Music in Accent and Language

The music of People X for any X has two parts to it that often get muddled. The first is the accent of the music---this is what most people are fixated about. Statements that talk about instrumentation/orchestration, or even the equivalent of the key signature of the music are often referring to this aspect of accent.

The second is the language of the music---this is what most people don't usually talk about. By ``language'', I mean the musical constructs of rhythm (i.e. sequence of pitch durations), melody (i.e. sequence of pitch values or frequencies), and in some cases, harmony (i.e. the spectrum of frequencies present), though I would place more emphasis on rhythm and melody since we are talking about ``the music of People X''.

The choice of labels is deliberate. ``Language'' has a strong sense of internal grammar and associated idioms that stand independent of whoever is using it. Thus, an Englishman speaking Mandarin Chinese can be identified as speaking Mandarin Chinese, even though his accent may not be the same as that of a native speaker. Similarly, a piece of music of People X can be identified as such no matter what instrument is used to play it, as long as the innate grammar and idioms of the rhythm and melody of the music of People X are followed.

``Accent'' can be thought of as quirks that change the feeling of the underlying ``language'' in subtle ways that do not affect the core meaning, though the ``accent'', if it is too heavy, can end up obscuring the meaning conveyed in the ``language''. To continue the analogy, an Englishman speaking Mandarin Chinese without paying close attention to the tones of the characters may sound less comprehensible than one who does. Or in cases like a Japanese native speaker attempting to speak English and messing up the `L'-`R' pronunciation due to their heavy accents---it takes more effort for a [native-speaking] listener to wade through the accent and reconstruct the actual language below it, but if the grammar and idioms of the underlying language are not garbled, the meaning can still be conveyed.

Bringing the analogy back to music, if one plays a melody in a different key, with instruments that have different behavioural characteristics (a drastic example might be for a cello to play what was originally a native folk drum set piece), then the underlying music of People X may be more obscured, but once someone gets past these differences in ``accent'', they can usually hear the music of People X being the backbone.

I'm writing all these as a reminder to myself (mostly) that we should celebrate that the music we love to play with our traditional/native instruments/orchestration is interesting and lovely enough for others to want to play too, kinda like how (say) people from Japan are learning English to better communicate with us, and not get all pissy when they seemingly play it all ``wrong'' due to the superficial differences from choices of instrument, key, or orchestration.

I mean, there are only that many pleasing melodies that we can make and reproduce ``consistently''---it may be a large number, but it is still finite.

Anyway, that's all I want to write for now. Till the next update.