Music and Emotions

In TOK class, we have been investigating Emotion as our fourth and final way of knowing (according to IB), and using music as a guide.  I wanted to provide a couple links to what we have been listening to and viewing. We began by watching and listening to cLOUDDEAD perform their song “Apt. A, Pt. 1″ where the entire “band” wore creepy Phantom of the Opera masks.

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We also checked out Boards of Canada’s song “Everything you do is a Balloon,” and accompanying video:




We listened to a clip from the documentary Ashes of American Flags, where Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy talks about music:

At some point the idea of representational art lost a lot of its appeal critically.  It think that for most of human history that was the norm and a lot of the way music was being generated was. .  . I want to tell this story, what does a spurned lover sound like, or what do these hills sound like, and I love that aspect of how music speaks and what music can do and how vividly it can actually paint those images in my mind, and I don’t find it arcane at all to aspire to that.  I think it’s kindof the point . . . still.  And I think it’s kind what happens even people aren’t trying to do that. And the best music still maintains some ability to etch an urban landscape in someone’s mind or you know grinding gears or even like supposed modern music with all of its disconnect and detachment from representational art and all of its theories of abstraction and all that.   I still mainly I think it presses itself upon people’s intellects as images.  So, why not, um, acknowledge that and use it as just another joyous part of what you get to try and do.  It’s like an attempt.  What’s wrong with that?

Then we watched his band, Wilco, perform “Via Chicago”

Lastly, we discussed the musical scores and soundtracks to movies, which I thought was a very interesting idea of how music is used to connect with our emotions.  Below is a clip from the making of the score to Arvin’s film that I continue to promote,  Au Revoir Taipei.