I kid but also listen to jazz every day.
Join us at !jazz@lemmy.world if you dig.
this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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Oh, somebody made a youtube video claiming music theory is white supremacy. Might as well be peer-reviewed research then! /s
It has its own what? Theory? What kind of theory is that? Oh, music theory! Wow. So what you're saying is, jazz has music theory.
That was a lot of hoops to jump through only to end up not disclaiming anything I said.
Did I ever say "Western music theory is the only valid system of musical notation?" No, I said "music theory is a science." And it is. You conflating "music theory" with "western musical notation" doesn't change that.
Go read about John Coltrane's circle of fifths. If there wasn't a science underpinning music theory, it simply wouldn't work. The reason it does work is because there are geometric proportions underlying musical phenomena.
I never said that. But if you're talking specifically about avant-garde, the underlying philosophy of which is specifically and explicitly stated as deconstructing systematized musical conventions (including rhythm and harmony), then I'd say yes, the entire point of avant-garde is to be arhythmic and anharmonious.
You're fucking adding all these layers of "western" this and that, which are things I didn't say. I said music theory isn't eurocentric, because it's more expansive than just western notation. You're the one operating on the assumption that only western notation classifies as music theory.
If you honestly believe that "rhythm" and "harmony" are exclusively western concepts, then you're extremely ignorant and eurocentric, and you need more exposure to international music.
Whether you wanna talk about Western or Byzantine or Arabian or African or Indian or Chinese or Native American musical systems, or any other kind, all of these systems of music utilize rhythm, meter, and harmony. They have different ways of using them, different ways of annotating them, and different ways of incrementing them, but they all use them.
The concepts of deconstructing musical conventions, such as is seen in avant-garde, dadaism, and noise metal, have only arisen in the 20th century and forward. And guess what. They arose primarily in the west! By western musicians. So there's nothing "colonialist" about a philosophical rebuttal of those concepts.
So your misinformed takes reveal not only your ignorance of musical theory and of international musical systems, but also your ignorance of musical history.
Edit:
P.S., if you didn't pick up on how a critique of avante-garde relates (or doesn't relate, as I'm claiming) to anti-colonialism, then you clearly don't have a very solid understanding of the history and philosophy underlying avant-garde. From it's inception, it was framed as an anti-colonialist deconstruction in the post-modern movement.
My argument is solely this: that's it's entirely possible to be anti-colonialist without rejecting music theory as a whole. Because music theory isn't limited to just western notation.
Everything else you're arguing against is purely strawman and red herring.
If this is meant as a reply to my comment I gotta say, this is an incredibly shit take.
I think you are replying to the wrong thread or something maybe?
My bad, I got you mixed up with someone else I was arguing with in this thread. They got my panties all in a bunch and the blood to my head.
On a glance back over the exchange with you, yeah my response was way overblown. I was just getting fed up with arguing with a dense user and my patience had worn extremely thin. I apologize for letting that blow up on you.