Hi. Just read your review of "Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey". I know this review is two years old, but I felt I had to reply to defend the film.
It is understandable that not everyone is into music, and that People's tastes in music and dance styles vary. I have to say, though, that I have a hard time understanding how this film did not reach you. You indicated in your review that most viewers would become bored within 20 minutes. I would argue that most viewers have remained captivated for the duration of the film. I, and a few others I know who have seen it, left the theater yearning for more.
What you seem to lack appreciation for are the polyrhythmic music and arrhythmic dance styles that dominated worldwide culture for 25,000 years before western musical conventions began to take hold first through colonization and later through the development of mass media.
Polyrhythm involves several simultaneous beats in different times, which wind up diverging and re-converging at regular intervals. Arhythmic dancing involves responding to these rhythms, following one and then another, changing pace in synchronization with the other dancers, and in effect tapping into the "pulse" created by the interplay of the polyrhythms.
In all of western music, we stick to the profoundly simplistic 4/4 time rhythm of rock, classical, etc. or the 3/4 time of swing, the waltz, and some folk traditions. Your preference for what we have been raised with culturally is evident in your appreciation of only the Flamenco music/dancing, the most western of the styles portrayed in the film.
I would urge you to view the film again, with the goal of letting yourself go, letting yourself feel the music. These rhythms and dance styles cannot be taught or easily dissected intellectually. This is not the "civilized" music of the brain (as are, surprisingly, even modern rock and pop musical styles), but rather the music of the body and spirit, of the ancient collective unconscious, and, in my opinion, the music of pure flow, rapture, and bliss.
Again, I urge you to give it another chance. It may be difficult to let go of the culturally ingrained preference for strict meter and order, but 300 years of western culture cannot have wiped out what 25,000 years of evolution has made a part of you.
With respect, good luck.
Cheers.
It is understandable that not everyone is into music, and that People's tastes in music and dance styles vary. I have to say, though, that I have a hard time understanding how this film did not reach you. You indicated in your review that most viewers would become bored within 20 minutes. I would argue that most viewers have remained captivated for the duration of the film. I, and a few others I know who have seen it, left the theater yearning for more.
What you seem to lack appreciation for are the polyrhythmic music and arrhythmic dance styles that dominated worldwide culture for 25,000 years before western musical conventions began to take hold first through colonization and later through the development of mass media.
Polyrhythm involves several simultaneous beats in different times, which wind up diverging and re-converging at regular intervals. Arhythmic dancing involves responding to these rhythms, following one and then another, changing pace in synchronization with the other dancers, and in effect tapping into the "pulse" created by the interplay of the polyrhythms.
In all of western music, we stick to the profoundly simplistic 4/4 time rhythm of rock, classical, etc. or the 3/4 time of swing, the waltz, and some folk traditions. Your preference for what we have been raised with culturally is evident in your appreciation of only the Flamenco music/dancing, the most western of the styles portrayed in the film.
I would urge you to view the film again, with the goal of letting yourself go, letting yourself feel the music. These rhythms and dance styles cannot be taught or easily dissected intellectually. This is not the "civilized" music of the brain (as are, surprisingly, even modern rock and pop musical styles), but rather the music of the body and spirit, of the ancient collective unconscious, and, in my opinion, the music of pure flow, rapture, and bliss.
Again, I urge you to give it another chance. It may be difficult to let go of the culturally ingrained preference for strict meter and order, but 300 years of western culture cannot have wiped out what 25,000 years of evolution has made a part of you.
With respect, good luck.
Cheers.
