Sincrético

I just stumbled upon this wonderful piece of chorinho. Unfortunately, the flautist, Camunguelo passed away not so long ago. As I go about doing my research about Brazilian music on the Web 2.0, I happen to come across many interesting things. I just wish I will find some time to share some of it here…. Enjoy this one at least.

By the way, I found this on Daniella Thompson’s on Brazil blog.

I just came across this little pearl: Rio - The Magnificent. A FitzPatrick Traveltalk.

Of course this shows only the nice sides of those times. But if one just look at the state, or the lack of State, that Rio is today…

Via: Rio em Disco

My relatively short research about different categories of knowledge has led to me to conclude that there are only two kinds: scientific and non-scientific knowledge. The former is objective and considered as true knowledge, the latter is everything else: everyday knowledge, narrative, culture, personal knowledge, ideology, common sense, religion, and so on. Is a cultural product such as music a piece of objective knowledge because it’s recorded? Is cultural knowledge, in the form of music able to grow? When music is recorded, its growth is put to rest, momentarily or indefinitely.

I think that’s the case when music is protected by more stringent copyright systems. Although it’s existence is more stable, it’s cultural growth is certainly impaired. Because some of these systems are so draconian, the products which they govern seem to reach a final stage. Naturally, there is the central aspect of which business model musicians should take; everyone has to make a living. To that David Byrne wrote an interesting article about it on Wired.

But that’s not the concern of my research. My interest is to find out whether the communicative strategies of the Web 2.0, such as podcasts, blogs, social networks and collaborative spaces, are able to  create a growth in cultural and non-scientific knowledge. Dissemination of information does not necessarily entail that what is communicated will generate new knowledge. What will certainly happen is a growth of the social aggregate of knowledge, that is, more people will know.

By using alternative licenses, such as those offered by Creative Commons, we may able to ascertain that growth will be maintained. The idea is very obvious and simple. An artist records a song and makes it available on his website under a CC license. Someone downloads it, changes it, remixes it, uses it as a sample or whatnot, and also puts it on her website, following a similar CC scheme. Given that licensing and all the attributions foreseen are respected, the process is continuous and new cultural knowledge is generated. In the case of traditional copyrights, the possibility of creating new cultural knowledge is as good as none, finito.