--- Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@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.
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