EB and the West

[tk-421]

it's just music simply, not a degree of comparison in those times and in that state of development. It is completely different and primitive compared to the Western music, as brought to bear by J.S. Bach in 1600s.

That's really a rather simplistic view of the development of music. First of all, your dates are wrong. Born in 1685, Bach wasn't doing a whole lot of composing in the 1600s. More importantly, saying that Bach "brought to bear" "western" music not only ignores contemporaries of Bach like Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Albinoni - all of whom we're more prominent in their day than Bach - but it also discredits all those who came before. Have you ever heard church motets and oratorios from the the late 16th and 17th centuries? Although generally not as complex as the extreme contrapuntal music of Bach (although you should note that Bach was not the first to write contrapuntal fugues and such), there is nothing "primitive" about them. Not to discredit Bach, his compositions were very important to the development of music, but any argument that states that all that is good in music stems from Bach and all that came before is "primitive" is fundamentally flawed.

[artavazd]

This may sound very simplistic, but most indo-european cultures shared similarities between them including music. People forget that all the way to western china there were indo-european speaking people ( Tocharians) One can not look at the contemporary cultures of the world and think that it has always been that way. What is Turkey today was one of the main centers of what is now "westernism) For example traditional Armenian music has similarities with Celtic music.