> music is probably the most universal language there is for > the human species. the best music does the same thing, reguardless of > who made it or where it comes from.
i used to think that music was a universal language. then i had some cheesy LER class where the professor did some "clever" thing by asking the class if music is a universal language. everyone said yes. then she played some song from some far off place and asked us to write to the emotion that was being conveyed. everyone wrote down something pretty similar. saying it sounded happy or what not. after this the professor told us what it was about... mourning over death or something like that despite the fact that the class thought it was a happy sounding song. so yeah cheesy story but whatever... it fits. where i am going is that music comes out of different cultures across the word. emotion, or better yet methods of expressing emotion are not the same from culture to culture. therefore when expressing emotion through music is it is going to be expressed in each culture's specific manner causing these emotions to not be delivered or interpreted in the same way. so very culturally specific music is definitely not a universal language. maybe music that is a fusion of culturally specific forms of music (techno) can be a universal language. it represents many cultures combined so many more people will interpret it the same. i guess i could have made this post more simple by saying it's just not so black and white to say all music is universal language. techno may be but the traditional music of native *insert country* people is most likely not universally understood.
