Quotes About Culture

Apparently, we have become such a hyper-individualized culture that it is impossible to develop an argument based on how individual cases fit into the fabric of the common good.

We had to redefine our musical culture. Not only our musical culture, however: at the end of the sixties all German artists had the same problems. Writers, directors, painters … all of them had to invent a new language.

I could only use the formula I knew. Which was, you call a song 'China Girl', it better sound Asian. You call a song 'Let's Dance', you damn well better make sure people dance to it.

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school. 42% of college students never read another book after college. 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year. 70% of US adults have not been to a bookstore in the last five years. 57% of new books are not read to completion. Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

There's more good music being made now than ever before.

So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah ' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?

It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

Music eats its young and gives birth to a new hybrid creature.

music, I would argue, is a part of what makes us human.

According to the science writer Philip Ball, when it was pointed out to musicologist Deryck Cooke that Slavic and much Spanish music use minor keys for happy music, he claimed that their lives were so hard that they didn't really know what happiness was anyway.

Around 1900, according to music writer Alex Ross, classical audiences were no longer allowed to shout, eat, and chat during a performance.2 One was expected to sit immobile and listen with rapt attention. Ross hints that this was a way of keeping the hoi polloi out of the new symphony halls and opera houses.

With the advent of recorded music in 1878, the nature of the places in which music was heard changed.

where music is heard can determine the sort of music created by the artists who perform there.

in acoustic culture, the world, like sound, is all around you, and comes at you from all directions at once. It is multilayered and nonhierarchical; it has no center or focal point.

no one has ever gone to war over music.

Every outfit carries cultural baggage of some kind. It took me a while to get a handle on this aspect of performance.

I'd argue that contemporary hip-hop is written (or at least the music is) to be heard in cars with systems like the one below. The massive volume seems to be more about sharing your music with everyone, gratis!

emerged from dance-oriented early hip-hop (which, like jazz, evolved by extending the breaks for dancers), it's morphed into something else entirely: music that sounds best in cars. People do dance in their cars, or they try to.

It can often seem that those in power don't want us to enjoy making things for ourselves - they'd prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.

In contrast to the crapshoot of electoral politics, investing in think tanks offers a reliable and proven way to slowly change policy and culture over time—and without the high-profile controversies that can come with partisan giving, which is often a concern to wealthy donors who also run businesses.

Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does.

Although I'm Australian, I find myself much more in sympathy with the Austrian version!

There were African slaves in China from at least the seventh century CE, and, Wolf reports, "by 1119 most of the wealthy people of Canton were said to have possessed Black slaves.