ELATICO, Adam Jo J.

2012-24517

Reaction paper for MuL 13: World Music Cultures

The book has been very honest about its methodology on dealing with
different studies of musical cultures. The term music in the way we understand it
has a very dynamic meaning. It is not just some collection of different sounds and,
whenever applicable, lyrics. Rather, it has evolved to be a greater part of todays
cultures in different societies.
Music may be viewed using different perspectives of different kinds of people
who belong to a certain group and thus music may really be regarded as a
relativistic discipline. The book points out certain roles of music which may not just
be for entertainment. This could be observed especially in todays society. For
example, Philippine history tells us of dark times for the arts the declaration of
Martial Law. Heavy censorship was implemented during this time which affected
even the freedom of expression through music. This did not really halt the evolution
of music, however, as now music was used as a platform for expressing criticisms.
Some of the noted artists during this time were Lolita Carbon, Joey Ayala and even
rock artists like Mike Hanopol expressed dismay with the government.
The book also pointed out that music is made up of different kinds of music.
The word KPOP or Korean Popular Music is a genre of music which corresponds to
popular music by the Koreans. Although this generalization exists, this genre of
music is still made up of different kinds of music which may be unique or variations
of others.
Therefore, the books intention of bringing up a relativistic view of different
music cultures is a very positive move towards introductory learning of the
intricacies of music. The sampling of data from different diversities of cultures of the
world and generalizing these data to represent a larger block of the world should be
sensitive enough in order to account for even the minorities of such cultures. If this
is attained, then the book may well have accomplished its goal to present
excursions of world music cultures.