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Chechnya bans music outside the range of 80-116 beats per minute

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Chechnya bans music outside the range of 80-116 beats per minute

#62
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seemed so obviously fake that I went and checked the primary sources: https://tass-ru.translate.goog/obschestvo/20533041/amp?_x_tr...

It's interesting, but I don't think it really confirms either interpretation. This link is about what Kadyrov says about the announcement. Not the announcement/rule itself. One click further leads to https://tass-ru.translate.goog/kultura/20461139?_x_tr_sl=ru&... > "He announced the final decision, agreed with the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Akhmatovich Kadyrov, that from now on all musical, vocal and choreog…

Kadyrov is the “primariest” source imaginable, since he basically runs Chechnya. If he says it’s for Chechen music only, that’s how it’s going to be. Seems like it was misinterpreted by Russian press first, and then uncritically picked up by the Western media.

Re: Chechnya bans music outside the range of 80-116 beats per minute

#63
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also incredibly dumb, but at least they attempted to criminalize the actual activity they found objectionable. That's at least a rational way to write the law. This BPM law is a complete joke, though, through and through. It won't actually accomplish what they (supposedly) want, and will just cause trouble for people. And to be completely fair, my own country is/was dumb too: in the 1920s many places in the US…

New York City had laws on the books until 2017 banning dancing in bars that don't have a "caberet license." I remember going out to bars and seeing signs on the wall that said "No dancing." We thought it was a joke until they came up to us and told us to stop dancing. Places could get hefty fines. It took a big activist push to get the law repealed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Cabaret_Law

How much did a cabaret license cost?

Re: Chechnya bans music outside the range of 80-116 beats per minute

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing “rules lawyer” with people who routinely respond to challenges with “summary execution” tends to end badly.

"Law is code" strikes again! It's not even playing "rules lawyer"; it's pretending that computers, not humans, interpret the law.

If a formal system isn't consistent, then it shouldn't work.

Re: Chechnya bans music outside the range of 80-116 beats per minute

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Law is code" strikes again! It's not even playing "rules lawyer"; it's pretending that computers, not humans, interpret the law.

If a formal system isn't consistent, then it shouldn't work.

If a legal system doesn’t have some flex, it doesn’t work.

Re: Chechnya bans music outside the range of 80-116 beats per minute

#66

This seems trivially easy to circumvent. For example, take your 3/4 song that's 160 bpm and call it a 6/8 song that's 80 bpm. Done.

Those aren't equivalent, though.

In 3/4 it's a given that the quarter note is the part that gets represented by the word "beat." That's 160bpm, so an eighth-note would be 320bpm.

In 6/8, the dotted quarter note is what gets represented as the "beat" because in 6/8 the meter divides into two halves of 3 eighth-notes each. So if you want to set each eighth-note in 6/8 to go by at 320bpm, a duration equal to three eighth-notes (a.k.a. a dotted half-note, or the "beat" in 6/8) is going to be about 107bpm.

Edit: tldr; if you set the tempo in 6/8 by referring to a quarter note, it will be suspicious and the beat police will bring you in for questioning.

Re: Chechnya bans music outside the range of 80-116 beats per minute

#69

I guess it could be worse. I'm pretty sure that the Taliban ban all music; regardless of the tempo. They tend to be rather ... strident ... in enforcing their rules.

Not exactly true, but yes, their ideas around permissible forms of music are incredibly restrictive.

Re: Chechnya bans music outside the range of 80-116 beats per minute

#70

> As the independent Russian news website Meduza notes, Russia’s national anthem—which is 76 beats per minute—falls outside the culture ministry’s range That seems like a bizarre oversight, I wonder how they’ll deal with it. I guess there will have to be some exception process.

Laws are never enforced universally or consistently and without bias even in so-called “free” and “liberal” and “secular” countries.

Prosecutorial discretion is one of the most critical and important ways that the oligarchy punishes those who would oppose them, in any country.

“For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the law.”

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