{"id":79595,"date":"2023-04-27T01:00:29","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T05:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=79595"},"modified":"2023-04-26T10:00:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T14:00:24","slug":"qotd-the-unexpected-sources-of-musical-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/04\/27\/qotd-the-unexpected-sources-of-musical-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The unexpected sources of musical innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>First, I need to provide some background on the sources of musical innovation. Over the course of three decades of research into this matter, I kept encountering new styles of song emerging in unexpected places \u2014 but these locations always had something in common.<\/p>\n<p>These epicenters of musical innovation are always densely populated cities where different cultures meet and mingle, sharing their distinctive songs and ways of life. This intermixing results in surprising hybrids \u2014 new ways of making music that nobody can foresee until it actually happens in this hothouse environment.<\/p>\n<p>New Orleans provides a great example. Around the time jazz originated in New Orleans, it was the most diverse city in the world \u2014 an intense intermixing of French, Spanish, African, Caribbean, Latin American, and other cultures. And the mixture was enhanced by the huge number of travelers and traders who came to the region because of the prominence of the Mississippi River as a business and distribution hub.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how I described this process in the appendix to my book <a href=\"http:\/\/tedgioia.com\/music.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Music: A Subversive History<\/em><\/a>, where I shared 40 precepts on the evolution of human songs. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Precepts-on-the-evolution-of-human-songs-Ted-Gioia.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Precepts-on-the-evolution-of-human-songs-Ted-Gioia-783x640.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"783\" height=\"640\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-79596\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Precepts-on-the-evolution-of-human-songs-Ted-Gioia-783x640.png 783w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Precepts-on-the-evolution-of-human-songs-Ted-Gioia-480x392.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Precepts-on-the-evolution-of-human-songs-Ted-Gioia-150x123.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Precepts-on-the-evolution-of-human-songs-Ted-Gioia-768x628.png 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Precepts-on-the-evolution-of-human-songs-Ted-Gioia.png 1167w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 783px) 100vw, 783px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I wish I had time to defend these assertions here with empirical evidence. But we don&#8217;t have the space to do that. Let me say, however, that these statements are amply documented and supported with dozens of examples and case studies in the course of that book. <\/p>\n<p>Ted Gioia, <a href=\"https:\/\/tedgioia.substack.com\/p\/the-most-important-city-in-the-history\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Most Important City in the History of Music Isn&#8217;t What You Think It Is&#8221;, <em>The Honest Broker<\/em><\/a>, 2023-01-26.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First, I need to provide some background on the sources of musical innovation. Over the course of three decades of research into this matter, I kept encountering new styles of song emerging in unexpected places \u2014 but these locations always had something in common. These epicenters of musical innovation are always densely populated cities where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28,41,13],"tags":[174,349,651,200,475],"class_list":["post-79595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-media","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-innovation","tag-jazz","tag-multiculturalism","tag-music","tag-neworleans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-kHN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79595"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81730,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79595\/revisions\/81730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}