[Harp-L] re: best harp/answer



Harri wrote:

"Debates on music are never ending and I want to finalize this thread from my part."

Actually, the debate has a nice ending. It's realizing that music isn't a competition, that there is no "best" at anything musically, just the people you prefer. It's accepting the subjective reality rather than trying to insist the world accepts a false objectivity. It's as simple as adding the little abbreviation IMO (which stands for In My Opinion) to statements of preference, thus taking them from being definitive and absolute statements into subjective and personal ones. Hell, if jazmaan had done that in the first place then the whole thread probably wouldn't have existed (or, at the very least, and I'm sure to the glee of most people on the list, I wouldn't have joined in).

" Stevie is great on harmonica and I actually just purchased his harmonica-only album Eivets Rednow. In the original discussion only living players were accepted as benchmarks of the harmonica. If we take comparison to all-time masters of the instrument then, I'm afraid Stevie drops down about 50 notches."

For you. For me he still ranks just as highly as always (in large part because I make no such distinctions--I don't care if someone is living or dead, because I have things called CD players and so forth). Note that my original part in this thread was saying that calling Stevie "the best" was ridiculous (as in worthy of ridicule) and my argument with you is less about Stevie's worthiness and more about getting that point across, with a secondary part about the implications I've seen made (in this case by you, but it happens often enough in many media) about multi-instrumentalists.

Harri again wrote:

"I did not put Stevie Wonder down in any of my posts"

Actually, you did. You implied that because he doesn't just play harmonica he can't be considered as good a player, or perhaps as serious or dedicated a player as someone who does just record on the harmonica. That was my point.

"I stand behind my opinion that he is a good harmonica player but not the best on earth. "

I still say the problem is the fifth-grade mentality that shows up which feels a need to create some false thing called "the best harmonica player on Earth" or the like. Assuming the people are technically capable, there is only the people you like more than others. Even if we limit the criteria as in most influential harmonica players, jazz players or the like, it still ends up being just personal opinion. What was ridiculous about jazmaan's statement that Stevie is "the best alive" is not that he chose Stevie, but the idea that such a person could exist.




()() JR "Bulldogge" Ross () () & Snuffy, too:) `----'







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