Discuss the statement “All Music is Basically the Same”.

Through the research of an

Indigenous Australian musician, students will explore the similarities and differences
between popular Australian music by Indigenous performers and more traditional
Indigenous music. Include references to how the concepts listed above are treated,
in your answer.

Not all music is basically the same which can be seen through the study of
traditional indigenous music and a modern indigenous artist such as Baker
Boy.

Both traditional and modern indigenous music may have some similarities
such as they both use similar instruments within their songs for example
the didgeridoo which is a traditional indigenous Australian instrument
played by blowing through one side of the instrument and moving the
shape of your mouth to change the sound played and clapping sticks. Both
of these instruments are very commonly used in indigenous music and in
indigenous pop songs such as Meditjin written and rapped by Baker Boy
and Jess B another indigenous artist. This makes the texture of both of
these types of songs similar as well as use of background singers to
enhance the symbolism within the song used in both kinds of music.
Although this is true the layering of these traditional elements within the
songs varies quite a large amount depending on the artist in modern day
indigenous music whereas in traditional indigenous music the general
feeling of the song stays the same. This means generally there is a larger
difference within Structure of the piece in modern pieces rather than
traditional pieces making these 2 categories already extremely different.

Within modern indigenous pop the artists traditional dialect of aboriginal

language is used making it similar to traditional music. But modern
indigenous artists don’t only incorporate traditional dialects anymore and
tend to use english as well (and sometimes even more languages). This
means the structure of the pieces tends to be more complex with more
sections and more parts. Also due to the complexity and nature of
singing/rapping of English in modern music, modern indigenous pop also
has a lot faster notes changing the duration of the piece in comparison to
the long held notes within traditional indigenous music. As well as this due
to the fast speech and singing of modern indignous pop there is also more
room for quick pitch change and lots of complex melodies which doesn’t
tend to occur within indigenous pop as these held notes don’t allow for
much variation in melody and pitch. This also means that within modern
indegenous pop there is more room for different kinds of harmonies and
instrumental parts allowing for homophonic, monophonic and polyphonic
music within pieces whereas traditional music tends to follow a more
homophonic route with one part have lots of note variation and everything
else conducting harmonies to match the one part (melody).

As can be seen through the structure, pitch and duration in traditional and
modern indigenous pieces of music not all music is basically the same.