The line between QB music and Trash music

[Khanate]

Honestly, as someone who has learned music up until I finished High School QB, I cannot see a distinguishing feature of what we should classify as "music" in quizbowl. You might say only classical music, but that can be thrown out given that Stephen Foster is a commonly used answer choice, Phillip Glass's "Heroes" Symphony is based on a David Bowie song, Jazz is considered to be part of "music", purely symphonic film music is considered trash, and I'm pretty sure if tribal music were better known it would be considered "music" as well. The major place where I see the line being a bit fuzzy is in modern music. People like John Cage and Phillip Glass are by no means traditional classical composers, while Simon and Garfunkel have been incredibly influential in the world of music and have written variations on significant folk songs like "El Condor Pasa". "The Girl from Ipanema" is an incredibly important bossa work that I don't ever recall seeing in a tossup. Musicals are traditionally considered acceptable, but Bono wrote a rock musical and Elton John wrote the music for Lion King, a musical film, and neither of them would really be considered acceptable "music". Also, this is a bit of a stretch, but there are also heavily classically influenced "pop" songs like Bohemian Rhapsody and Exogenesis Symphony(moreso this than the former) that may fall on this fuzzy line.

I think we need to reconsider what can be classified in quizbowl as "music", because I don't see a basis for what is and isn't "music" by the current classification. Now I'm not advocating that we start tossing up Nickelback and Lady Gaga in our music tossups, rather I think we should define music as something considerably influential and accept artists like Simon and Garfunkel and works like "Girl from Ipanema". Since early influential Jazz artists are so widely accepted, we should also accept influential 90's Grunge artists like Nirvana, who has inspired elements of much of modern music. I just think we need a better line to draw.

[AKKOLADE]

Honestly, as someone who has learned music up until I finished High School QB, I cannot see a distinguishing feature of what we should classify as "music" in quizbowl. You might say only classical music, but that can be thrown out given that Stephen Foster is a commonly used answer choice, Phillip Glass's "Heroes" Symphony is based on a David Bowie song, Jazz is considered to be part of "music", purely symphonic film music is considered trash, and I'm pretty sure if tribal music were better known it would be considered "music" as well. The major place where I see the line being a bit fuzzy is in modern music. People like John Cage and Phillip Glass are by no means traditional classical composers, while Simon and Garfunkel have been incredibly influential in the world of music and have written variations on significant folk songs like "El Condor Pasa". "The Girl from Ipanema" is an incredibly important bossa work that I don't ever recall seeing in a tossup. Musicals are traditionally considered acceptable, but Bono wrote a rock musical and Elton John wrote the music for Lion King, a musical film, and neither of them would really be considered acceptable "music". Also, this is a bit of a stretch, but there are also heavily classically influenced "pop" songs like Bohemian Rhapsody and Exogenesis Symphony(moreso this than the latter) that may fall on this fuzzy line.

I think we need to reconsider what can be classified in quizbowl as "music", because I don't see a basis for what is and isn't "music" by the current classification. Now I'm not advocating that we start tossing up Nickelback and Lady Gaga in our music tossups, rather I think we should define music as something considerably influential and accept artists like Simon and Garfunkel and works like "Girl from Ipanema". Since early influential Jazz artists are so widely accepted, we should also accept influential 90's Grunge artists like Nirvana, who has inspired elements of much of modern music. I just think we need a better line to draw.

This is a low effort response, but:

Musicals aren't really treated as fine arts.

Accessibility is a big factor in this, and The Beatles/Simon & Garfunkel/other talented platinum artists are a lot more accessible than Philip Glass.

A less key problem with the "pop music as art" argument is that it often goes with the "oh, but if they're not good, then they don't count" thing, which itself is a hot mess of arbitrary demarcations.

[vinteuil]

Déjà vu (viewtopic.php?f=9&t=13240); I have no more to say on the subject...

[Khanate]

Déjà vu (viewtopic.php?f=9&t=13240); I have no more to say on the subject...

Well my bad, I thought I looked through the college and HS discussion threads before I posted this, but I must have scanned to quickly. Anyway I'll go ahead and make my point here and go to the other board.

I don't think the accessibility argument is very valid. "What a Wonderful World" can be heard on the radio and is fairly ubiquitous. "Danse Macabre" is in a whiskey commercial that i've probably seen 30 times. Many classical works are encountered many times in a non-academic environment. Also a fair chunk of todays society doesn't know some of the more famous works of Simon & Garfunkel.

[ProfessorIanDuncan]

"The Girl from Ipanema" is an incredibly important bossa work that I don't ever recall seeing in a tossup.

At NAC this year there was an audio clip of "The Girl from Ipanema" asking for the type of music or the language being sung in "this 1960's hit" ( I know that's stupid, after all it's ). I got the answer almost immediately and answered Portuguese. I knew the song and the language but I had never heard of bossa before. People still seemed pretty impressed that I knew the answer (this was a game against High Tech A, so its not like our opponents weren't good). I would say that bossa isn't an incredibly important genre, hence it wouldn't really be asked about in anything at the high school level except for maybe a bonus at HSNCT. But that's not to say that The Girl from Ipanema isn't an incredibly important bossa work. It is (the only one I know).

NOTE: I have very little knowledge of Fine Arts esp. music

[Auks Ran Ova]

The line, as far as it's generally understood, is pretty straightforward: the "music" subdistribution of the "fine arts" distribution is intended to encompass the history of classical music and music in the classical tradition, which you can refer to by the handy umbrella term art music. Specifically, in quizbowl, the subdistributional area in the "fine arts" distribution labeled "music" is for non-operatic art music. Opera, jazz, ballet and other folk-type music (Stephen Foster, bossa nova, what have you) are found in the "other fine arts" distribution, while popular music as a whole is generally put in the "pop culture" distribution--not as an indictment of its quality, import, or influence, but because that's what it actually is.

Parts of your post can be chalked up to entirely understandable inexperience--just because you haven't seen it happen in the relatively constricted answer space of high school quizbowl and easier college tournaments doesn't mean that, say, "The Girl from Ipanema" doesn't come up all the time. Musicals aren't generally going to show up in the "music" part of the distribution, other than as the giveaway for a Leonard Bernstein question, or something similar (like a mention of Kismet in a Borodin question or something*). The more important ones, though, will sometimes pop up in the "other arts" area of the distribution, which is where many of the other fringe-type things you've mentioned (jazz, folk music, potential questions on tribal music) often find a home.

As has been noted, this sort of question has been raised before, and my response this time is the same as it has been in the past: What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish? Opening the music distribution up to "anything of any influence on anything" is both kind of silly and actually far, far blurrier a "line" than the current standard. If you've got an idea for something a little outside the current norms, feel free to write it and submit it to a tournament and see what kind of reception it gets.

*This is a good example of how the current generally-understood, slightly blurry standard for what goes in the academic music distribution works better than any sort of hard-and-fast line, and why the existence of edge cases doesn't necessarily mandate a radical reworking of basic distribution concepts. Two of Philip Glass's symphonies are based on David Bowie albums, but are nonetheless orchestral works obviously composed in the (contemporary) classical tradition.

[Muriel Axon]

I don't think the accessibility argument is very valid. "What a Wonderful World" can be heard on the radio and is fairly ubiquitous. "Danse Macabre" is in a whiskey commercial that i've probably seen 30 times. Many classical works are encountered many times in a non-academic environment. Also a fair chunk of todays society doesn't know some of the more famous works of Simon & Garfunkel.

I don't think any of the major commentators in the prior discussion actually used the "accessibility" argument you describe. John Lawrence's argument, which I liked a lot, effectively said "we're in a post-classical and post-jazz era, but we're not yet in a post-pop or post-rock era." While fans of Slint or Mogwai may disagree, I think this argument is fairly reasonable - pop, rock, country, and hip-hop are the dominant forms of music today, regardless of the accessibility of individual works, so they are not in the music distribution.

Another argument in that thread is based on the amount of scholarly study occurring into different types of music. A lot of people analyze classical music and publish their research, while fewer analyze pop music. (Beatles scholarship is going strong, but most work in that field has to do with the production and historical context of the music less than the music or lyrics.)

In those areas where classical and pop/rock music seem to blend together, use common sense. Yes, Nico Muhly worked on Veckatimest, but that doesn't make Grizzly Bear classical. Yes, Glass wrote symphonies borrowing themes from Bowie albums, but he's not rock or pop. If it really could go either way, write it and we'll see if the quiz bowl world is ready.