My parents and I were at an Indian restaurant several years ago and they had Indian pop music videos playing on some televisions suspended from the ceilings. My father and I got into an argument about whether the videos were intriguing because they were so similar to American pop videos (my position) or because they were so different (my father's position).

There's a documentary on Pitchfork TV about contemporary Icelandic music. It's got the famous folks (Bjork and Mum and Sigur Ros), but it's mostly about non international Icelandic musicians. It's good and its got great music. At the end of the film Bjork is talking about how all national anthems sound the same, they just give different feelings for the folks who are from each country. This is good timing because I wanted to do a post about how all national anthems sound like Western marching music. Nationalism in all of its glory and horror was born in the West and so I guess it makes sense that the artistic emblem of each nation should abandon its unique cultural history and sound like European music. But I was struck by the difference in feeling between the Ukrainian (like most, full of pomp and seriousness) and the Italian (almost jolly; certainly celebratory) anthems. So Bjork is right, but not really.





Perhaps my father was right, it's the little things about the content that make the difference.



Contrast to this (embedding is turned off for famous people)