Weird Music

Catalog description

The term “weird” has long been used pejoratively to describe music that people don’t understand, which sounds to them like some combination of extreme, bad, pretentious, or indecipherable (“strange”). The term “weird” may be laced with racism and ignorance, such as when one chooses to say another culture’s music is “weird” rather than try to understand it. “Experimental,” by contrast, elevates music that is perceived as intending to push boundaries. Thus, both conjure up what they are not: “normal” music, such as a mainstream pop song. In this class, we take a journey through some of the world’s “weirdest” music and in the process question musical normativity and taste. We consider music deemed by its makers (or by outsides observers) as too loud, soft, fast, slow, complex, meandering, or simple; we study global histories of experimentalism, including experimental instruments and tuning systems, subversive and/or humorous uses of digital and analog technologies, and the “slow movement” and related DIY and punk subcultures; and we explore alternative ways of conceptualizing the structure and function of music that lie far outside the mainstream music industry. Questioning how capitalism makes its musical object, and moving beyond exoticism, we will seek greater insight into the fraught role of musical outsiders and cultural difference in mainstream capitalist culture. Why does some music strike us as weird? What role has the music industry played in shaping conventions? What strategies might we use to better respect musical difference?