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We Should Teach Music History Backwards

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Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#51

Post by vidarh »

olavk wrote: post #41
bambax wrote: post #19

Not just music history, but history in general. History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures. History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past. However the human mind loves nothing more than causation; we see cause and effect everywhere even where it's n…

I think it is a valuable approach to art history, but I am doubtful it will work for history in general. Going backwards, looking for the causes of what happens later, is very prone to hindsight bias.

In a history lesson, the teacher will not be looking to students to uncover new explanations, so I'm unsure why that would matter - the narrative is already set. Which direction you're describing it in boils down to how to best convey the knowledge to students.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#53

Post by coldtea »

bambax wrote: post #19

Not just music history, but history in general. History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures. History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past. However the human mind loves nothing more than causation; we see cause and effect everywhere even where it's n…

>History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures. History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past.

That, besides being totally unintuitive to our sense of time, puts even bigger emphasis on making the future seem inevitable (the past harvested as the "seed for post events").

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#54

Post by dgellow »

Retric wrote: post #48
dgellow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History is about what happened, not what could have happened. You can then speculate on how things could have been given some specific changes, but the fact is that we don’t know how the alternate universe would develop and evolve, and you are now closer to fiction than history. In a way it’s correct to say that it was inevitable, because it did happen. All the other alternatives didn’t, even if we believe they could…

Unfortunately when we have no idea why things happened there is zero predictive power. So, history without context is little more than a story and at best interesting. Really, nobody actually studies history going forward. We don't for example study random people's backgrounds on the off chance they might have an impact. Rather we pick important figures based on what they did and then go back and take a look at their…

> Really, nobody actually studies history going forward. We don't for example study random people's backgrounds on the off chance they might have an impact. Rather we pick important figures based on what they did and then go back and take a look at their backgrounds.

I don’t believe that to be correct, actual history studies seem to be a lot of back-and-forth on topics surrounding, let’s say, a particular event that we know happened or believe to happened. Then in this back-and-forth you will have the spotlight on some specific characters who seem to be related to the event (and then, as you said, a huge part of the actual details are filtered out, I don’t see how that could be otherwise). So of course you have to go in the past to focus on an event.

> So the trap in teaching history going forward is you hide why things are being studied.

Aren’t topics studied because they are believed to be true, or because researchers think that there is some interesting knowledge to find? What are those reasons that we hide?

> Further by focusing on only important things people start to associate importance with what is being focused on right now.

Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean by that.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#55

Post by jacobolus »

tsenkov wrote: post #26
bambax wrote: post #19

Not just music history, but history in general. History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures. History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past. However the human mind loves nothing more than causation; we see cause and effect everywhere even where it's n…

I honestly can't imagine how this would work. Even in cinema I rarely like this approach (telling a story backwards). In music history I think it makes sense to go a couple of steps backwards (if you are just a fan trying to better understand their preferences), but if you are really interested - you have to start from the beginning and look how things have developed. Same thing in programming - starting up with some…

> I often read papers full with math I don't understand and I am forced to go backwards, but it only works because I hit a previous knowledge not so far back in that graph.

This is the best way to learn new things (besides spending time face to face with an expert tutor). You have a motivating problem, an idea of where you are going, and a whole graph to traverse backward until you fit the pieces together. You will remember the parts you come across because they are connected together (both forward and backward), and you will be working closer to the edge of your capabilities. It is much easier to achieve flow doing this kind of learning.

If you have too many unconnected edges in the graph, then sometimes you have to give up and pick a closer/easier subject to study, but the time spent was still not wasted, as it provides useful orientation for future attempts.

Not sure how well it works if a lecturer or textbook is guiding you though. The whole point is picking your own problems and questions, and then figuring out how to solve/answer them.

> I once knew a successful person who told me "I never start a project I can't fool myself into thinking I can complete within a weekend"

Not sure about “never”, but doing many of these little projects is often a more valuable use of time than banging against a project whose scope is so big you have no idea where to start.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#56

Post by ellius »

skellera wrote: post #42
ellius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might actually work. In teaching "history," you are always picking an essentially arbitrary starting point. I think you could easily start with something like nuclear negotations between the Soviet Union and the USA, then work backwards from there. Why was it these two powers that had nuclear weapons? Well, let's talk about World War 2... How did this Hitler guy come to power in Germany in the first place?…

I think it only sounds like a good idea because you already know the details of what comes before. If you had absolutely no knowledge of history, I think this method would not work well. There are so many details that led up to WW2 that going backwards would just feel messy. All the things happening in Europe would have to be described in a way where you already know about the next war but now have to list off these…

I see what you mean but that's sort of what I meant by doing it linearly at a topic level. Absolutely, you don't want to start with the end of World War 2 and then move backwards to its causes. But I think it's entirely feasible to learn about the Cold War, then study WW2, then study WW1, etc... I don't know, I don't have especially strong feelings about it, but it definitely seems at least viable.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#57

Post by christudor »

dgellow wrote: post #43
bambax wrote: post #19

Not just music history, but history in general. History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures. History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past. However the human mind loves nothing more than causation; we see cause and effect everywhere even where it's n…

History is about what happened, not what could have happened. You can then speculate on how things could have been given some specific changes, but the fact is that we don’t know how the alternate universe would develop and evolve, and you are now closer to fiction than history. In a way it’s correct to say that it was inevitable, because it did happen. All the other alternatives didn’t, even if we believe they could…

This is not true. Ged Martin’s (critically acclaimed) ‘Past Futures’ is all about the importance of what might have happened when studying history.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/471921

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#58

Post by vidarh »

oraknabo wrote: post #39
falcor84 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how it could be different. There has obviously been way too much music in the past to teach in it's entirety. We have to decide what to teach based on what we currently think is "important". And though we can try to fool ourselves that there is some measure of objective importance, at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure it always boils down to popularity within some milieu.

Of course there have to be criteria for any course of study that leaves out plenty of artists that have to be considered not significant enough to cover. If you were designing a course in either chronological order or in reverse, niether one might ever touch on groups like the Residents, Young Marble Giants, Donovan or Charles Ives--but what if you couldn't even get back to Mozart, Charlie Parker or Woody Guthrie fro…

The your current starting point is exceedingly narrow.

Don't take it too literally. E.g. don't assume you'd start at a single leaf and trace a graph only backwards, but looking at "here is this set of music trends that are common now. Why do this subset over here have X in common? Lets backtrack... " and then don't be afraid to take steps to the side as well.

The point of the article I took was that when we're exploring music (and other art forts) we tend to be exposed to current trends, and then we tend to explore backwards to something similar but not quite the same.

But we don't go strictly backwards. We may very well e.g. trace an influence back to a wider genre and start exploring to the sides, and even then forwards again. started with.

I think the more important point is to aim to start with something that students are likely to be immersed in and follow threads that hopefully retain their interest because it retains their connection to something they enjoy, rather than e.g. jumping 500 years back in time and taking ages tracing things forwards before you've reconnected it to something they care about.

To take a very contrived example: If you like German electronic artist Zombie Nation, what's the odds you'll find starting with 40's easy listening interesting?

But go backwards: In 1999 they sampled Lazy Jones for Kernkraft 400 [1]. Lazy Jones was a 1984 game with a very memorable main track [2].

If you start poking around in mid 80's chip tunes, you'll pretty much have to cover Monty on The Run [3] - one of the big things that MOTR brought, was a much more ambitious orchestral inspired score with heavy use of rapid transitions and vibrato to get closer to simulate real instruments despite only having three voices to play with. Compare Lazy Jones and MOTR with Kernkraft 400 - while Kernkraft 400 copies the tune, MOTR is at places surprisingly close to having a sound you might expect in modern electronic music.

As it happens, among many other references to earlier styles of music, the immediate influence on MOTR was the Dick Barton theme tune [4] from the late 40's.

If you dig deeper, you'll find many additional influences and threads to unravel in between.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernkraft_400

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWxlYYA8yrg

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIA_0cvS2gQ

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2eqX93umXo

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#59

Post by drb91 »

bambax wrote: post #19

Not just music history, but history in general. History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures. History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past. However the human mind loves nothing more than causation; we see cause and effect everywhere even where it's n…

Just chuck causality out the window and it’s fine.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#60

Post by bambax »

dgellow wrote: post #43
bambax wrote: post #19

Not just music history, but history in general. History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures. History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past. However the human mind loves nothing more than causation; we see cause and effect everywhere even where it's n…

History is about what happened, not what could have happened. You can then speculate on how things could have been given some specific changes, but the fact is that we don’t know how the alternate universe would develop and evolve, and you are now closer to fiction than history. In a way it’s correct to say that it was inevitable, because it did happen. All the other alternatives didn’t, even if we believe they could…

This point of view is, I think, completely false and what I was arguing against.

If you toss a coin you will get one result; saying it was "inevitable" because it happened is to misunderstand everything about randomness and statistics, etc.

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