’s bring some culture to these backwoods yokies”! Besides, the first reported official “classical” music concert was held in Atlanta in 1858. Here’s a link to the history of classical music in Atlanta [New</a> Georgia Encyclopedia: Classical Music in Atlanta](<a href=“http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-898]New”>http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-898) . Yes, these folks came from elsewhere (gee-- maybe the north, ya think??) But they had to build some theaters first before they could invite musicians to play. Then, some pesky guy named Sherman came through in 1864 with a few too many matches, and the construction had to restart.</p>
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