Primal Connections? That strange musical kinship you can't explain...

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While answering a post in the Bulgarian Womens Choir thread I was struck by a weird thought:

dleone: Classic. I heard this several years after it was actually popular, so I missed the yuppie fascination. Something about Eastern European folk music has everyone else's folk music beat, for me.
Custos: Can you articulate why this is? Does the blood of Eastern Europe flow through you and fill you with an inexplicable nostalgia for a land for which you've never been to?

Who else among you have a strange liking for an exotic music that comes from outside your culture...one for which you feel a "kinship" or "nostalgia" that you cannot explain.
Example: I've always had a cryptic and inexplicable affection for Celtic Folk music...especially CFM sung in Gaelic and played with very old-fashioned instruments. I automatically like the stuff, and I don't know why I'm such a sucker for it.
I even dig the friggin Pogues for cryin' out loud! THE POGUES!
Am I alone in having some kind of "genetic (???)" predeliction for a music that has nothing at all to do with my upbringing?

― Lord Custos Alpha (Lord Custos Alpha), Tuesday, 24 September 2002 02:23 (twenty-three years ago)

i feel this way about flamenco.

― mike (ro)bott, Tuesday, 24 September 2002 03:24 (twenty-three years ago)

bagpipes do it for me

― donna (donna), Tuesday, 24 September 2002 03:31 (twenty-three years ago)

there is a track from the Latcho Drom soundtrack from Turkey that is incredible. Somehow I feel like I belong.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 24 September 2002 03:47 (twenty-three years ago)

Not music, but places and period. Any open grassland, especially in west China or Mongolia; anything from the early fourteenth century.

― jon (jon), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 09:20 (twenty-three years ago)

That reminds me of the meek bureaucrat from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, who didn't know he was a direct line male descendant of Genghis Khan.

― Lord Custos Alpha (Lord Custos Alpha), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 14:24 (twenty-three years ago)

crossed with the Man Who Designed the Cathedrals, that's me - meak bureacrat.

― jon (jon), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 14:25 (twenty-three years ago)

five months pass...

Casting *RESURRECT THREAD*

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Tuesday, 18 March 2003 18:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Bossa nova, no question. Even before it became fashionable among indie hipsters like Sam Prekop and Sean Lennon, I'd play around with the bossa nova rhythm on my Casio for hours, entranced by the syncopation. Throw in those lovely maj-7th chords and I'm hooked. Of course, maybe this doesn't count as a "native" music, since mid-60's Brazilian pop was clearly influenced by American jazz, but still.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 18 March 2003 20:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Custos: Can you articulate why this is? Does the blood of Eastern Europe flow through you and fill you with an inexplicable nostalgia for a land for which you've never been to?

1/2 of my blood's Eastern European/Slavic, and the Bulgarian Womens Choir does nothing for me. so much for pan-slavism i suppose.

as fer me own slavic tribe -- i hate polka and most anything that sounds like it (i.e., ska). probably has more to do with being forced to listen to too many bad polka bands at relatives' weddings or church picnics when i was a kid than anything ethnic, though.

― Tad (llamasfur), Wednesday, 19 March 2003 06:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Okay, so your "slavic" blood does not "sing" to you...are you pureblood slav, or do you have other ethnicities in your bloodline that might have an inexplicable *nfl**nc* on your tastes?

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 19 March 2003 13:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I dig Hawaiian music even though I've always lived in cold climates.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 19 March 2003 14:53 (twenty-two years ago)

are you part Hawaiian?

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 19 March 2003 15:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't even have a Hawaiian shirt anymore, thanks to that no-good pal-o-mine JW who stole it at my going-away party and then had the nerve to wear it to pick me up at the airport upon my return from the great unwashed North of Canada.
"What?" he said "I've always had this shirt."

That bastard.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 19 March 2003 15:50 (twenty-two years ago)

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