There have been here, several pieces over the years about taste - this one from nearly ten years ago.
I was reminded of this theme again tonight, listening to one of Atahualpa's most famous songs - Los Ejes de mi carreta (My cart's axles).
Diversion: there are a number of songs about carters in the Americas. Guillermo Portabales is one of my favourite singers. A Cuban who settled (and died) in Puerto Rico during the twentieth century he is noted for his guajiras. A guajiro/a is someone who works in the country. Whereas "peasant" has negative connotations in English, it doesn't seem to in Spanish - rather, the opposite. So these are songs about country life. His El Carretero (lyrics in English and Spanish) speaks country life being an Eden.
Lyrics in Latin America often have ideas that repeat themselves across songs. One of these, found in El Carretero is "A caballo vamos pa'l monte, a caballo vamos pa'l monte". The phrase is repeated again and again through songs in different genres. It's in the son track by Morena son. It's in the mesmeric modern guajira by Orquesta Akokán. It's in the modern folk song Me voy al monte by the Colombian Katie James and in the light hearted number El Mochilon by the Cuban band Sonora Matancera - and many more. The inimitable1971 eponymous song by the Puerto Rican / American Grammy award winning pianist, bandleader and composer, Eddie Palmieri, begins with drums imitating the galloping of a horse. Often the idea of going to the mountain is symbolic as much as literal: the idea of escaping trouble, urban life, or returning to one's homeland, a simpler, cleaner, more natural way of living, perhaps in tune with ancestors, with the spiritual world. Or it could be a return to community, or to a refuge, to a generally more wholesome, less corrupted way of living.
Atahualpa's carter knows what he likes, he has his reasons and he doesn't care what other people think. He has independence and strength of mind.
Porque no engraso los ejes
Why don't I grease the axles?
Me llaman abandona'o
They call me abandoned (They disparage me for not greasing them)
Si a mi me gusta que suenen
If I like the sound
¿Pa qué los quiero engrasaos ?
Why do I want them greased?
E demasiado aburrido
It's too boring
Seguir y seguir la huella
To follow and follow the trail
Demasiado largo el camino
Sin nada que me entretenga
With nothing to entertain me
No necesito silencio
Yo no tengo en qué pensar
I have nothing to think about
Tenía, pero hace tiempo
I had, but a long time ago
Ahora ya no pienso mas
Now I don't think anymore
Los ejes de mi carreta
The axles of my cart
I'm never going to grease them
We think we know what we like, and we do know, to an extent, but our preferences, especially our publicly avowed preferences are inordinately influenced by the herd. To know the truth of this, consider the people you know with much skill or knowledge who are not valued, all those roses blushing unseen. I know a man of many talents and much knowledge who lives in material poverty because he just doesn't seem to fit in. He should be valued and he isn't, at least, commercially because he doesn't fit the world's mould. We all know people like this. It is uncomfortable because their existence exposes the hypocrisy and shallowness of what we value, very often just because other people do.
And there are so many others with so much less talent or skill or knowledge who are paid vast sums because a herd decides they are "in".
As just one example from the tango world, there are many tango DJs, ostensibly valued for the music they play but actually, question the people who are valuing them and their knowledge of music is as limited as a hobbled horse. So these DJs are actually valued for other reasons that have nothing to do with music. Sometimes it is because they are cool or charismatic or often because they are good self-publicists, or good dancers. Many DJs are in fact good dancers but not all good dancers are good DJs!
In the worst cases they are valued merely because other people seem to value them. There is a "general consensus" or tradition of valuing them. There are some catastrophically bad (volume, tanda structure, set structure, set balance, track choice, ego) but long-standing very poor DJs who are "valued" as DJs for these weakest of "reasons" which are actually not reasons at all.
On being sceptical because the majority, the herd, likes or values something - I know I have said the opposite about tango music. I have said that music that fills the floor with dancers is likely "good" because it passes the test of a lot of people wanting to dance to it. What is that if not herd instinct? But music is different to avowals that that book, that lecturer, that restaurant, even that DJ is "good". Because the human response to the music playing is instinctive, it comes from the body and can be better trusted. Whereas many our other avowals of taste, our judgements of value come from elsewhere. As such it is valid to question why we like such and such, especially where it does not come from a physical response, and to ask how influenced we are about liking something to fit in rather than as a genuine response to the thing in itself.
But speaking of things in themselves let's throw a spanner in the works and leave the final word to the late Daniel Dennett, philosopher, who died last week. He thought it was a great mistake to define your terms and talk about the essences the way Aristotle did and people still do. "Forget about essences, learn about all the variations and the details and the penumbral cases and then afterwards you'll know what you're talking about."
Grey is always the interesting area. Perhaps once you're at ease with grey then black and white seems easy.
