What’s So Great About Bob Marley anyway? Flashcards
Who is Bob Marley?
Bob Marley is a Jamaican reggae singer and composer famous with his work with Bob Marley and the Wailers.
Definition of Canon
From these one can infer that canons are exemplary, act as models, instruct, represent high quality, endure and embody at least some degree of moral and ethical force. (Tatit 15)
Secular canons have similar implications. In the sense of a specified body of works in a given field, canons exert tremendous power. By setting standards they represent what is considered worthy of inclusion. (Tatit 15)
Canons are therefore exclusive. (Tatit 15)
They represent certain sets of values and ideologies, which in turn represent certain segments of society. Canons self-perpetuate. As models to be emulated, they replicate their encoded values in subsequent exemplars. As canonic values become entrenched over time, the prescriptive and normative powers of canons become even greater (Tatit 15)
Canon in music
…the academy…institutionalize a familiar way of thinking about music: as the creation of composing geniuses, embodied in sacred scores…faithfully but feelingly articulated by gifted performers to reverential audiences guided by enlightened critics. (Frith 38)
…university music departments…Their purpose is the same: to establish the canon, to come up with a coherent, linear historico-aesthetic narrative. (Frith 38)
Caribbean Canon
The Caribbean musical canon has been established in the line of traditional Western European models.
Canonical artists are usually – male, heterosexual and of a certain age.
Doctorate recipients University of the West Indies and University of Trinidad and Tobago – Mighty Sparrow, Shadow, Roy Cape, Mighty Gabby, Machel Montano.
Nations need great men.
Canons can make you understand societies!
For canons simultaneously reflect, instigate, and perpetuate value systems. They encode ideologies that are further legitimated through being canonized. (Citron 19)
The process of serialized privilege suggests that canon tend to resist change+ ; privileged interests will wish to remain privileged. (Citron 19)
Thus canons arise in a multi-cultural society of disparate power structures, where canons themselves provide “a means by which culture validates social power.” (Citron 20)
