Tasteless Iraj

Music itself transcends taste. It’s just music.  it’s what people do with it that may be tasteless.

It’s hard to believe that you could make a good definition of “Tasteless” music. They are certain genres that I detest that others are obsessed with liking. There are some words to songs that I consider absolute trash and destructive to our society. Yet others, even people that are within your circle listening to it all the time.

I would say at least this; If you make a change to the instrumentation, does it still hold up somewhat? If it doesn’t then it’s not really the music that you are enjoying. If you remove or change the words, replace them with different words or La La La etc., do you still think the song is somewhat interesting? If not then it really isn’t the music that you find interesting. If it is a different singer singing the exact same song, does it still kind of work, etc.? I really do think that Iraj wrote good musical songs, but I don’t think that Mathinta and Victor Rathnayake  is a good musical composition because of what I have suggested.

For me, this is hate music of any kind.

I might find some genres like pop a little fluffy and bubbly. In the western world, like twerk, juke and booty house can be demeaning to women (but it was developed in and to strip clubs so we can not expect much). I love a dark, satanic thrash from time to time but look at that as a stage show instead of a religious slight. In the end you could probably find some form of issue with most genres if you really wanted to, but there is only one music form that really makes me sick.

That is to hate music. In Sri Lanka the most known kind of hate music made popular by Iraj and his hate filled fans. There are other forms in Sri Lanka just less known. Frankly, I have no desire to know them better. Just enough to stay away from them.

It’s a disgusting use of music in my mind and probably the one type of music I refuse to open my mind to.

I am going to end this by stating something a little off the topic. Which is my reference to people who hate everything. Haters are not all racist. The movement was originally a working class, multi-racial movement that mainly listened to reggae and ska offshoots. Some eventually hijacked the movement and now we have a hard time (especially in Sri Lanka) separating Nationalists from racism. There are many types of Nationalists and yes a lot of them listen to hate music and it can be confusing to ones not familiar with the subculture.  Sorry for ending with an off topic rant. I just feel more should be aware of this when talking about hate music and the cultures involved.

There are more stupid people in Sri Lanka than people with above average intelligence, and those with average intelligence apparently like fitting in with the lowest common denominator.