sex of the angels

You know how many dozens of sociology texts could be written on this very question? :)

I won't even start, except to say that the notion of "sexiness" is pretty culturally specific. For "western culture" at large, yes: the idea of sexiness is tagged onto the musical heritage of African Americans, for a million pretty obvious reasons ranging from the anti- sexual Puritan religious ethic to the social marginalization of blacks in the U.S. But this certainly doesn't translate universally. Surely there are kids in Bombay or Cairo who find Parliament frightening and think of Ravi Shankar and Um Kulthuum as sex gods.

Could we safely agree that the only semi-universal property you can attach to musical "sexiness" is that it provokes a response that's more physical than intellectual? That definition allows for people's cultural responses to vary widely while still tagging the root of the quality that constitutes "sexiness" ...

I don't think we could agree, no.

I agree with Nitsuh. The 'sexy' in black music comes from the drums, the bass, the beat, which we repsond to physically. I think it was Miles Davis (?) who said, and I am paraphrasing, "the best music is never far from dance." Perhaps that can explain Miles' continuing mainstream popularity and influence, while so many other jazzers are relegated to museum status.

what miles said may be true but a relevant part of jazz history =free was also a reaction to what jazz music was "supposed to be" .

Yet another feedback loop - 'jazz'/'swing' whatever used to invoke wild craziness in films (rock'n'roll same function later), started Pavlovian association in public mind, alto sax solo begins to signify sleazy fun. African-American music no more or less essentially sexual than any other.

I don't get this at all, I've never even noticed any coded racial implications in the use of sexiness from any commentators apart from historical archive footage from the 1950s deep south. Can you give any examples that 'are often made'?

In 'Abigails Party' the Alison Steadman character presents a pretty compelling case for Demis Roussos being sexy, and I would never disagree with Alison Steadman's qualification to make such an assesment.

I wasn't so keen on that swan painting mind, that was probably Mike Leigh in full misanthropy mode and Alison didn't really mean it and was just acting at that bit.

sexiness in music is often judged by the closeness to the mentioned tradition in many ways: examples "abstract electronica" , in a lot of european press, was dismissed as cold , not sexy music .it's hard to pick up specific examples but the fact itself there's such a category as "black music" in charts makes self evident that implied relations are made between blackness and a particular kind of music( do those charts include daniel givens ?) . the sexiness in african/american music ,for me, is in it's evolutive politics . of course there's not music that' s sexier than others a priori :waltz was welcomed in vienna as a sexually charged revolutionary music & dance . but what interests me is another thing :have you got personal criteria to define what's sexy in your listenings?

i don't think ravi shankar is seen as a sex god in india.

No I'm still not following the basic message. Especially since the roots of electronica are always cited as having evolved from very explicit erotica. Klaus Shultz and David Vorhaus for instance.

re:Abstract Electronica - somewhere last decade sexiness got hijacked and used to hype non-human/non-organic design elements in alot of product, music, business (ie, the new sexy!) - - perhaps this is next evolution in getting away from the 'other-sexy' construct...

there's a brilliant book about that :mario perniola "the sexiness of the inorganic" (but from a philosophial point of view)