#5. Classical Music

Madonna implores us, “music makes the people come together.” Yeah.

Black people love music. Love it. Black people love music so much that when you travel on a monorail system in any major city (Chicago, Atlanta, Washington DC, New York City, etc.) they gladly share the song their listening to with the entire train.

Throughout history, as the various races that populate the globe matured and evolved to their various forms today, music proved an integral tool in connecting the generations and more importantly, in ensuring that traditions and customs would pass on from one line to the next.

In Africa, the ancestral homeland of all people on the planet, music is vital part of life and delivers untold joy and happiness to all in earshot, thanks largely to most important instrument that acts as the foundation of all African music, the drum:

“African musical instruments include a wide array of drums, slit gongs, rattles, double bells as well as melodic instruments like string instruments, (musical bows, different types of harps and harp-like instruments like the Kora as well as fiddles), many types of xylophone and lamellophone such as the mbira and different types of wind instrument like flutes and trumpets.

Drums used in African traditional music include tama talking drums, bougarabou and djembe in West Africa, water drums in Central and West Africa, and the different types of ngoma drums (or engoma) in Central and Southern Africa. Other percussion instruments include many rattles and shakers, such as the kosika, rainstick, bells and woodsticks.”

Black people in America love music. Jazz, Blues and especially Rap are forms of music that tell dual story of both misery and triumph for Black people. Rap music, besides the the lyrics supplied by Black people, owes its existence to the technology supplied by Rober Moog and his invention of the synthesizer, as that electronic musical device brings us modern rap:

"Beats are traditionally generated from portions of other songs by a DJ, or sampled from portions of other songs by a producer, though synthesizers, drum machines, and live bands are also used, especially in newer music."

Black people believe that rap music is finest form of music ever created, the culmination of all of mankind's musical evolution into the finest self-expressive format ever.

The meshing of traditional African instruments with technology has birthed a form of music that will enshrine the culmination of Black peoples influence, as in 2009 Black people have achieved the apex of their dominion of the world.

And yet, a form of music leaves Black people squeamish and is strangely absent from their Ipods, and this genre of music has even been used to repeal criminals from stores:

"For years, the drunks and drug dealers and hookers who hang out at Hartford's Barnard Park have been all but oblivious to the city's efforts to get them to leave. But now the people who live and work nearby are turning to a new weapon in their effort to reclaim the park.

Classical music.

A small band of neighbors is working with the police department to enlist Beethoven, Brahms and Vivaldi in their campaign to clean up one of the city's most notoriously abused public spaces.

"We want the criminals to know we are serious about taking back this park," said neighborhood activist Carol Coburn, who came up with the idea after reading about similar efforts in West Palm Beach, Fla., as well as cities in Canada and Australia."

This interesting crime fighting mechanism, classical music, has been proven to effective in cities all across the world:

"In the past, crowds of up to 25 people would hang out in the lot, which became the site of drug dealing, fights and police responses, according to Patrick Senn, store director at Saar's Market Place.

"But now, people just come and go," said Donna Fischer, a cashier at the store.

The market started using classical music about three years ago to repel loiterers and vandals from their buildings. Senn said the method appears to be working. Since he began playing the music, Senn said he hasn't called police to the lot as much, although the Seattle Police Department wasn't able to confirm that.

Businesses and transportation systems use classical, opera and country music as a crime-fighting tool around the globe.

Several Canadian cities began pumping classical and opera music from speakers in public places, such as subway platforms, to keep people from loitering. London plays classical music in 65 of its Underground stations, drawing compliments from some commuters and transit workers, according to a Transport for London spokeswoman.

...The reason certain types of music work as a crime deterrent, neurologists say, may lie in people's neurobiological responses to things they don't enjoy or find unfamiliar. Production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to pleasure and rewards, is modulated by the nucleus accumbens, one of the brain's "pleasure centers."

When people hear music that they like, that stimulates dopamine production and puts them in a better mood. But when people dislike the music, their brains respond by suppressing dopamine production — souring their mood and making them avoid the music."

Classical music, the crime fighting tool that is centuries old and produced solely by dead white males, strangely is poison to Black people:

"Classical music is a broad term that usually refers to mainstream music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 9th century to present times. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period.

European music is largely distinguished from many other non-European and popular musical forms by its system of staff notation, in use since about the 16th century. Western staff notation is used by composers to prescribe to the performer the pitch, speed, meter, individual rhythms and exact execution of a piece of music. This leaves less room for practices, such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, that are frequently heard in non-European art music."

Names like Beethoven, Wagner and Tchaikovsky send shivers down Black people's spines, like nails on a chalkboard.

Why is it that Black people find classical music so abominable and unpleasant to the ears? The harmony of the many instruments working together perfectly under the skillful guidance of a conductor, or perhaps the pageantry that surrounds a formal orchestra and a concert?

Could it be a more sinister answer? James Baldwin, a famous literary figure because he was Black writer, said this, which sums up the not inconsiderable hatred Black people have for classical music:

“I know . . . that the most crucial time in my own development came when I was forced to recognize that I was a kind of bastard of the West; when I followed the line of my past I did not find myself in Europe but in Africa. And this meant that in some subtle way, in a really profound way, I brought to Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt, to the stones of Paris, to the cathedral at Chartres, and to the Empire State Building, a special attitude. These were not really my creations, they did not contain my history . . . I was an interloper; this was not my heritage.”

Movies in the United States have long been enhanced by beautiful musical scores from modern composers like James Horner, John Williams, Hans Zimmer and Howard Shore. It is this brilliant music that connects white people to the vast historical legacy they have inherited, but refuse to acknowledge.

Black people refuse to acknowledge any portion of classical music, to the jubilation of store owners everywhere whom play Chopin with increasing regularity.

Music is what bind us all to the past, a clear mark of refinement that goes far beyond culture, for it is an extension of the racial soul, and Black people have found their racial soul primarily through the medium of the drum. Stuff Black People Don't Like though, is classical music, for James Baldwin summed up the reason in exact detail.