Sunday, July 03, 2005
I ♥ KTRU! Musical ruminations...
KTRU Houston Rice Radio, 91.7FM is the world's coolest radio station! At least the coolest one I've ever worked for. Which is not saying much, coz that's the only station I've ever DJ-ed in :)
I have a regular general music show on there, plus the Navrang show of Indian music on Sunday mornings 10pm-noon CT. Listen to it online or on the radio, of course.
KTRU is our University radio station, run by students under vague administrative oversight. It plays music which most Americans tend to term as 'alternative'. I've always wondered about the definition of 'alternative' music - or 'alternative' or 'counter' anything for that matter. It seems to exist solely to distinguish itself from 'mainstream' culture. So KTRU plays 'good' music that is not heard on commercial channels anywhere in the US. But again, 'mainstream' is such a relative term! For me, growing up in Indian suburbia, 'mainstream' was strictly Bollywood superhit songs. Anything else was 'alternative'. So even Britney Spears might fit into my definition of 'alternative' (shudder).
Are you still listening?
Anyway, I've been DJing for this radio station for about a year now, and I've learnt a whole lot of stuff. One, there is just way too much music out there. And a lot of it is good music that we don't hear anywhere else. However, I admit it...I can't deal with ALL their music, especially the super-experimental improvised jazz and electronica stuff. Melody and rhythm are fundamental to any kind of music in India, and I just cannot escape their clutches.
But that leads to deep philosphical questions like: How do you define good music? Is music an acquired taste or is there something instrinsic about music that appeals to our emotions? I mean, is there more to music than just a precise collection of sound waves? Can you supply a computer or synthesizer with all the sheet music of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and can it recreate a version that will arouse me with the same martial intensity as a good orchestra does when the cannons boom out at its climax? Can it make me waltz with an imaginary partner when the Blue Danube splashes around the auditorium?
An interesting observation from personal experience: a lot of western classical music does not invoke the 'expected' emotion that it is supposed to invoke in me. A piece that may be supposed to be relaxing but cheerful may just seem plain depressing to me. Similarly, there are numerous instances when I receive phone calls during my radio show asking 'Hey, what was that cool funky cheerful piece that you played?' and I have to resist telling them it was a sad lament of separated lovers or something like that.
I think the answer to the question regarding music above may lead us closer to the answer another eternal conundrum: Are we humans merely a glorified collection of chemicals? Are all our emotions: love, hate, anger, happiness and all our existentialist crises precise results of chemicals locking into and out of each other? Are we somehow more than the sum of our parts?
I know which answer I want to hear, but I sometimes fear the truth lies elsewhere.
# posted by technophobicgeek @ 9:37 PM 
