[WikiEN-l] original research

Mon Dec 6 01:15:29 UTC 2004

--- Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

> Stan Shebs wrote
> 
> > [...]  but I
> > can see WP *creating* a demand for new original
> research, to
> > answer questions that have come up.
> 
> I don't think 'original research' should cover
> original scholarship.  That's
> a stretch.
> 
> Charles

I'm not sure I understand this distinction, so let me
give an example.  In the field of music, there are a
number of genres that use very simple, stark and
emotional lyrics about poverty and bad luck, use
sparse, acoustic accompaniment, and are
played/invented by a group of poor people, often an
ethnic or religious minority.  The most famous example
is the blues.  Many music publications will compare a
genre like Brazilian samba or Greek rembetika to the
blues because it shares these traits -- these
comparisons occur in a wide variety of publications,
and it seems to be generally accepted that these
similarities are notable, despite there being no
historical relationship between the genres.  To the
best of my knowledge, no one has ever specifically
studied or documented this phenomenon; it's existence
is purely limited to a reference here and there in an
article on some other subject.

I put a list of such genres on the [[list of genres of
the blues]], along with an explanation (the list is
separated from the styles with a historical
relationship to the blues).  Would this count as
original research?  I didn't create a new observation,
but put other peoples' observations together in a new
way.

Just in case you're interested, here's a quote which
is fairly direct.  Ironically, it doesn't mention the
blues and does note the similarity of being from urban
port cities, which wouldn't apply to the blues.

:Thus, if we take together the Fado of Lisbon, the
Tango of Buenos-Aires and the Rembetika of Athens, we
will note firstly that all of them emerged a little
before or after the middle of the 19th century in poor
districts of the big port cities of the nascent
industry, attracting people from the country or from
abroad, and who were confined to a marginal existence.
And if we look for other parallels in the development
of these urban popular cultures, we will find them
again: first, their obscure and repressed beginnings,
then their discovery and appropriation by elements of
the higher social classes, later their acceptance and
admission by the establishment (often after their
success outside of the native land) before ending as a
subject of tourist explorations.

__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
All your favorites on one personal page – Try My Yahoo!
http://my.yahoo.com 