How Music Reflects Culture

To what extent does a tradition of music reflect the outlook of its host culture? This is a question we’ll consider as we look at Non-Western musics such as Indian and Indonesian music, consider how Native American, Australian Aboriginal and Papuan-New Guinean song reconciles those peoples to their landscapes; look at contemporary phenomena such as K-Pop, and consider how the various Western genres reflect different ways of looking at the world. A symphony constructs a sense of achievement, victory - even, according to some writers, colonization. How do jazz and Country music differ? And how might the vast range of American music reflect its host country? We’ll consider the words of songs and their relationship to other musical elements and examine different ways of structuring music. As well, we’ll examine our own individual ‘songprint’ and how that might tell us where we fit in our world.