Re: An Israelite Odyssey - Review of Koby Israelite's "Dance of

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

At 05:44 PM 5/4/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Of course there are, but one needs to recognize that what goes into each one
>depends on someone's arbitrary opinion. But just for fun, let's play a
>little game. Genre-classify the following five artists:
>Salim Halali
>The Klezmatics
>Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart)
>Miles Davis (make sure you include the years1969-1975)
>Leonard Bernstein
>
>See what I mean?

Some things =are= hard to categorize (which I think is where RAS started, in 
this particular case). But people do think in categories. I don't think it 
hurts to try to provide a context in which the reader can hear your review. 
Sometimes that means eschewing categories because they don't help. Sometimes, 
the grounding can help. Sometimes it also depends on your audience. 

Perhaps we need to say that mindless categorization, like other foolish 
consistencies, is the hobgoblin of small minds. But we would also need to agree 
that not all categorization is foolish ;-).

ari


Ari Davidow
ari (at) ivritype(dot)com
list owner, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
the klezmer shack: http://www.klezmershack.com/

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