Answers from Zhihu netizens who have left their names throughout the ages
When we analyze the contribution of music of various ethnic groups to world culture, there are several factors that need to be considered.
The first, and most important, is the cost and difficulty of learning an instrument.
For example, the African music mentioned by the subject. The most important thing in African music is rhythm. What is the most famous musical instrument in Africa? Just those messy tambourines. This kind of percussion instrument does not require much learning. You can play it with a little learning, and there are not many fancy skills. Those who know how to play the tambourine can learn to play the tambourine and become good at it after practicing for a day or two. But what about East Asian instruments? Learning folk music is definitely not as easy as African tambourine. It is impossible for a person who can play the violin to play the erhu well without studying systematically and professionally for several months. Even those who can play the guitar have to learn for a long time before they can play the pipa well. If an instrument requires a high learning threshold, it will definitely not be popular. It is easy to find folk music teachers in China, but what about foreigners? Even if a British person wants to learn guzheng, where can he find a guzheng teacher?
I can play the Chinese bamboo flute. I bought an Irish whistle some time ago. I can play it as soon as I get it. The fingering is basically the same, and I don’t have to worry about any breath problems. Just blow the air like a recorder. Just go in. On the contrary, when most people play the bamboo flute for the first time, let alone the melody, they cannot play it without professional breath guidance.
The second is the compatibility of culture and musical instruments.
For example, the Celtic music mentioned by the subject. The New Age we listen to now drew many elements from Celtic music in its early days. The main instruments of Irish traditional music include violins, whistles, bagpipes, guitars, harps, etc. These instruments are not much different from the mainstream instruments in the world. Therefore, for a person who grew up in a Western cultural environment, this kind of national music is not very different. It's fresh, but it feels very natural when listening to it, just playing some special music with familiar instruments. For them, when they hear East Asian musical instruments, they feel completely unfamiliar. They don’t know what they are. When they hear the suona, they feel like “Can this **** also play tunes?”
Third One is the uniqueness of the music itself.
For example, the Arabic music mentioned by the subject. The most fascinating thing about Arabic music is its microtonal tone, which divides an octave into more than twelve tones. This is almost non-existent in other cultures, so it is very unique and attracts attention. Another thing is that when we hear harmonic minor tunes, we always have a feeling of the Western Regions, and we will naturally connect them with them. Then someone wants to say, don’t we have the pentatonic mode of Gong Shangjiao Zhengyu? Unfortunately, the pentatonic mode is the simplest mode. Other national cultures in the world have also developed the pentatonic mode, and the Chinese nation has no patent. Black people's Blues or Pentatonic. If our music is not played with unique Chinese instruments, the characteristics of our music will not be obvious.
The fourth one is geographical relationship.
For example, the Latin music that is now popular all over the world, Brazil’s Bossa Nova, Argentina’s Tango, Cuba’s Salsa, etc. The promotion of this music is largely due to the geographical advantages between these countries and the United States. A large proportion of immigrants in the United States are Latinos, and they have pushed this music from ethnic music to the mainstream. After all, the United States is the center of the modern music industry in the world and has a monopoly on the cultural output of modern society. There are also a large population of East Asians in the United States, but East Asian music has not yet become mainstream in the United States because there are too few Asians engaged in the cultural industry, and they are basically concentrated in science, computers, engineering, medical and other technology industries.
Of course, the important reason is that Bossa, for example, can be perfectly integrated with Jazz and has great artistic value from the perspectives of rhythm, harmony, orchestration, etc. At present, the most integrated musical instruments in East Asia are in pop songs. Even special instruments used in symphonies are not popular and have insufficient artistic value. In fact, in the final analysis, it is still the incompatibility of musical instruments. As a result, Chinese musical instruments often can only appear as melody instruments, but cannot lay the foundation for harmony and rhythm, and cannot form a groove.
Whether it is Celtic music or Brazilian music, guitars and pianos are native musical instruments that can be used for accompaniment. For Eastern music, guitars and pianos are foreign instruments, but there are no local instruments that can replace the functions of guitars and pianos. For example, Japanese musical instruments, because Westerners came into contact with Japanese culture earlier, are better known internationally than Chinese ones, but they still cannot carry the entire band independently, and they still need Western musical instruments to provide the foundation.
To sum up, what kind of national music is easy to be widely known in the world? At least one of the following three points needs to be met.
Musical instruments are relatively popular. If it is a special instrument, it should not be difficult to learn.
It has high musical uniqueness and artistic value.
Culturally, it has close ties with the dominant European and American developed countries.
Chinese traditional folk music unison has a complete texture and is unique enough. Logically speaking, it should be easy to spread to the world. However, it is still too niche internationally. The reason is that folk music unison has already been established in China itself. It has become a niche. How can you expect strangers to like something that you don’t like? Even many so-called "antique lovers" only like pop music with some Chinese instruments, but they still can't appreciate traditional folk music in unison.
At present, there are only two ways to go about the development direction of Chinese traditional music. The first is to be conservative, everything goes back to ancient times, and you can play how you played in ancient times. Although it doesn't sound so in line with popular aesthetics, the uniqueness is retained. The second is fusion. Try to integrate Western music as much as possible, so that Chinese music can occupy a place in the world's modern music through subtle influence. However, this will lose more uniqueness. The specific choice is the responsibility of each musician and the public's aesthetics.
Finally, there is another very important point, that is, we were closed to the outside world before the reform and opening up, but after opening up, we built a large local area network.
Nowadays, cultural communication around the world relies heavily on the Internet. Countless artists of various types around the world have become famous through YouTube MVs, and they have established their own fan groups through Facebook and Twitter, and they have become popular. After that, we contacted commercial record brokerage companies with clear contracts with each other in the world, and were protected by copyright laws around the world. If Chinese music wants to go global, this road will not work