ZSP77 Wins Panasonic Home Theater System!!
 

Turns out, I work in sales, and I recently was lucky enough to win a home theater system through a nationwide drawing. I realize it's not a Bose or anything, but the one I won is just fine by me.

Anyways, I got the system a couple days ago, hooked it up, and the first song I decided to play was Drown, because it's at the top of my SP favorites list, for sure.

So, if you got a new stereo system, what's the first track you'd pick to break it in with?

PS: BTW, I'm currently playing Machina the entire way through! :smoke:

Damn "The Sacred and the Profane" kicks ass.

i won $100 on a scratch off lotto ticket and didn't use i to buy or do anything sp related.
sorry.

congrats! does it sound real nice? :)

GREAT JOB!
 

everyone here at the office was rooting for you!

http://www.mattfaus.com/misc/THUMBS_UP_MAN_small.JPG


even black man jim from accounting!

Why would they be rooting for me if they were also in the contest? Nice try, lol. ;)

Damn, if only that 100 dollar bill had 2 speaker towers, a center channel, and a wireless sub with 2 surround speakers I'm sure you would have! :rofl:

Fucking douche.

i may be a douche, but not a fucking douche.

you rofl'ed at yourlself too, that's bigger douchebaggery.

i don't have anything against you or your system, i hope you enjoy it. watch star wars or something.

Yep, it's pretty sweet. :p

Great. Sure.

you're awfully bitter for someone who just won a prize.

congrats! does it sound real nice?

he's playing machina. how can it sound nice?

Id hook it up to my computer and have it speak this to me, then that would be music covered and i could move onto something constructive.

Music
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For other uses, see Music (disambiguation).

Music is an art form consisting of sound and silence. Elements of sound in music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, structure, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture.

The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. Music ranges from strictly organized compositions (and their recreation in performance), through improvisational music to aleatoric forms. Music can be divided into genres and sub-genres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial. Within "the arts", music can be classified as a performing art, a fine art, or an auditory art form.

Music may also involve generative forms in time through the construction of patterns and combinations of natural stimuli, principally sound. Music may be used for artistic or aesthetic, communicative, entertainment, ceremonial or religious purposes, and by many composers purely as an academic instrument for study.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 History
o 1.1 Ancient
o 1.2 Medieval and Renaissance Europe
o 1.3 European Baroque
o 1.4 European Classical
o 1.5 Romantic
o 1.6 The 20th century
* 2 Performance
o 2.1 Aural tradition
o 2.2 Ornamentation
* 3 Production
o 3.1 Composition
o 3.2 Notation
o 3.3 Improvisation
o 3.4 Theory
* 4 Cognition
* 5 Sociology
* 6 Media and Technology
* 7 Business
* 8 Education
o 8.1 Primary
o 8.2 Academia
o 8.3 Ethnomusicology
* 9 Music therapy
* 10 Sources
* 11 Further reading
* 12 See also
* 13 External links

History
Globe icon
The examples and perspective in this section, particularly after about 950, may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.
Figurines playing stringed instruments, excavated at Susa, 2nd millennium BC. Iran National Museum.
Figurines playing stringed instruments, excavated at Susa, 2nd millennium BC. Iran National Museum.

Main article: History of music

The history of music predates the written word. The development of music among humans must have taken place against the backdrop of natural sounds such as birdsong and the sounds other animals use to communicate.[citation needed] Prehistoric music is the name given to all music produced in preliterate cultures.[citation needed][1]

Ancient

Main article: Ancient music

A range of paleolithic sites have yielded bones in which lateral holes have been pierced: these are usually identified as flutes[2], blown at one end like the Japanese shakuhachi. The earliest written records of musical expression are to be found in the Sama Veda of India and in 4,000 year old cuneiform from Ur.[citation needed] Instruments, such as the seven-holed flute and various types of stringed instruments have been recovered from the Indus valley civilization archaeological sites.[3] India has one of the oldest musical traditions in the world—references to Indian classical music (marga) can be found in the ancient scriptures of the Hindu tradition, the Vedas. The traditional art or court music of China has a history stretching for more than three thousand years. Music was an important part of cultural and social life in Ancient Greece: mixed-gender choruses performed for entertainment, celebration and spiritual ceremonies; musicians and singers had a prominent role in ancient Greek theater; music was part of children's basic education.[citation needed]

Al-Farabi (c. 872 - c. 950) wrote a notable book on music titled Kitab al-Musiqi al-Kabir ("Great Book of Music"). He played and invented a variety of musical instruments and devised the Arab tone system of pitch organisation, which is still used in Arabic music.[4]

Medieval and Renaissance Europe

Main articles: Medieval music and Renaissance music

While musical life in Europe was undoubtedly rich in the early Medieval era, as attested by artistic depictions of instruments, writings about music, and other records, the only European repertory which has survived from before about 800 is the monophonic liturgical plainsong of the Roman Catholic Church, the central tradition of which was called Gregorian chant. Several schools of liturgical polyphony flourished in the period after about 1100. Alongside these traditions of sacred music, a vibrant tradition of secular song developed, exemplified by the music of the troubadours, trouvères and Minnesänger.

Much of the surviving music of 14th century Europe is secular. By the middle of the 15th century, composers and singers used a smooth polyphony for sacred musical compositions such as the mass, the motet, and the laude, and secular forms such as the chanson and the madrigal. The introduction of commercial printing had an immense influence on the dissemination of musical styles.[citation needed]

European Baroque

Main article: Baroque music

The first operas, written around 1600 and the rise of contrapuntal music define the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque era that lasted until roughly 1750, the year of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Allegory of Music, by Filippino Lippi
Allegory of Music, by Filippino Lippi
Allegory of Music on the Opéra Garnier
Allegory of Music on the Opéra Garnier

German Baroque composers wrote for small ensembles including strings, brass, and woodwinds, as well as Choirs, pipe organ, harpsichord, and clavichord. During the Baroque period, several major music forms were defined that lasted into later periods when they were expanded and evolved further, including the Fugue, the Invention, the Sonata, and the Concerto.[5]

European Classical

Main article: Classical period (music)

The music of the Classical period is characterized by homophonic texture, often featuring prominent melody with accompaniment. These new melodies tended to be almost voice-like and singable. The now popular instrumental music was dominated by further evolution of musical forms initially defined in the Baroque period: the sonata, and the concerto, with the addition of the new form, the symphony. Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, well known even today, are among the central figures of the Classical period.

Romantic

Main article: Romantic music

Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert were transitional composers, leading into the Romantic period, with their expansion of existing genres, forms, and functions of music. In the Romantic period, the emotional and expressive qualities of music came to take precedence over the orientation towards technique and tradition. The late 19th century saw a dramatic expansion in the size of the orchestra, and in the role of concerts as part of urban society. Later Romantic composers created complex and often much longer musical works, merging and expanding traditional forms that had previously been used separately. For example, counterpoint, combined with harmonic structures to create more extended chords with increased use of dissonance and to create dramatic tension and resolution.

The 20th century

Main article: 20th century music

The 20th Century saw a revolution in music listening as the radio gained popularity worldwide and new media and technologies were developed to record, capture, reproduce and distribute music. The focus of art music in the 20th was characterized by exploration. Claude Debussy has become well-known and respected for his orientation towards colors and depictions in his compositional style. Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and John Cage were all deeply influential composers in 20th century art music. Jazz evolved and became a significant genre of music over the course of the 20th century, and during the second half of that century, rock music and rap music did the same.

Performance
Chinese Naxi musicians
Chinese Naxi musicians

Performance is the physical expression of music. Often, a musical work is performed once its structure and instrumentation are satisfactory to its creators; however, as it gets performed more and more over time, it can evolve and change in any number of ways.

A performance can either be rehearsed or improvised. Improvisation is a musical idea created on the spot (such as a guitar solo or a drum solo), with no prior premeditation, while rehearsal is vigorous repetition of an idea until it has achieved cohesion. Musicians will generally add improvisation to a well-rehearsed idea to create a unique performance. Many cultures ******* strong traditions of solo and performance, such as in Indian classical music, and in the Western Art music tradition. Other cultures, such as in Bali, ******* strong traditions of group performance. All cultures ******* a mixture of both, and performance may range from improvised solo playing for one's enjoyment to highly planned and organised performance rituals such as the modern classical concert, religious processions, music festivals or music competitions.

Chamber music, which is music for a small ensemble with only a few of each type of instrument, is often seen as more intimate than symphonic works. A performer may be referred to as a musician.

Aural tradition

Many types of music, such as traditional blues and folk were originally preserved in the memory of performers, and the songs were handed down orally, or aurally ("by ear"). When the composer of music is no longer known, this music is often classified as "traditional". Different musical traditions have different attitudes towards how and where to make changes to the original source material, from quite strict, to those which demand improvisation or modification to the music. History is also passed by ear through song- for example in African societies.

Ornamentation

Main article: Ornament (music)

The detail included explicitly in the music notation varies between genres and historical periods. In general, art music notation from the 17th through to the 19th century required performers to have a great deal of contextual knowledge about performing styles.

For example, in the 17th and 18th century, music notated for solo performers typically indicated a simple, unornamented melody. However, it was expected that performers would know how to add stylistically-appropriate ornaments such as trills and turns. In the 19th century, art music for solo performers may give a general instruction such as to perform the music expressively, without describing in detail how the performer should do this. It was expected that the performer would know how to use tempo changes, accentuation, and pauses (among other devices) to obtain this "expressive" performance style. In the 20th century, art music notation often became more explicit, and used a range of markings and annotations to indicate to performers how they should play or sing the piece.

In popular music and jazz, music notation almost always indicates only the basic framework of the melody, harmony, or performance approach; musicians and singers are expected to know the performance conventions and styles associated with specific genres and pieces. For example, the "lead sheet" for a jazz tune may only indicate the melody and the chord changes. The performers in the jazz ensemble are expected to know how to "flesh out" this basic structure by adding ornaments, improvised music, and chordal accompaniment.

Production

Main article: Music production

Music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. Amateur musicians compose and perform music for their own pleasure, and they do not attempt to derive their income from music. Professional musicians are employed by a range of institutions and organisations, including armed forces, churches and synagogues, symphony orchestras, broadcasting or film production companies, and music schools. As well, professional musicians work as freelancers, seeking contracts and engagements in a variety of settings.

Although amateur musicians differ from professional musicians in that amateur musicians have a non-musical source of income, there are often many links between amateur and professional musicians. Beginning amateur musicians take lessons with professional musicians. In community settings, advanced amateur musicians perform with professional musicians in a variety of ensembles and orchestras. In some rare cases, amateur musicians attain a professional level of competence, and they are able to perform in professional performance settings.

A distinction is often made between music performed for the benefit of a live audience and music that is performed for the purpose of being recorded and distributed through the music retail system or the broadcasting system. However, there are also many cases where a live performance in front of an audience is recorded and distributed (or broadcast).

Composition

Main article: Musical composition

Often we class "composition" as the creation and recording of music via a medium by which others can interpret it (i.e. paper or sound). Many cultures use at least part of the concept of preconceiving musical material, or composition, as held in western classical music. Even when music is notated precisely, there are still many decisions that a performer has to make. The process of a performer deciding how to perform music that has been previously composed and notated is termed interpretation.

Different performers' interpretations of the same music can vary widely. Composers and song writers who present their own music are interpreting, just as much as those who perform the music of others or folk music. The standard body of choices and techniques present at a given time and a given place is referred to as performance practice, where as interpretation is generally used to mean either individual choices of a performer, or an aspect of music which is not clear, and therefore has a "standard" interpretation.

In some musical genres, such as jazz and blues, even more freedom is given to the performer to engage in improvisation on a basic melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic framework. The greatest latitude is given to the performer in a style of performing called free improvisation, which is material that is spontaneously "thought of" (imagined) while being performed, not preconceived. According to the analysis of Georgiana Costescu, improvised music usually follows stylistic or genre conventions and even "fully composed" includes some freely chosen material (see precompositional). Composition does not always mean the use of notation, or the known sole authorship of one individual.

Music can also be determined by describing a "process" which may create musical sounds, examples of this range from wind chimes, through computer programs which select sounds. Music which contains elements selected by chance is called Aleatoric music, and is associated with such composers as John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Witold Lutosławski.

Musical composition is a term that describes the composition of a piece of music. Methods of composition vary widely from one composer to another, however in analysing music all forms -- spontaneous, trained, or untrained -- are built from elements comprising a musical piece. Music can be composed for repeated performance or it can be improvised; composed on the spot. The music can be performed entirely from memory, from a written system of musical notation, or some combination of both. Study of composition has traditionally been dominated by examination of methods and practice of Western classical music, but the definition of composition is broad enough to ******* spontaneously improvised works like those of free jazz performers and African drummers.

What is important in understanding the composition of a piece is singling out its elements. An understanding of music's formal elements can be helpful in deciphering exactly how a piece is constructed. A universal element of music is how sounds occur in time, which is referred to as the rhythm of a piece of music.

When a piece appears to have a changing time-feel, it is considered to be in rubato time, an Italian expression that indicates that the tempo of the piece changes to suit the expressive intent of the performer. Even random placement of random sounds, which occurs in musical montage, occurs within some kind of time, and thus employs time as a musical element.

Notation

Main article: Musical notation

Notation is the written expression of music notes and rhythms on paper using symbols. When music is written down, the pitches and rhythm of the music is notated, along with instructions on how to perform the music. This is referred to as musical notation, and the study of how to read notation involves music theory, harmony, the study of performance practice, and in some cases an understanding of historical performance methods.
Musical notation
Musical notation

Written notation varies with style and period of music. In Western Art music, the most common types of written notation are scores, which ******* all the music parts of an ensemble piece, and parts, which are the music notation for the individual performers or singers. In popular music, jazz, and blues, the standard musical notation is the lead sheet, which notates the melody, chords, lyrics (if it is a vocal piece), and structure of the music. Scores and parts are also used in popular music and jazz, particularly in large ensembles such as jazz "big bands."

In popular music, guitarists and electric bass players often read music notated in tablature, which indicates the location of the notes to be played on the instrument using a diagram of the guitar or bass fingerboard. Tabulature was also used in the Baroque era to notate music for the lute, a stringed, fretted instrument.

Notated music is produced as sheet music for the performers to read from. To perform music from notation requires an understanding of both the musical style and the performance practice that is associated with a piece of music or genre.

Improvisation

Main article: Musical improvisation

Improvisation is the creation of spontaneous music. Improvisation is often considered an act of instantaneous composition by composers, where compositional techniques are employed with or without preparation.

Theory

Main article: Music Theory

Music theory encompasses the nature and mechanics of music. It often involves identifying patterns that govern composers' techniques. In a more detailed sense, music theory (in the western system) also distills and analyzes the elements of music – rhythm, harmony (harmonic function), melody, structure, and texture. People who study these properties are known as music theorists.

Cognition

Main article: Music cognition
Further information: Hearing (sense)
Further information: Psychoacoustics

Concert in the Mozarteum, Salzburg
Concert in the Mozarteum, Salzburg

The field of music cognition involves the study of many aspects of music including how it is processed by listeners. Rather than accepting the standard practices of analyzing, composing, and performing music as a given, much research in music cognition seeks instead to uncover the mental processes that underlie these practices. Also, research in the field seeks to uncover commonalities between the musical traditions of disparate cultures and possible cognitive "constraints" that limit these musical systems. Questions regarding musical innateness, and emotional responses to music are also major areas of research in the field.

It is important to note that Deaf people can experience music by feeling the vibrations in their body, a process which can be enhanced if the individual holds a resonant, hollow object. A well-known deaf musician is the composer Ludwig van Beethoven, who composed many famous works even after he had completely lost his hearing. Recent examples of deaf musicians ******* Evelyn Glennie, a highly acclaimed percussionist who has been deaf since the age of twelve, and Chris Buck, a virtuoso violinist who has lost his hearing. This is relevant as it indicates that music is a deeper cognitive process than unexamined phrases such as, "pleasing to the ear" would suggest. Much research in music cognition seeks to uncover these complex mental processes involved in listening to music, which may seem intuitively simple, yet are vastly intricate and complex.

Sociology
Half-section of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) version of Night Revels of Han Xizai, original by Gu Hongzhong; the painting shows musicians entertaining guests in a 10th century household. In the center are three female musicians playing guan, two female musicians playing transverse bamboo flutes, and a male musician playing a wooden clapper called paiban.
Half-section of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) version of Night Revels of Han Xizai, original by Gu Hongzhong; the painting shows musicians entertaining guests in a 10th century household. In the center are three female musicians playing guan, two female musicians playing transverse bamboo flutes, and a male musician playing a wooden clapper called paiban.

Music is experienced by individuals in a range of social settings ranging from being alone to attending a large concert. Musical performances take different forms in different cultures and socioeconomic milieus. In Europe and North America, there is often a divide between what types of music are viewed as a "high culture" and "low culture." "High culture" types of music typically ******* Western art music such as Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern-era symphonies, concertos, and solo works, and are typically heard in formal concerts in concert halls and churches, with the audience sitting quietly in seats.

On the other hand, other types of music such as jazz, blues, soul, and country are often performed in bars, nightclubs, and theatres, where the audience may be able to drink, dance, and express themselves by cheering. Until the later 20th century, the division between "high" and "low" musical forms was widely accepted as a valid distinction that separated out better quality, more advanced "art music" from the popular styles of music heard in bars and dance halls.

However, in the 1980s and 1990s, musicologists studying this perceived divide between "high" and "low" musical genres argued that this distinction is not based on the musical value or quality of the different types of music.[citation needed] Rather, they argued that this distinction was based largely on the socioeconomic standing or social class of the performers or audience of the different types of music.[citation needed] For example, whereas the audience for Classical symphony concerts typically have above-average incomes, the audience for a hip-hop concert in an inner-city area may have below-average incomes. Even though the performers, audience, or venue where non-"art" music is performed may have a lower socioeconomic status, the music that is performed, such as blues, hip-hop, punk, funk, or ska may be very complex and sophisticated.

When composers introduce styles of music which break with convention, there can be a strong resistance from academic music experts and popular culture. Late-period Beethoven string quartets, Stravinsky ballet scores, serialism, bebop-era jazz, hip hop, punk rock, and electronica have all been considered non-music by some critics when they were first introduced.[citation needed]

Such themes are examined in the sociology of music. The sociological study of music, sometimes called sociomusicology, is often pursued in departments of sociology, media studies, or music, and is closely related to the field of ethnomusicology.

Media and Technology

Further information: Computer music

The music that composers make can be heard through several media; the most traditional way is to hear it live, in the presence, or as one of the musicians. Live music can also be broadcast over the radio, television or the internet. Some musical styles focus on producing a sound for a performance, while others focus on producing a recording which mixes together sounds which were never played "live". Recording, even of styles which are essentially live, often uses the ability to edit and splice to produce recordings which are considered better than the actual performance.

As talking pictures emerged in the early 20th century, with their prerecorded musical tracks, an increasing number of moviehouse orchestra musicians found themselves out of work.[6] During the 1920s live musical performances by orchestras, pianists, and theater organists were common at first-run theaters[7] With the coming of the talking motion pictures, those featured performances were largely eliminated. The American Federation of Musicians took out newspaper advertisements protesting the replacement of live musicians with mechanical playing devices. One 1929 ad that appeared in the Pittsburgh Press features an image of a can labeled "Canned Music / Big Noise Brand / Guaranteed to Produce No Intellectual or Emotional Reaction Whatever" [8]

Since legislation introduced to help protect performers, composers, publishers and producers, including the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 in the United States, and the 1979 revised Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in the United Kingdom, recordings and live performances have also become more accessible through computers, devices and internet in a form that is commonly known as music-on-demand.

In many cultures, there is less distinction between performing and listening to music, as virtually everyone is involved in some sort of musical activity, often communal. In industrialised countries, listening to music through a recorded form, such as sound recording or watching a music video, became more common than experiencing live performance, roughly in the middle of the 20th century.

Sometimes, live performances incorporate prerecorded sounds. For example, a DJ uses disc records for scratching, and some 20th-century works have a solo for an instrument or voice that is performed along with music that is prerecorded onto a tape. Computers and many keyboards can be programmed to produce and play MIDI music. Audiences can also become performers by participating in Karaoke, an activity of Japanese origin which centres around a device that plays voice-eliminated versions of well-known songs. Most karaoke machines also have video screens that show lyrics to songs being performed; performers can follow the lyrics as they sing over the instrumental tracks.

Business

Main article: Music industry

The music industry refers to the business industry connected with the creation and sale of music. It consists of record companies, labels and publishers that distribute recorded music products internationally and that often control the rights to those products. Some music labels are "independent," while others are subsidiaries of larger corporate entities or international media groups.

Education

Primary

Main article: Music education

The incorporation of music training from preschool to post secondary education is common in North America and Europe. Involvement in music is thought to teach basic skills such as concentration, counting, listening, and cooperation while also promoting understanding of language, improving the ability to recall information, and creating an environment more conducive to learning in other areas. [9] In elementary schools, children often learn to play instruments such as the recorder, sing in small choirs, and learn about the history of Western art music. In secondary schools students may have the opportunity to perform some type of musical ensembles, such as choirs, marching bands, concert bands, jazz bands, or orchestras, and in some school systems, music classes may be available. Some students also take private music lessons with a teacher. Amateur musicians typically take lessons to learn musical rudiments and beginner- to intermediate-level musical techniques.

At the university level, students in most arts and humanities programs can receive credit for taking music courses, which typically take the form of an overview course on the history of music, or a music appreciation course that focuses on listening to music and learning about different musical styles. In addition, most North American and European universities have some type of musical ensembles that non-music students are able to participate in, such as choirs, marching bands, or orchestras. The study of Western art music is increasingly common outside of North America and Europe, such as STSI in Bali, or the Classical music programs that are available in Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China. At the same time, Western universities and colleges are widening their curriculum to ******* music of non-Western cultures, such as the music of Africa or Bali (e.g. Gamelan music).

Academia

Main article: Musicology

Musicology is the study of the subject of music. The earliest definitions defined three sub-disciplines: systematic musicology, historical musicology, and comparative musicology. In contemporary scholarship, one is more likely to encounter a division of the discipline into music theory, music history, and ethnomusicology. Research in musicology has often been enriched by cross-disciplinary work, for example in the field of psychoacoustics. The study of music of non-western cultures, and the cultural study of music, is called ethnomusicology.

Graduates of undergraduate music programs can go on to further study in music graduate programs. Graduate degrees ******* the Master of Music, the Master of Arts, the PhD (e.g., in musicology or music theory), and more recently, the Doctor of Musical Arts, or DMA. The Master of Music degree, which takes one to two years to complete, is typically awarded to students studying the performance of an instrument, education, voice or composition. The Master of Arts degree, which takes one to two years to complete and often requires a thesis, is typically awarded to students studying musicology, music history, or music theory. Undergraduate university degrees in music, including the Bachelor of Music, the Bachelor of Music Education, and the Bachelor of Arts (with a major in music) typically take three to five years to complete. These degrees provide students with a grounding in music theory and music history, and many students also study an instrument or learn singing technique as part of their program.

The PhD, which is required for students who want to work as university professors in musicology, music history, or music theory, takes three to five years of study after the Master's degree, during which time the student will complete advanced courses and undertake research for a dissertation. The Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) is a relatively new degree that was created to provide a credential for professional performers or composers that want to work as university professors in musical performance or composition. The DMA takes three to five years after a Master's degree, and includes advanced courses, projects, and performances. In Medieval times, the study of music was one of the Quadrivium of the seven Liberal Arts and considered vital to higher learning. Within the quantitative Quadrivium, music, or more accurately harmonics, was the study of rational proportions.

Zoomusicology is the study of the music of non-human animals, or the musical aspects of sounds produced by non-human animals. As George Herzog (1941) asked, "do animals have music?" François-Bernard Mâche's Musique, mythe, nature, ou les Dauphins d'Arion (1983), a study of "ornitho-musicology" using a technique of Ruwet's Language, musique, poésie (1972) paradigmatic segmentation analysis, shows that bird songs are organised according to a repetition-transformation principle. Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1990), argues that "in the last analysis, it is a human being who decides what is and is not musical, even when the sound is not of human origin. If we acknowledge that sound is not organised and conceptualised (that is, made to form music) merely by its producer, but by the mind that perceives it, then music is uniquely human."

Music theory is the study of music, generally in a highly technical manner outside of other disciplines. More broadly it refers to any study of music, usually related in some form with compositional concerns, and may ******* mathematics, physics, and anthropology. What is most commonly taught in beginning music theory classes are guidelines to write in the style of the common practice period, or tonal music. Theory, even that which studies music of the common practice period, may take many other forms. Musical set theory is the application of mathematical set theory to music, first applied to atonal music. Speculative music theory, contrasted with analytic music theory, is devoted to the analysis and synthesis of music materials, for example tuning systems, generally as preparation for composition.

Ethnomusicology

Main article: Ethnomusicology

In the West, much of the history of music that is taught deals with the Western civilization's art music. The history of music in other cultures ("world music" or the field of "ethnomusicology") is also taught in Western universities. This includes the documented classical traditions of Asian countries outside the influence of Western Europe, as well as the folk or indigenous music of various other cultures.

Popular styles of music varied widely from culture to culture, and from period to period. Different cultures emphasised different instruments, or techniques, or uses for music. Music has been used not only for entertainment, for ceremonies, and for practical and artistic communication, but also for propaganda in totalitarian countries.

There is a host of music classifications, many of which are caught up in the argument over the definition of music. Among the largest of these is the division between classical music (or "art" music), and popular music (or commercial music - including rock and roll, country music, and pop music). Some genres don't fit neatly into one of these "big two" classifications, (such as folk music, world music, or jazz music).

As world cultures have come into greater contact, their indigenous musical styles have often merged into new styles. For example, the United States bluegrass style contains elements from Anglo-Irish, Scottish, Irish, German and African instrumental and vocal traditions, which were able to fuse in the United States' multi-ethnic society. Genres of music are determined as much by tradition and presentation as by the actual music. While most classical music is acoustic and meant to be performed by individuals or groups, many works described as "classical" ******* samples or tape, or are mechanical.[original research?] Some works, like Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, are claimed by both jazz and classical music. Many current music festivals celebrate a particular musical genre.

Indian music, for example, is one of the oldest and longest living types of music, and is still widely heard and performed in South Asia, as well as internationally (especially since the 1960s). Indian music has mainly 3 forms of Classical music, Hindustani, Carnatic, and Dhrupad styles. It has also a large repertoire of styles, which involve only Percussion music such as the Tala-vadya performances famous in South India.

Music therapy

Main article: Music therapy

Robert Burton wrote in the 17th century in his work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, that music and dance were critical in treating mental illness, especially melancholia.[10] He said that "But to leave all declamatory speeches in praise of divine music, I will confine myself to my proper subject: besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself." Burton noted that "...Canus, a Rhodian fiddler, in Philostratus, when Apollonius was inquisitive to know what he could do with his pipe, told him, "That he would make a melancholy man merry, and him that was merry much merrier than before, a lover more enamoured, a religious man more devout."[11][12][13]

In November 2006, Dr. Michael J. Crawford[14] and his colleagues also found that music therapy helped schizophrenic patients.[15] In the Ottoman Empire, mental illnesses were treated with music[citation needed].

Didn't you hear? It has a standard speaker setup!

Standard!!

Since it's the holiday season, I would probably donate it to someone who could use it a lot more than I could

Greedy bastard

i just recently purchased an onkyo tx-sr805 which is a monster of a home theater receiver. i watched batman begins on hd-dvd to test it out.

you hear that ZSP, some guys dont rely on corporate handouts you cheap loser fuck, tell him how much more yours is worth moonster

well, i exploited the high canadian dollar on ebay when it was still decently high. the receiver's msrp is $1100 USD and somehow a guy on ebay was selling them for $675 so i snatched one up. it probably would have been like $1500 after taxes in a canadian store. :D

I'd rather spend my money on another test pressing, if I could find one that is.

Yeah. I bet bitches feel like they're having your wallet slapped in their faces when they hear that bass. Good man.

Test pressing? Drop that shit and buy stuff you can use and makes your dick big. Collect pussy.

Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia
High School Musical 3
Page: 1 2 Next >
By Cade Metz → More by this author
Published Tuesday 4th December 2007 00:48 GMT
Find out how your peers are dealing with Virtualization

Exclusive On the surface, all is well in Wikiland. Just last week, a headline from The San Francisco Chronicle told the world that "Wikipedia's Future Is Still Looking Up," as the paper happily announced that founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales plans to expand his operation with a high-profile move to the city by the bay.

But underneath, there's trouble brewing.
Click here to find out more!

Controversy has erupted among the encyclopedia's core contributors, after a rogue editor revealed that the site's top administrators are using a secret insider mailing list to crackdown on perceived threats to their power.

Many suspected that such a list was in use, as the Wikipedia "ruling clique" grew increasingly concerned with banning editors for the most petty of reasons. But now that the list's existence is confirmed, the rank and file are on the verge of revolt.

Revealed after an uber-admin called "Durova" used it in an attempt to enforce the quixotic ban of a longtime contributor, this secret mailing list seems to undermine the site's famously egalitarian ethos. At the very least, the list allows the ruling clique to push its agenda without scrutiny from the community at large. But clearly, it has also been used to silence the voice of at least one person who was merely trying to improve the encyclopedia's content.

"I've never seen the Wikipedia community as angry as they are with this one," says Charles Ainsworth, a Japan-based editor who's contributed more feature articles to the site than all but six other writers. "I think there was more hidden anger and frustration with the 'ruling clique' than I thought and Durova's heavy-handed action and arrogant refusal to take sufficient accountability for it has released all of it into the open."

Kelly Martin, a former member of Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, leaves no doubt that this sort of surreptitious communication has gone on for ages. "This particular list is new, but the strategy is old," Martin told us via phone, from outside Chicago. "It's certainly not consistent with the public principles of the site. But in reality, it's standard practice."

Meanwhile, Jimbo Wales has told the community that all this is merely a tempest in a teacup. As he points out, the user that Durova wrongly banned was reinstated after a mere 75 minutes. But it would seem that Jimbo has done his best to suppress any talk of the secret mailing list.

Whatever the case, many longtime editors are up-in-arms. And the site's top administrators seem more concerned with petty site politics than with building a trustworthy encyclopedia. "The problem with Wikipedia is that, for so many in the project, it's no longer about the encyclopedia," Martin wrote in a recent blog post. "The problem is that Wikipedia's community has defined itself not in terms of the encyclopedia it is supposedly producing, but instead of the people it venerates and the people it abhors."
Bang! Bang! You're dead

On November 18, Durova banned a Wikipedia editor known as "!!". Yes, "!!". Some have taken to calling him "Bang Bang." At Wikipedia, everyone has the right to anonymity, and user names are often, shall we say, inexplicable.

In banning this account, Durova described it as an "abusive sock puppet," insisting it was setup by someone dead set on destroying the encyclopedia. "This problem editor is a troublemaker whose username is two exclamation points with no letters," read the block. "He is a ripened sock with a padded history of redirects, minor edits, and some DYK work. He also indulges in obscene trolling in German, and free range sarcasm and troublemaking. If you find this user gloating, or spot his nasty side, hit him with the banhammer." DYKs are edits made to the "Did You Know" section of the Wikipedia home page.

Durova then posted a notice to the site's public forum, insisting the ban was too important for discussion outside the purview of the Arbitration Committee, Wikipedia's Supreme Court. "Due to the nature of this investigation, our normal open discussion isn't really feasible," she said. "Please take to arbitration if you disagree with this decision."

But it was discussed. At length. Countless editors were nothing less than livid, many arguing that the banned user was actually a wonderfully productive editor. "Durova, you're really going to have to explain this," wrote one editor. "I see no transgressions of any kind on the part of this user; indeed, with over 100 DYKs, he seems to be a pretty positive force around here."

Meanwhile, Durova continued to insist that she had some sort of secret evidence that could only be viewed by the Arbitration Committee. "I am very confident my research will stand up to scrutiny," she said. "I am equally confident that anything I say here will be parsed rather closely by some disruptive banned sockpuppeteers. If I open the door a little bit it'll become a wedge issue as people ask for more information, and then some rather deep research techniques would be in jeopardy."

Then someone posted a private email from Durova in which she divulged her evidence - and revealed the secret mailing list.

Wikiparanoia

Basically, Durova's email showed that Bang Bang was indeed a wonderfully productive editor. She was sure this was all a put-on, that he was trying to gain the community's "good faith" and destroy it from within.

We're not joking.

This sort of extreme paranoia has become the norm among the Wikipedia inner circle. There are a handful sites across the web that spend most of their bandwidth criticizing the Wikipedia elite - the leading example being Wikipedia Review - and the ruling clique spends countless hours worrying that these critics are trying to infiltrate the encyclopedia itself.

Bang Bang was a relatively new account. Since this new user was a skilled editor, Durova decided, he must be "a vandal" sent by Wikipedia Review. "I need to show you not just what Wikipedia Review is doing to us, but how they're doing it," she said in her email. "Here's a troublemaker whose username is two exclamation points with no letters: !! It's what I would call [a] 'ripened sock'...Some of the folks at WR do this to game the community's good faith."

Former Arbitration Committee member Kelly Martin confirms that this bizarre attitude is now par for the course inside the Wikipedia inner circle. "Anyone who makes large changes to anything now is likely to get run over by a steamroller," she says. "It's not a matter of whether your edit was good or bad. All they see is 'large edit my person not known to me' and - boom! They smack you on the head because vandals are so bad."

As it turned out, Bang Bang was an experienced user. He had set up a new account after having privacy problems with his old one. Once her secret email was posted, Durova removed the ban, calling it "a false positive."

Durova then voluntarily relinquished her admin powers, and over the weekend, the Arbitration Committee admonished her "to exercise greater care when issuing blocks."
The secret mailing list

But this particular false positive was only part of the problem. With her email, Durova also revealed that the ruling clique was using that secret mailing list to combat its enemies - both real and imagined. "The good news," she said, was that the Wikipedia Review "trolls" didn't know the list existed. And then she linked to the list's sign-up page.

The list is hosted by Wikia, the Jimmy Wales-founded open source web portal that was setup as an entirely separate entity from the not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation that oversees Wikipedia.

The sign-up page explains that the list is designed to quash "cyberstalking" and "harassment." But it would seem that things have gotten a bit out-of-hand. Clearly, the list is also used to land "the banhammer" on innocent bystanders.

"The problem is that their false positive rate is about 90 per cent - or higher," says Kelly Martin. "It's possible that every last person Durova has identified is innocent."

Recently, in another effort to quash "harassment," several members of the Wikipedia elite tried to ban the mention of certain "BADSITES" on the encyclopedia, and naturally, Wikipedia Review was on the list. Dan Tobias was one of the many editors who successfully fought this ban, and as he battled, he marveled at how well organized his opponents seemed to be.

"Over the months that I've been fighting people over issues like the BADSITES proposal, it looks like a lot of these people I was fighting were on this secret email list - at least I suspect they were," says the Floridia-based Tobias. "They always seemed to be show up in right place, at the right time, to gang up on people."

Yes, it all sounds like the most ridiculous of high school squabbles. But Tobias was merely trying to protect free speech on a site where free speech is supposedly sacred.

The irony, Tobias points out, is that in using this mailing list, the Wikipedia inner circle is guilty of the same behavior they're trying to fight. "They're villainizing the so-called attack sites because these sites are promoting pernicious ideas about Wikipedia," he says. "The argument is that when a bunch of like-minded people get together, they're sounding boards for one another, and they end up getting way off base because there's not an opposing viewpoint around.

"But you could say the exact same thing about this secret email list: a bunch of like-minded people are encouraging each other's possibly wacked-out views and, in the end, making trouble on Wikipedia."
Oversight

If you take Wikipedia as seriously as it takes itself, this is a huge problem. The site is ostensibly devoted to democratic consensus and the free exchange of ideas. But whether or not you believe in the holy law of Web 2.0, Wikipedia is tearing at the seams. Many of its core contributors are extremely unhappy about Durova's ill-advised ban and the exposure of the secret mailing list, and some feel that the site's well-being is seriously threatened.

In a post to Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales says that this whole incident was blown out of proportion. "I advise the world to relax a notch or two. A bad block was made for 75 minutes," he says. "It was reversed and an apology given. There are things to be studied here about what went wrong and what could be done in the future, but wow, could we please do so with a lot less drama? A 75 minute block, even if made badly, is hardly worth all this drama. Let's please love each other, love the project, and remember what we are here for."

But he's not admitting how deep this controversy goes. Wales and the Wikimedia Foudation came down hard on the editor who leaked Durova's email. After it was posted to the public forum, the email was promptly "oversighted" - i.e. permanently removed. Then this rogue editor posted it to his personal talk page, and a Wikimedia Foundation member not only oversighted the email again, but temporarily banned the editor.

Then Jimbo swooped in with a personal rebuke. "You have caused too much harm to justify us putting up with this kind of behavior much longer," he told the editor.

The problem, for many regular contributors, is that Wales and the Foundation seem to be siding with Durova's bizarre behavior. "I believe that Jimbo's credibility has been greatly damaged because of his open support for these people," says Charles Ainsworth. And if Jimbo can't maintain his credibility, the site's most experienced editors may not stick around. Since the banhammer came down, Bang Bang hasn't edited a lick. ®

Dennis Quaid is a flamer. You have no credibility.

Esoteric Hitlerism

[edit] Savitri Devi

Main article: Savitri Devi

Savitri Devi was the first major post-war exponent of what has since become known as Esoteric Hitlerism.[1]With the fall of the Third Reich, Hitler, who had died at the end of the war, could now be deified. She connected Hitler’s Aryanist ideology to that of the pan-Hindu part of the Indian Independence movement,[2] and activists such as Subhas Chandra Bose. For her, the swastika was an especially important symbol, as it symbolized the Aryan unity amongst the Hindus and Germans.

Savitri Devi, above all, was interested in the Indian caste system, which she regarded as the archetype of racial laws intended to govern the segregation of different races and to maintain the pure blood of the fair-complexioned Aryans. She regarded the survival of the light-skinned minority of Brahmans among an enormous population of many different Indian races after sixty centuries as a living tribute to the value of the Aryan caste system (Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun, p. 92).

Savitri Devi integrated Nazism into a broader cyclical framework of Hindu history. She considered Hitler to be Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, and called him “the god-like Individual of our times; the Man against Time; the greatest European of all times”[3], having an ideal vision of returning his Aryan people to an earlier, more perfect time, and also having the practical wherewithal to fight the destructive forces "in Time". She saw his defeat —and the forestalling of his vision from coming to fruition — as a result of him being "too magnanimous, too trusting, too good", of not being merciless enough, of having in his "psychological make-up, too much 'sun' [beneficence] and not enough 'lightning.' [practical ruthlessness]”[4]; unlike his coming incarnation:

“Kalki” will act with unprecedented ruthlessness. Contrarily to Adolf Hitler, He will spare not a single one of the enemies of the divine Cause: not a single one of its outspoken opponents but also not a single one of the luke-warm, of the opportunists, of the ideologically heretical, of the racially bastardised, of the unhealthy, of the hesitating, of the all-too-human; not a single one of those who, in body or in character or mind, bear the stamp of the fallen Ages.[5]

[edit] Miguel Serrano

Main article: Miguel Serrano

The next major figure in Esoteric Hitlerism is Miguel Serrano, a former Chilean diplomat. Author of numerous books including The Golden Ribbon: Esoteric Hitlerism (1978) and Adolf Hitler, the Last Avatar (1984), Serrano is one of a number of Nazi esotericists who regard the "Aryan blood" as originally extraterrestrial:

"Serrano finds mythological evidence for the extraterrestrial origins of man in the Nephilim [fallen angels] of the Book of Genesis....Serrano suggests that the sudden appearance of Cro-Magnon Man with his high artistic and cultural achievements in prehistoric Europe records the passage of one such divya-descended race alongside the abysmal inferiority of Neanderthal Man, an abomination and manifest creation of the demiurge....Of all the races on earth, the Aryans alone preserve the memory of their divine ancestors in their noble blood, which is still mingled with the light of the Black Sun. All other races are the progeny of the demiurge's beast-men, native to the planet."[6]

Serrano supports this idea from various myths which assign divine ancestry to 'Aryan' peoples, and even the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl (one of the 'White Gods' of the ancient Americas) descending from Venus. He also cites the entirely respectable (but not widely accepted) scientific hypothesis of Bal Gangadhar Tilak on the Arctic homeland of the Indo-Aryans, as his authority for identifying the earthly centre of the Aryan migrations with the 'lost' Arctic continent of Hyperborea. Thus, Serrano's extraterrestrial gods are also identified as Hyperboreans.[7]

In attempting to raise the spiritual development of the earthbound races, the Hyperborean divyas (a Sanskrit term for god-men) suffered a tragic setback. Expanding on a story from the Book of Enoch, Serrano laments that a renegade group among the gods committed miscegenation with the terrestrial races, thus diluting the light-bearing blood of their benefactors and diminishing the level of divine awareness on the planet.[8]

The concept of Hyperborea has a simultaneously racial and mystical meaning for Serrano.[9] He believes that Hitler was in Shambhala, an underground centre in Antarctica (formerly at the North Pole and Tibet), where he was in contact with the Hyperborean gods and from whence he would someday emerge with a fleet of UFOs to lead the forces of light (the Hyperboreans, sometimes associated with Vril) over the forces of darkness (inevitably including, for Serrano, the Jews who follow Jehovah) in a last battle and thus inaugurating a Fourth Reich.
The "Black Sun" emblem, representing the celestial homeland of the Hyperboreans and the invisible source of their energy, according to Serrano.
The "Black Sun" emblem, representing the celestial homeland of the Hyperboreans and the invisible source of their energy, according to Serrano.

According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke,[10] "Serrano follows the Gnostic tradition of the Cathars (fl. 1025-1244) by identifying the evil demiurge as Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. As medieval dualists, these eleventh-century heretics had repudiated Jehovah as a false god and mere artificer opposed to the real God far beyond our earthly realm. This Gnostic doctrine clearly carried dangerous implications for the Jews. As Jehovah was the tribal deity of the Jews, it followed that they were devil worshipers. By casting the Jews in the role of the children of Satan, the Cathar heresy can elevate anti-Semitism to the status of a theological doctrine backed by a vast cosmology. If the Hyperborean Aryans are the archetype and blood descendents of Serrano's divyas from the Black Sun, then the archetype of the Lord of Darkness needed a counter-race. The demiurge sought and found the most fitting agent for its archetype in the Jews".

As religious scholars Frederick C. Grant and Hyam Maccoby emphasize, in the view of the dualist Gnostics, "Jews were regarded as the special people of the Demiurge and as having the special historical role of obstructing the redemptive work of the High God's emissaries".[11] Serrano thus considered Hitler as one of the greatest emissaries of this High God, rejected and crucified by the tyranny of the Judaicized rabble like previous revolutionary light-bringers. Serrano had a special place in his ideology for the SS, who, in their quest to recreate the ancient race of Aryan god-men, he thought were above morality and therefore justified, after the example of the anti-humanitarian "detached violence" taught in the Aryo-Hindu Bhagavad Gita.

[edit] The collective Aryan unconscious

In the book Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reports how C.G. Jung described "Hitler as possessed by the archetype of the collective Aryan unconscious and could not help obeying the commands of an inner voice. In a series of interviews between 1936 and 1939, Jung characterized Hitler as an archetype, often manifesting itself to the complete exclusion of his own personality. 'Hitler is a spiritual vessel, a demi-divinity; even better, a myth. Mussolini is a man' ... the messiah of Germany who teaches the virtue of the sword. 'The voice he hears is that of the collective unconscious of his race'".[12] Richard Noll has controversially argued that the early Jung was influenced by Theosophy, solar mysticism and völkisch nationalism in developing the ideas on the collective unconscious and the archetypes.[13] Jung's suggestion that Hitler personified the collective Aryan unconscious deeply interested and influenced Miguel Serrano, who later concluded that Jung was merely psychologizing the ancient, sacred mystery of archetypal possession by the gods, independent metaphysical powers that rule over their respective races and occasionally possess their members.[14] A similar esoteric thesis is also put forward by Michael Moynihan in his book Lords of Chaos.

[edit] Tempelhofgesellschaft

The Tempelhofgesellschaft was founded in Vienna in the early 1990s by Norbert Jurgen-Ratthofer and Ralft Ettl to teach a form of Gnostic religion called Marcionism. The group identifies an "evil creator of this world," the Demiurge with Jehovah, the god of Judaism. They distribute pamphlets claiming that the Aryan race originally came to Atlantis from the star Aldebaran (this information is supposedly based on "ancient Sumerian manuscripts"). They maintain that the Aryans from Aldebaran derive their power from the vril energy of the Black Sun. They teach that since the Aryan race is of extraterrestrial origin, it has a divine mission to dominate all the other races.

[edit] Conspiracy theories and pseudoscience

The writings of Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi and other proponents of Esoteric Nazism have spawned numerous later works connecting Aryan master race beliefs and Nazi escape scenarios with enduring conspiracy theories about hollow earth civilizations and shadowy new world orders.[citation needed] Since 1945, neo-Nazi writers have also proposed Shambhala and the star Aldebaran as the original homeland of the Aryans. The book Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival, by Hypnerotomachia Poliphili scholar Joscelyn Godwin, discusses pseudoscientific theories about surviving Nazi elements in Antarctica. Arktos is noted for its scholarly approach and examination of many sources currently unavailable elsewhere in English-language translations. Godwin and other authors such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke have discussed the connections between Esoteric Nazism and Vril energy, the hidden Shambhala and Agartha civilizations, and underground UFO bases, as well as Hitler’s supposed survival in Antarctic oases or in alliance with Hyperboreans from the subterranean world.[15]

[edit] Influences within neopaganism

Organisations such as the Armanen-Orden represent significant developments of neo-pagan esotericism and 'Ariosophy' after World War II, but they do not all constitute forms of Nazi esotericism. Some northern European neopagan groups, such as Theods, Ásatrúarfélagið and Viðartrúar, have explicitly stated that neo-Nazism is not common among their members. On the other hand, there are neopagan organisations with close ties to neo-Nazism, such as the Artgemeinschaft or the Heathen Front, and the attraction of many neo-Nazis to Germanic paganism remains an issue particularly in Germany (see Nornirs Ætt).

[edit] Nazi satanism and National Socialist black metal

Main article: Neo-fascism and paganism

There is a contemporary loose network of small groups that combine neo-fascism and satanism. These groups can be found in Britain, France, and New Zealand, under names such as "Black Order" or "Infernal Alliance", drawing their inspiration from the Esoteric Hitlerism of Miguel Serrano.[16] These groups advocate the anti-modern neo-tribalism and "Traditionalism" found in the "pagan" mysticist ideals of Alain de Benoist's Nouvelle Droite inspired by Julius Evola.

Esoteric themes, including references to artifacts such as the Spear of Longinus, are also often alluded to in neo-Nazi music (e.g. Rock Against Communism) and above all in National Socialist black metal.[17]

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Assassinations shock Mexican musicians


· Death of two singers takes toll into double figures
· No obvious links to the nation's drug cartels

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Thursday December 6, 2007
The Guardian

Mexican musicians are trying to close ranks after assassins killed two singers in the space of a few hours - following a year in which at least eight others in the profession have died violently.

Sergio Gómez, the leader of the hugely popular K-Paz de la Sierra group, was kidnapped after playing a stadium in the central state of Michoacán on Saturday night. His battered, burned, and strangled body was found dumped on a roadside on Monday. Kayda Peña survived a bullet in the back during an assault on her hotel in the border city of Matamoros on Saturday only to be killed by gunmen later with two shots to the face while being treated in hospital. A female friend and a hotel employee had already died in the initial attack.

Article continues
"We musicians have to unite; we have to work against violence in the music scene," Omar Sánchez, singer of the group Alacranes Musical, told reporters after filing past Gómez's coffin in a Mexico City funeral parlour.

Gómez, also a major figure in the US, played an up-tempo Duranguense style of music. Peña sang Grupera - a hybrid of Latin and Country rhythms performed in cowboy outfits. Both are popular in parts of Mexico caught up in a turf war between rival drug cartels believed to be responsible for more than 2,000 execution-style murders this year, despite a military-led crackdown.

Mexican drug smuggling has long had a musical component, most famously ballads about traffickers' heroic exploits known as narcocorridos. More recently, a wider range of styles have been appropriated by the gangs and their admirers who post them on YouTube to accompany grisly montages of blood-soaked bodies.

Valentin Elizalde's song A Mis Enemigos (To My Enemies) became an anthem for the Sinaloa cartel's battle for supremacy with the Gulf cartel. The singer was killed after a concert he gave in the rivals' territory in November last year.

What is particularly worrying for musicians, who thought keeping a distance from violent themes was tantamount to life insurance, is that neither Peña nor Gómez had any obvious links with the drug subculture. Both were famous for songs about love and heartbreak. And while one of Peña's first hits was titled Tiro de Gracia (the final bullet that kills a tortured victim), the song is actually a crooned requiem for a failed relationship.

Gómez's family, friends and colleagues have also vehemently denied the singer had any link to drugs - a claim repeated by many fans who gathered to send him off both in a tumultuous gathering in Michoacan and in Mexico City. A mass in the capital's cathedral is planned.

As there are no obvious links to the trafficking underworld, speculation in the Mexican media on both deaths has turned to possible love triangles. Yet it is difficult to relegate these well-organised killings to simple crimes of passion. Peña died in an incident reminiscent of the way drug traffickers have, in the past, rescued arrested leaders being treated in hospital following a shoot out with the authorities. Gómez was reportedly kidnapped after his vehicle was stopped in its tracks by 10 SUVs. "They've just kidnapped and murdered a major international star travelling with bodyguards," Elijah Wald, author of a book on narcorridos, said. "That is a very clear message: 'We can get anybody.'"


Assassinations shock Mexican musicians


· Death of two singers takes toll into double figures
· No obvious links to the nation's drug cartels

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Thursday December 6, 2007
The Guardian

Mexican musicians are trying to close ranks after assassins killed two singers in the space of a few hours - following a year in which at least eight others in the profession have died violently.

Sergio Gómez, the leader of the hugely popular K-Paz de la Sierra group, was kidnapped after playing a stadium in the central state of Michoacán on Saturday night. His battered, burned, and strangled body was found dumped on a roadside on Monday. Kayda Peña survived a bullet in the back during an assault on her hotel in the border city of Matamoros on Saturday only to be killed by gunmen later with two shots to the face while being treated in hospital. A female friend and a hotel employee had already died in the initial attack.

Article continues
"We musicians have to unite; we have to work against violence in the music scene," Omar Sánchez, singer of the group Alacranes Musical, told reporters after filing past Gómez's coffin in a Mexico City funeral parlour.

Gómez, also a major figure in the US, played an up-tempo Duranguense style of music. Peña sang Grupera - a hybrid of Latin and Country rhythms performed in cowboy outfits. Both are popular in parts of Mexico caught up in a turf war between rival drug cartels believed to be responsible for more than 2,000 execution-style murders this year, despite a military-led crackdown.

Mexican drug smuggling has long had a musical component, most famously ballads about traffickers' heroic exploits known as narcocorridos. More recently, a wider range of styles have been appropriated by the gangs and their admirers who post them on YouTube to accompany grisly montages of blood-soaked bodies.

Valentin Elizalde's song A Mis Enemigos (To My Enemies) became an anthem for the Sinaloa cartel's battle for supremacy with the Gulf cartel. The singer was killed after a concert he gave in the rivals' territory in November last year.

What is particularly worrying for musicians, who thought keeping a distance from violent themes was tantamount to life insurance, is that neither Peña nor Gómez had any obvious links with the drug subculture. Both were famous for songs about love and heartbreak. And while one of Peña's first hits was titled Tiro de Gracia (the final bullet that kills a tortured victim), the song is actually a crooned requiem for a failed relationship.

Gómez's family, friends and colleagues have also vehemently denied the singer had any link to drugs - a claim repeated by many fans who gathered to send him off both in a tumultuous gathering in Michoacan and in Mexico City. A mass in the capital's cathedral is planned.

As there are no obvious links to the trafficking underworld, speculation in the Mexican media on both deaths has turned to possible love triangles. Yet it is difficult to relegate these well-organised killings to simple crimes of passion. Peña died in an incident reminiscent of the way drug traffickers have, in the past, rescued arrested leaders being treated in hospital following a shoot out with the authorities. Gómez was reportedly kidnapped after his vehicle was stopped in its tracks by 10 SUVs. "They've just kidnapped and murdered a major international star travelling with bodyguards," Elijah Wald, author of a book on narcorridos, said. "That is a very clear message: 'We can get anybody.'"



Assassinations shock Mexican musicians


· Death of two singers takes toll into double figures
· No obvious links to the nation's drug cartels

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Thursday December 6, 2007
The Guardian

Mexican musicians are trying to close ranks after assassins killed two singers in the space of a few hours - following a year in which at least eight others in the profession have died violently.

Sergio Gómez, the leader of the hugely popular K-Paz de la Sierra group, was kidnapped after playing a stadium in the central state of Michoacán on Saturday night. His battered, burned, and strangled body was found dumped on a roadside on Monday. Kayda Peña survived a bullet in the back during an assault on her hotel in the border city of Matamoros on Saturday only to be killed by gunmen later with two shots to the face while being treated in hospital. A female friend and a hotel employee had already died in the initial attack.

Article continues
"We musicians have to unite; we have to work against violence in the music scene," Omar Sánchez, singer of the group Alacranes Musical, told reporters after filing past Gómez's coffin in a Mexico City funeral parlour.

Gómez, also a major figure in the US, played an up-tempo Duranguense style of music. Peña sang Grupera - a hybrid of Latin and Country rhythms performed in cowboy outfits. Both are popular in parts of Mexico caught up in a turf war between rival drug cartels believed to be responsible for more than 2,000 execution-style murders this year, despite a military-led crackdown.

Mexican drug smuggling has long had a musical component, most famously ballads about traffickers' heroic exploits known as narcocorridos. More recently, a wider range of styles have been appropriated by the gangs and their admirers who post them on YouTube to accompany grisly montages of blood-soaked bodies.

Valentin Elizalde's song A Mis Enemigos (To My Enemies) became an anthem for the Sinaloa cartel's battle for supremacy with the Gulf cartel. The singer was killed after a concert he gave in the rivals' territory in November last year.

What is particularly worrying for musicians, who thought keeping a distance from violent themes was tantamount to life insurance, is that neither Peña nor Gómez had any obvious links with the drug subculture. Both were famous for songs about love and heartbreak. And while one of Peña's first hits was titled Tiro de Gracia (the final bullet that kills a tortured victim), the song is actually a crooned requiem for a failed relationship.

Gómez's family, friends and colleagues have also vehemently denied the singer had any link to drugs - a claim repeated by many fans who gathered to send him off both in a tumultuous gathering in Michoacan and in Mexico City. A mass in the capital's cathedral is planned.

As there are no obvious links to the trafficking underworld, speculation in the Mexican media on both deaths has turned to possible love triangles. Yet it is difficult to relegate these well-organised killings to simple crimes of passion. Peña died in an incident reminiscent of the way drug traffickers have, in the past, rescued arrested leaders being treated in hospital following a shoot out with the authorities. Gómez was reportedly kidnapped after his vehicle was stopped in its tracks by 10 SUVs. "They've just kidnapped and murdered a major international star travelling with bodyguards," Elijah Wald, author of a book on narcorridos, said. "That is a very clear message: 'We can get anybody.'"



Assassinations shock Mexican musicians


· Death of two singers takes toll into double figures
· No obvious links to the nation's drug cartels

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Thursday December 6, 2007
The Guardian

Mexican musicians are trying to close ranks after assassins killed two singers in the space of a few hours - following a year in which at least eight others in the profession have died violently.

Sergio Gómez, the leader of the hugely popular K-Paz de la Sierra group, was kidnapped after playing a stadium in the central state of Michoacán on Saturday night. His battered, burned, and strangled body was found dumped on a roadside on Monday. Kayda Peña survived a bullet in the back during an assault on her hotel in the border city of Matamoros on Saturday only to be killed by gunmen later with two shots to the face while being treated in hospital. A female friend and a hotel employee had already died in the initial attack.

Article continues
"We musicians have to unite; we have to work against violence in the music scene," Omar Sánchez, singer of the group Alacranes Musical, told reporters after filing past Gómez's coffin in a Mexico City funeral parlour.

Gómez, also a major figure in the US, played an up-tempo Duranguense style of music. Peña sang Grupera - a hybrid of Latin and Country rhythms performed in cowboy outfits. Both are popular in parts of Mexico caught up in a turf war between rival drug cartels believed to be responsible for more than 2,000 execution-style murders this year, despite a military-led crackdown.

Mexican drug smuggling has long had a musical component, most famously ballads about traffickers' heroic exploits known as narcocorridos. More recently, a wider range of styles have been appropriated by the gangs and their admirers who post them on YouTube to accompany grisly montages of blood-soaked bodies.

Valentin Elizalde's song A Mis Enemigos (To My Enemies) became an anthem for the Sinaloa cartel's battle for supremacy with the Gulf cartel. The singer was killed after a concert he gave in the rivals' territory in November last year.

What is particularly worrying for musicians, who thought keeping a distance from violent themes was tantamount to life insurance, is that neither Peña nor Gómez had any obvious links with the drug subculture. Both were famous for songs about love and heartbreak. And while one of Peña's first hits was titled Tiro de Gracia (the final bullet that kills a tortured victim), the song is actually a crooned requiem for a failed relationship.

Gómez's family, friends and colleagues have also vehemently denied the singer had any link to drugs - a claim repeated by many fans who gathered to send him off both in a tumultuous gathering in Michoacan and in Mexico City. A mass in the capital's cathedral is planned.

As there are no obvious links to the trafficking underworld, speculation in the Mexican media on both deaths has turned to possible love triangles. Yet it is difficult to relegate these well-organised killings to simple crimes of passion. Peña died in an incident reminiscent of the way drug traffickers have, in the past, rescued arrested leaders being treated in hospital following a shoot out with the authorities. Gómez was reportedly kidnapped after his vehicle was stopped in its tracks by 10 SUVs. "They've just kidnapped and murdered a major international star travelling with bodyguards," Elijah Wald, author of a book on narcorridos, said. "That is a very clear message: 'We can get anybody.'"



Assassinations shock Mexican musicians


· Death of two singers takes toll into double figures
· No obvious links to the nation's drug cartels

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Thursday December 6, 2007
The Guardian

Mexican musicians are trying to close ranks after assassins killed two singers in the space of a few hours - following a year in which at least eight others in the profession have died violently.

Sergio Gómez, the leader of the hugely popular K-Paz de la Sierra group, was kidnapped after playing a stadium in the central state of Michoacán on Saturday night. His battered, burned, and strangled body was found dumped on a roadside on Monday. Kayda Peña survived a bullet in the back during an assault on her hotel in the border city of Matamoros on Saturday only to be killed by gunmen later with two shots to the face while being treated in hospital. A female friend and a hotel employee had already died in the initial attack.

Article continues
"We musicians have to unite; we have to work against violence in the music scene," Omar Sánchez, singer of the group Alacranes Musical, told reporters after filing past Gómez's coffin in a Mexico City funeral parlour.

Gómez, also a major figure in the US, played an up-tempo Duranguense style of music. Peña sang Grupera - a hybrid of Latin and Country rhythms performed in cowboy outfits. Both are popular in parts of Mexico caught up in a turf war between rival drug cartels believed to be responsible for more than 2,000 execution-style murders this year, despite a military-led crackdown.

Mexican drug smuggling has long had a musical component, most famously ballads about traffickers' heroic exploits known as narcocorridos. More recently, a wider range of styles have been appropriated by the gangs and their admirers who post them on YouTube to accompany grisly montages of blood-soaked bodies.

Valentin Elizalde's song A Mis Enemigos (To My Enemies) became an anthem for the Sinaloa cartel's battle for supremacy with the Gulf cartel. The singer was killed after a concert he gave in the rivals' territory in November last year.

What is particularly worrying for musicians, who thought keeping a distance from violent themes was tantamount to life insurance, is that neither Peña nor Gómez had any obvious links with the drug subculture. Both were famous for songs about love and heartbreak. And while one of Peña's first hits was titled Tiro de Gracia (the final bullet that kills a tortured victim), the song is actually a crooned requiem for a failed relationship.

Gómez's family, friends and colleagues have also vehemently denied the singer had any link to drugs - a claim repeated by many fans who gathered to send him off both in a tumultuous gathering in Michoacan and in Mexico City. A mass in the capital's cathedral is planned.

As there are no obvious links to the trafficking underworld, speculation in the Mexican media on both deaths has turned to possible love triangles. Yet it is difficult to relegate these well-organised killings to simple crimes of passion. Peña died in an incident reminiscent of the way drug traffickers have, in the past, rescued arrested leaders being treated in hospital following a shoot out with the authorities. Gómez was reportedly kidnapped after his vehicle was stopped in its tracks by 10 SUVs. "They've just kidnapped and murdered a major international star travelling with bodyguards," Elijah Wald, author of a book on narcorridos, said. "That is a very clear message: 'We can get anybody.'"



Assassinations shock Mexican musicians


· Death of two singers takes toll into double figures
· No obvious links to the nation's drug cartels

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Thursday December 6, 2007
The Guardian

Mexican musicians are trying to close ranks after assassins killed two singers in the space of a few hours - following a year in which at least eight others in the profession have died violently.

Sergio Gómez, the leader of the hugely popular K-Paz de la Sierra group, was kidnapped after playing a stadium in the central state of Michoacán on Saturday night. His battered, burned, and strangled body was found dumped on a roadside on Monday. Kayda Peña survived a bullet in the back during an assault on her hotel in the border city of Matamoros on Saturday only to be killed by gunmen later with two shots to the face while being treated in hospital. A female friend and a hotel employee had already died in the initial attack.

Article continues
"We musicians have to unite; we have to work against violence in the music scene," Omar Sánchez, singer of the group Alacranes Musical, told reporters after filing past Gómez's coffin in a Mexico City funeral parlour.

Gómez, also a major figure in the US, played an up-tempo Duranguense style of music. Peña sang Grupera - a hybrid of Latin and Country rhythms performed in cowboy outfits. Both are popular in parts of Mexico caught up in a turf war between rival drug cartels believed to be responsible for more than 2,000 execution-style murders this year, despite a military-led crackdown.

Mexican drug smuggling has long had a musical component, most famously ballads about traffickers' heroic exploits known as narcocorridos. More recently, a wider range of styles have been appropriated by the gangs and their admirers who post them on YouTube to accompany grisly montages of blood-soaked bodies.

Valentin Elizalde's song A Mis Enemigos (To My Enemies) became an anthem for the Sinaloa cartel's battle for supremacy with the Gulf cartel. The singer was killed after a concert he gave in the rivals' territory in November last year.

What is particularly worrying for musicians, who thought keeping a distance from violent themes was tantamount to life insurance, is that neither Peña nor Gómez had any obvious links with the drug subculture. Both were famous for songs about love and heartbreak. And while one of Peña's first hits was titled Tiro de Gracia (the final bullet that kills a tortured victim), the song is actually a crooned requiem for a failed relationship.

Gómez's family, friends and colleagues have also vehemently denied the singer had any link to drugs - a claim repeated by many fans who gathered to send him off both in a tumultuous gathering in Michoacan and in Mexico City. A mass in the capital's cathedral is planned.

As there are no obvious links to the trafficking underworld, speculation in the Mexican media on both deaths has turned to possible love triangles. Yet it is difficult to relegate these well-organised killings to simple crimes of passion. Peña died in an incident reminiscent of the way drug traffickers have, in the past, rescued arrested leaders being treated in hospital following a shoot out with the authorities. Gómez was reportedly kidnapped after his vehicle was stopped in its tracks by 10 SUVs. "They've just kidnapped and murdered a major international star travelling with bodyguards," Elijah Wald, author of a book on narcorridos, said. "That is a very clear message: 'We can get anybody.'"



Assassinations shock Mexican musicians


· Death of two singers takes toll into double figures
· No obvious links to the nation's drug cartels

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Thursday December 6, 2007
The Guardian

Mexican musicians are trying to close ranks after assassins killed two singers in the space of a few hours - following a year in which at least eight others in the profession have died violently.

Sergio Gómez, the leader of the hugely popular K-Paz de la Sierra group, was kidnapped after playing a stadium in the central state of Michoacán on Saturday night. His battered, burned, and strangled body was found dumped on a roadside on Monday. Kayda Peña survived a bullet in the back during an assault on her hotel in the border city of Matamoros on Saturday only to be killed by gunmen later with two shots to the face while being treated in hospital. A female friend and a hotel employee had already died in the initial attack.

Article continues
"We musicians have to unite; we have to work against violence in the music scene," Omar Sánchez, singer of the group Alacranes Musical, told reporters after filing past Gómez's coffin in a Mexico City funeral parlour.

Gómez, also a major figure in the US, played an up-tempo Duranguense style of music. Peña sang Grupera - a hybrid of Latin and Country rhythms performed in cowboy outfits. Both are popular in parts of Mexico caught up in a turf war between rival drug cartels believed to be responsible for more than 2,000 execution-style murders this year, despite a military-led crackdown.

Mexican drug smuggling has long had a musical component, most famously ballads about traffickers' heroic exploits known as narcocorridos. More recently, a wider range of styles have been appropriated by the gangs and their admirers who post them on YouTube to accompany grisly montages of blood-soaked bodies.

Valentin Elizalde's song A Mis Enemigos (To My Enemies) became an anthem for the Sinaloa cartel's battle for supremacy with the Gulf cartel. The singer was killed after a concert he gave in the rivals' territory in November last year.

What is particularly worrying for musicians, who thought keeping a distance from violent themes was tantamount to life insurance, is that neither Peña nor Gómez had any obvious links with the drug subculture. Both were famous for songs about love and heartbreak. And while one of Peña's first hits was titled Tiro de Gracia (the final bullet that kills a tortured victim), the song is actually a crooned requiem for a failed relationship.

Gómez's family, friends and colleagues have also vehemently denied the singer had any link to drugs - a claim repeated by many fans who gathered to send him off both in a tumultuous gathering in Michoacan and in Mexico City. A mass in the capital's cathedral is planned.

As there are no obvious links to the trafficking underworld, speculation in the Mexican media on both deaths has turned to possible love triangles. Yet it is difficult to relegate these well-organised killings to simple crimes of passion. Peña died in an incident reminiscent of the way drug traffickers have, in the past, rescued arrested leaders being treated in hospital following a shoot out with the authorities. Gómez was reportedly kidnapped after his vehicle was stopped in its tracks by 10 SUVs. "They've just kidnapped and murdered a major international star travelling with bodyguards," Elijah Wald, author of a book on narcorridos, said. "That is a very clear message: 'We can get anybody.'"

If i won a Bose I'd sell it. Fuck Bose.

What brand/make is it?

History

[edit] Origins
The "kabuki-mono" were a group that dressed in a somewhat peculiar style and spoke in vulgar specialized vernacular that matched their often abrasive and outrageous behavior.
The "kabuki-mono" were a group that dressed in a somewhat peculiar style and spoke in vulgar specialized vernacular that matched their often abrasive and outrageous behavior.

Despite their notoriety in modern Japan, the precise origin of the Yakuza is still somewhat the subject of debate. The first historical interpretation of their derivation is from the hatamoto-yakko or Kabuki-mono of the 17th century Genroku Era,[2] who were derivative classes of the low-rank hatamoto, which resembled a quarter of the shogun.[3]

Other theories, suggested by the Yakuza members themselves claim their origins are from the machi-yokko, who policed villages by protecting them from the hatamoto-yakko that tried to steal from them, despite their being outmatched by the Hatamoto-yakko in training and strength. Despite their shortcomings, the machi-yakko were regarded as folk heroes similar to those in the stories of Robin Hood, with some groups being made the feature of plays and dramas.[4][5] The derivation from the hatamoto-yakko or Kabuki-mono known for their adoption of strange hair styles and outrageous dress manner refers to a relevant era of the Genroku Period in which kabuki plays, and onnagata were prominent.

Despite the different groups, the majority of the events which led to their inception occurred during the Edo period. As peacetime brought about by the destruction of the Toyotomi Clan ensured the Tokugawa shogunate's role of maintaining peace, shogun retainers were no longer required in their role as soldiers[6] and moved from their own catchment areas to live in feudal castles where their income was determined by their daimyō.

Due to the isolation of Japan and restriction of foreign trade, Japan's agricultural production and domestic trade greatly improved which resulted in the increase of power in the merchant class and the financial dependency of the samurai upon them -- samurai retainers were paid with rice by their daimyō, and then sold in markets as a means of generating their salary.

As natural disasters, famine and tax increases led to the destabilization of the social hierarchy and the decline of morals due to public dissatisfaction with the government, factions of wayward, leaderless samurai known as ronin began to focus their attention from community service towards generating money through theft and violence towards smaller mercantile villages with disparate policing and little feudal control as they presented less-dangerous means of achieving iniquitous money. However, Yakuza that claim origin from the machi-yakko refute their origins from the hatamoto-yakko due to its association with thievery, which is supposedly unpracticed amongst modern Yakuza.

In larger towns, several of these groups often existed simultaneously, and they often fought for territory, money and influence much like modern gangs, disregarding any civilians caught in the crossfire. Again, this is the origin of a popular theme of Japanese film and television, made famous in the West by an Akira Kurosawa film called Yojimbo in which a wandering ronin sets two such gangs against each other and eventually destroys them. Yakuza derived some practices from both machi-yakko and kabukimono. Their protection rackets can be seen as originating from machi-yakko, but their more colorful fashion and language are derived from the kabukimono tradition.

[edit] Divisions of origin

Despite uncertainty about the single origin of Yakuza organizations, most modern Yakuza derive from two classifications which emerged in the mid-Edo Period: tekiya, those who primarily peddled illicit, stolen or shoddy goods; and bakuto, those who were involved in or participated in gambling.[7]

Tekiya (peddlers) were considered one of the lowest of Edo castes. As they began to form organizations of their own, they took over some administrative duties relating to commerce, such as stall allocation and protection of their commercial activities. During Shinto festivals, these peddlers opened stalls and some members were hired to act as security. Each peddler paid rent in exchange for a stall assignment and protection during the fair. The Edo government eventually formally recognized such tekiya organizations and granted the "oyabun" (servants) of tekiya a surname as well as permission to carry a sword. This was a major step forward for the traders, as formerly only samurai and noblemen were allowed to carry swords.

Bakuto (gamblers) had a much lower social standing even than traders, as gambling was illegal. Many small gambling houses cropped up in abandoned temples or shrines at the edge of towns and villages all over Japan. Most of these gambling houses ran loan sharking businesses for clients, and they usually maintained their own security personnel. The places themselves, as well as the bakuto, were regarded with disdain by society at large, and much of the undesirable image of the yakuza originates from bakuto; This includes the name "yakuza" itself.

Because of the economic situation during the mid-period and the predominance of the merchant class, developing Yakuza groups were composed of misfits and delinquents that had joined or formed Yakuza groups to extort customers in local markets by selling fake or shoddy goods.[7] The roots of the Yakuza can still be seen today in initiation ceremonies, which incorporate tekiya or bakuto rituals. Although the modern yakuza has diversified, some gangs still identify with one group or the other; For example, a gang whose primary source of income is illegal gambling may refer to themselves as bakuto.

[edit] Post-War Yakuza: Gurentai
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (September 2007)

As Japan began to industrialize and urbanization got underway, a third group of yakuza called gurentai (*********連隊) began to emerge (though the name gurentai was not given until after World War II). Whether they fall into the traditional definition of yakuza is still open to debate, but they certainly gave birth to another kind of yakuza, the bōryokudan (violence group). In short, a gurentai is a gang in a much more traditional sense, a group of young unruly thugs who peddle their violence for profit. They often engaged in the suppression of unions and other workers' organizations and such activities brought them much closer to the conservative elements of the Japanese power structure. During the militarisation of Japan, some of them became the militant wing of Japanese politics known as uyoku (right wing, 右翼), i.e. ultra-nationalists.

Unlike more traditional yakuza, uyoku did not maintain territories—they leveraged their violence for political gain. The most famous group before World War II was the Kokuryū-kai (黒龍*********), or Black Dragon Society. The Kokuryu-kai was a secret ultra-nationalist umbrella organization whose membership was composed of government officials and military officers as well as many martial artists and members of the Japanese underworld who engaged in political terrorism and assassination. They also provided espionage services for the Japanese colonial government. Kokuryū-kai engaged in contraband operations including the Chinese opium trade, as well as prostitution and gambling overseas which provided them with funds as well as information.

During the post-War rationing, the yakuza controlled the black market much in line with traditional tekiya operations. At the same time, they also moved into controlling major sea ports as well as the entertainment industry. The biggest yakuza umbrella group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, emerged in the Kansai region, which had a large entertainment industry in the city of Osaka as well as a major sea port in Kobe. American occupation forces fought against them in vain and conceded defeat in 1950. Yakuza also adapted to a more western style, including wearing clothing reminiscent of US gangsters, and began to use firearms. At this point, tekiya and bakuto no longer confined themselves to their traditional activities and expanded into any venture they found profitable. At the same time gurentai began to adopt traditional roles of tekiya and bakuto. They also began to feud among themselves, jockeying for power and prestige.

In the 1960s, Yoshio Kodama, an ex-nationalist, began to negotiate treaties with various groups, first with the Yamaguchi-gumi of Kazuo Taoka and Tōsei-kai of Hisayuki Machii and eventually with the Inagawa-kai. Fights between individual gangs, however, are ongoing.

[edit] The Korean Yakuza
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (September 2007)
Certain public Japanese bathhouses (sentō) and gymnasiums often openly ban those bearing large or graphic tattoos in an attempt to prevent Yakuza from entering.
Certain public Japanese bathhouses (sentō) and gymnasiums often openly ban those bearing large or graphic tattoos in an attempt to prevent Yakuza from entering.

Main article: Koreans in Japan

Koreans are a prominent part of yakuza, despite or perhaps because Koreans suffer discrimination in Japanese society. Although Japanese-born people of Korean ancestry are a significant segment of the Japanese population, they are still considered resident aliens. But Koreans, who are often shunned in legitimate trades, are embraced by the Japanese yakuza precisely because they fit the group's "outsider" image. The man who paved the way for Koreans in Japanese organized crime was the Korean yakuza godfather Hisayuki Machii.

Born Chong Gwon Yong in 1923 in Japanese-occupied Korea, Machii was an ambitious street hood who saw opportunity in Japan and seized it. After the Japanese surrender, Machii worked with the United States Counter Intelligence Corps, which valued his staunch anti-communist beliefs. While leaders of the Japanese yakuza were imprisoned or under close scrutiny by the American occupying forces, the Korean yakuza were free to take over the lucrative black markets. But rather than trying to rival the Japanese godfathers, Machii made alliances with them, and throughout his career, he remained close to both Kodama and Taoka.

In 1948 Machii established the Tosei-kai (Voice of the East Gang) and soon took over Tokyo's Ginza district, the Times Square of Japan's capital. The Tosei-kai became so powerful in Tokyo that they were known as the "Ginza police," and even the Yamaguchi-gumi's all-powerful Taoka had to cut a deal with Machii to allow that group to operate in Tokyo. Machii's vast empire included tourism, entertainment, bars and restaurants, prostitution, and oil importing. He and Kodama made a fortune on real estate investments alone. More importantly, he brokered deals between the Korean government and the yakuza that allowed Japanese criminals to set up rackets in Korea, a country that had been victimized by the Japanese for many years. Thanks to Machii, Korea became the yakuza's home away from home. Befitting his role as fixer between the underworlds of both countries, Machii was allowed to acquire the largest ferry service between Shimanoseki, Japan, and Pusan, South Korea—the shortest route between the two countries.

In the mid-1960s, pressure from the police forced Machii to officially disband the Tosei-kai. He formed two supposedly legitimate organizations around this time, the Toa Sogo Kigyo (East Asia Enterprises Company) and Toa Yuai Jigyo Kumiai (East Asia Friendship Enterprises Association), which became fronts for his criminal activities. He was widely believed to have helped the Korean Central Intelligence Agency kidnap then-leading Korean opposition leader Kim Dae Jung from a Tokyo hotel (see kidnapping of Kim Dae-Jung). Kim was whisked out to sea where he was bound, gagged, blindfolded and fitted with weights so that his body would never surface. The execution by drowning was abruptly cancelled when aircraft buzzed the ship, and Kim was mysteriously delivered to his neighborhood in Seoul. American intervention is said to have saved his life. A police investigation revealed that Machii's people had rented every other room on the floor of the hotel where Kim had been staying, but Machii was never charged with any crime in connection with kidnapping. Machii "retired" in his 80s and was frequently seen vacationing in Hawaii. He died on September 14, 2002.

Also, Tokutaro Takayama was the kaicho of the Fourth Aizukotetsu yakuza gang. An ethnic Korean, he rose to power as the head of the Kyoto-based gang until his retirement in the 1990s.

[edit] Organization and activities
The Yakuza are a popular subject in films
The Yakuza are a popular subject in films

[edit] Structure

During the formation of the yakuza, they adopted the traditional Japanese hierarchical structure of oyabun-kobun where kobun (*********分; lit. foster child) owe their allegiance to the oyabun (親分; lit. foster parent). In a much later period, the code of "jingi" (仁義, justice and duty) was developed where loyalty and respect are a way of life. The oyabun-kobun relationship is formalized by ceremonial sharing of sake from a single cup. This ritual is not exclusive to the yakuza — it is also commonly performed in traditional Japanese Shinto weddings, and may have been a part of "sworn brotherhood" relationships.

During the World War II period in Japan, the more traditional tekiya/bakuto form of organization declined as the entire population was mobilised to participate in the war effort and society came under strict military government. However, after the war, the yakuza adapted again.

Prospective yakuza come from all walks of life. The most romantic tales tell how yakuza accept sons who have been abandoned or exiled by their parents. Many yakuza start out in junior high school or high school as common street thugs or members of bōsōzoku gangs. Some yakuza "goons" are actually mentally handicapped, but recruited due to their large physiques. Perhaps because of its lower socio-economic status, numerous yakuza members come from Burakumin and ethnic Korean backgrounds. The leadership levels of yakuza gangs usually consist of very sharp, cunning, intelligent men, as the process to rise to the top-levels in the yakuza can be very competitive and Machiavellian.

Yakuza groups are headed by an Oyabun or Kumichō (組*********, family head) who gives orders to his subordinates, the kobun. In this respect, the organization is a variation of the traditional Japanese senpai-kōhai (senior-junior) model. Members of yakuza gangs cut their family ties and transfer their loyalty to the gang boss. They refer to each other as family members - fathers and elder and younger brothers. The Yakuza is populated entirely by men, and there are usually no women involved except the Oyabun's wife who is called "o-nee-san" (お姉さん older sister). Unlike many crime groups, women are sometimes involved in its activities. When the Yamaguchi-gumi (Family) boss was shot in the late nineties, his wife took over as boss of Yamaguchi-gumi, albeit for a short time.

The Yakuza have a very complex organizational structure. There is an overall boss of the syndicate, the kumicho, and directly beneath him are the saiko komon (senior advisor) and so-honbucho (headquarters chief). The second in the chain of command is the wakagashira, who governs several gangs in a region with the help of a fuku-honbucho who is himself responsible for several gangs. The regional gangs themselves are governed by their local boss, the shateigashira. [1]

Each member's connection is ranked by the hierarchy of sakazuki (sake sharing). Kumicho are at the top, and control various saikō-komon (最高顧問, senior advisors). The saikō-komon control their own turfs in different areas or cities. They have their own underlings, including other underbosses, advisors, accountants and enforcers. Those who have received sake from oyabun are part of the immediate family and ranked in terms of elder or younger brothers. However, each kobun, in turn, can offer sakazuki as oyabun to his underling to form an affiliated organisation, which might in turn form lower ranked organisations. In the Yamaguchi-gumi, which controls some 2500 businesses and 500 yakuza groups, there are even 5th rank subsidiary organisations.

[edit] Rituals
A Dowa Yakuza member's "Irezumi" showing a fierce tiger. Often, these tattoos are used to represent a desired or possessed characteristic such as wealth and bravery.
A Dowa Yakuza member's "Irezumi" showing a fierce tiger. Often, these tattoos are used to represent a desired or possessed characteristic such as wealth and bravery.

Yubitsume, or finger-cutting, is a form of penance or apology. Upon a first offense, the transgressor must cut off the tip of his left pinky finger and hand the severed portion to his boss. Sometimes an underboss may do this in penance to the oyabun if he wants to spare a member of his own gang from further retaliation. Its origin stems from the traditional way of holding a Japanese sword. The bottom three fingers of each hand are used to grip the sword tightly, with the thumb and index fingers slightly loose. The removal of digits starting with the little finger moving up the hand to the index finger progressively weakens a person's sword grip. The idea is that a person with a weak sword grip then has to rely more on the group for protection — reducing individual action. In recent years, prosthetic fingertips have been developed to disguise this distinctive appearance. (When the British cartoon Bob the Builder was first considered for import to Japan, there were plans in place to add an extra digit to each of the title character's four-fingered hands to avoid scaring children. The same thing was also considered for the show Postman Pat.) [2]

Many Yakuza have full-body tattoos. These tattoos, known as irezumi in Japan, are still often "hand-poked," that is, the ink is inserted beneath the skin using non-electrical, hand-made and hand held tools with needles of sharpened bamboo or steel. The procedure is expensive and painful and can take years to complete.[8]

Yakuza in prison sometime perform pearlings: for each year spent in prison one pearl is inserted under the skin of the penis.

When yakuza members play Oicho-Kabu cards with each other, they often remove their shirts or open them up and drape them around their waists. This allows them to display their full-body tattoos to each other. This is one of the few times that yakuza members display their tattoos to others, as they normally keep them concealed in public with long-sleeved and high-necked shirts.

Another prominent yakuza ritual is the sake-sharing ceremony. This is used to seal bonds of brotherhood between individual yakuza members, or between two yakuza groups. For example, in August 2005 , the Godfathers Kenichi Shinoda and Kazuyoshi Kudo held a sake-sharing ceremony, sealing a new bond between their respective gangs, the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Kokusui-kai.

[edit] Principal families
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Although yakuza membership has declined following an antigang law aimed specifically at yakuza and passed by the Japanese government in 1992, there are thought to be more than 87,000 active yakuza members in Japan today. Although there are many different Yakuza groups, together they form the largest organized crime group in the world. Most yakuza members belong to four principal families (see below.)
Principal families Description Their Mon (crest)
Yamaguchi-gumi
(六代*********山口組, Rokudaime Yamaguchi-gumi, Yamaguchi-gumi
?) Created in 1915, the Yamaguchi-gumi is the biggest yakuza family with more than 39,000 members divided into 750 clans (thus making up 45% of all yakuza in Japan.) Despite more than one decade of police repression, the Yamaguchi-gumi has continued to grow. From its headquarters in Kobe, it directs criminal activities throughout Japan. It is also involved in operations in Asia and the United States. Shinobu Tsukasa, also known as Kenichi Shinoda, is the Yamaguchi-gumi's current oyabun. He follows an expansionist policy, and has increased operations in Tokyo (which has not traditionally been the territory of the Yamaguchi-gumi.)
Yamabishi (山菱), the Mon of the Yamaguchi-gumi
Yamabishi (山菱), the Mon of the Yamaguchi-gumi
Sumiyoshi-rengo
(住吉*********), sometimes known as Sumiyoshi-kai (住吉*********) The Sumiyoshi-rengo is the second largest yakuza family, with 10,000 members divided into 177 clans. The Sumiyoshi-kai, as it is sometimes called, is a confederation of smaller yakuza groups. Its current oyabun is Shigeo Nishiguchi. Structurally, Sumiyoshi-kai differs from its principal rival, the Yamaguchi-gumi, in that it functions like a federation. The chain of command is more lax, and although Shigeo Nishiguchi is always the supreme oyabun, its leadership is distributed among several other people.
Inagawa-kaï
(稲川*********) The Inagawa-kaï is the third largest yakuza family in Japan, with roughly 7,400 members divided into 313 clans. It is based in the Tokyo-Yokohama area and was one of the first yakuza families to expand its operations to outside of Japan. Its current oyabun is Kakuji Inagawa.
Toua Yuai Jigyo Kummiai (東亜友愛*********業組*********), sometime called Tōa-kai (東亜*********) Founded by Hisayuki Machii in 1948, the Tao Yuai Jigyo Kummiai yakuza family quickly became one of most influential yakuza groups in Tokyo. It is composed of yakuza of Korean origin, and numbers more than 1,000 divided into 6 clans. Its current oyabun is Satoru Nomura.

[edit] Current activities

[edit] In Japan

Much of the current activities of the yakuza can be understood in the light of their feudal origin. First, they are not a secret society like their counterparts of the Italian mafia and Chinese triads. Yakuza organizations often have an office with a wooden board on the front door, openly displaying their group name or emblem. Members often wear sunglasses and colourful suits so that their profession can be immediately recognized by civilians (katagi). Even the way many Yakuza walk is markedly different from ordinary citizens. Their arrogant, wide gait is markedly different from the quiet, unassuming way many Japanese go about their business. Alternatively, Yakuza can dress more conservatively and flash their tattoos to indicate their affiliation when the need arises. On occasion they also sport insignia pins on their lapels. One Yakuza family even printed a monthly newsletter with details on prisons, weddings, funerals, murders, and poems by leaders.

Until recently, the majority of yakuza income came from protection rackets in shopping, entertainment and red-light districts within their territory. This is mainly due to the reluctance of such businesses to seek help from the police. The Japanese police are also reluctant to interfere in internal matters in recognized communities such as shopping arcades, schools/universities, night districts and so on. In this sense, yakuza are still regarded as semi-legitimate organizations. For example, immediately after the Kobe earthquake, the Yamaguchi-gumi, whose headquarters are in Kobe, mobilised itself to provide disaster relief services (including the use of a helicopter), and this was widely reported by the media as a contrast to the much slower response by the Japanese government. For this reason, many yakuza regard their income and hustle (shinogi) as a collection of a feudal tax.

Yakuza are heavily involved in sex-related industries, smuggling pornography from Europe and America into Japan. They also control large prostitution rings throughout the country. In China, where the law restricts the amount of children per household and the cultural preference is for boys, the yakuza can buy unwanted girls for as little as $5,000 and put them to work in the mizu shōbai, which means 'water trade' and refers to the night entertainment business, in yakuza-controlled bars, nightclubs and restaurants. The Philippines are another source of young women. Yakuza trick girls from impoverished villages into coming to Japan, where they would be given respectable jobs with good wages. Instead, they are forced into becoming prostitutes and strippers. Often the girls succumb to the demands of their pimps, since they are earning more money than they ever could in the Philippines. [3]
The alleys and streets of Shinjuku are a popular modern Tokyo Yakuza hangout.
The alleys and streets of Shinjuku are a popular modern Tokyo Yakuza hangout.

Yakuza frequently engage in a uniquely Japanese form of extortion, known as sōkaiya (総*********屋). In essence, this is a specialized form of protection racket. Instead of harassing small businesses, the yakuza harasses a stockholders' meeting of a larger corporation. They simply scare the ordinary stockholder with the presence of yakuza operatives, who obtain the right to attend the meeting by a small purchase of stock. They also engage in simple blackmail, obtaining incriminating or embarrassing information about a company's practices or leaders. Once the yakuza gain a foothold in these companies, they will work for them to protect the company from having such internal scandals exposed to the public. Some companies still ******* payoffs as part of their annual budget.

The Yakuza have a strong influence in Japanese professional wrestling, or puroresu. Most of their interest in wrestling activities and promotions is purely financial. The Yakuza have mostly gotten involved by financially supporting wrestling promotions with fading fortunes, or simple business loans. Many venues used by wrestling (arenas, stadiums, and so forth) are owned or connected to the Yakuza, and as such, when a promotion uses one of their sites, the Yakuza receive a percentage of the gate. The Yakuza as a whole is regarded as a great supporter of both puroresu and MMA. It's not unusual for wrestlers to receive specific instructions on what to do in their matches so as to appeal just to Yakuza members in the crowd. It is thought in Japan that it is safe to say that none of the large wrestling promotions in Japan would fold, because they would be rescued by the Yakuza. The pioneer of wrestling in Japan, Rikidozan, was killed by the Yakuza. WWE wrestler Yoshihiro Tajiri was asked to start a Yakuza gimmick, an offer he quickly refused, fearing that he would be targeted by the real Yakuza. Professional wrestler Yoshiaki Fujiwara is often referred to as "Kumicho (i.e, "Godfather") and his wrestling promotion was called the Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi. He often portrays Yakuza figures as an actor on Japanese television comedies and dramas.

Yakuza also have ties to the Japanese realty market and banking, through jiageya (地*********げ屋). Jiageya specialize in inducing holders of small real estate to sell their property so that estate companies can carry out much larger development plans. Japan's bubble economy of the 1980s is often blamed on real estate speculation by banking subsidiaries. After the collapse of the Japanese property bubble, a manager of a major bank in Nagoya was assassinated, and much speculation ensued about the banking industry's indirect connection to the Japanese underworld.

Yakuza have been known to make large investments in legitimate, mainstream companies. In 1989 Susumu Ishii, the Oyabun of the Inagawa Alliance (a well known Yakuza group) bought US$ 255 million worth of Tokyo Kyuko Electric Railway's stock. [4]

As a matter of principle, theft is not recognised as a legitimate activity of yakuza. This is in line with idea that their activities are semi-open; theft by definition would be a covert activity. More importantly, such an act would be considered a trespass by the community. Also, yakuza usually do not conduct the actual business operation by themselves. Core business activities such as merchandising, loan sharking or management of gambling houses are typically managed by non-yakuza members who pay protection fees for their activities.

There is much evidence of Yakuza involvement in international crime. There are many tattooed Yakuza members imprisoned in various Asian prisons for such crimes as drug trafficking and arms smuggling. In 1997, one verified Yakuza member was caught smuggling 4 kilograms (8.82 pounds) of heroin into Canada. In 1999, Italian-American Mafia Bonnano family member, Mickey Zaffarano, was overheard talking about the profits of the pornography trade that both families could profit from.[9] Another Yakuza racket is bringing women of other ethnicities/races, especially East European[10] and Asian[11] to Japan under the lure of a glamourous position, then forcing the women into prostitution.[citation needed]

Because of their history as a legitimate feudal organization and their connection to the Japanese political system through the uyoku (extreme right-wing political groups), yakuza are somewhat a part of the Japanese establishment. In the early 80s in Fukuoka, a yakuza war spiraled out of control and a few civilians were hurt. The police stepped in and forced the yakuza bosses on both sides to declare a truce in public. At various times, people in Japanese cities have launched anti-yakuza campaigns with mixed and varied success. In March 1995, the Japanese government passed the "Act for Prevention of Unlawful Activities by Criminal Gang Members" which made traditional racketeering much more difficult.

[edit] In America

Yakuza activity in the United States is mostly relegated to Hawaii, but have made their presence known in other parts of the country. The Yakuza are said to use Hawaii as a way station between Japan and mainland America, smuggling crystal methamphetamine into the country and smuggling back firearms to Japan. They easily fit into the local population, since many tourists from Japan and other Asian countries visit the islands on a regular basis. The Yakuza were estimated to control around 90% of the methamphetamine trade in Hawaii as of 1988. They also work with local gangs, funneling Japanese tourists to gambling parlors and brothels.

In California, the Yakuza have made alliances with local Vietnamese and Korean gangs as well as Chinese triads. Yakuza gangsters have also been spotted in Las Vegas and New York City, where they appear to collect finders fees from American mafiosos and businessmen for guiding Japanese tourists to gambling establishments, both legal and illegal. [5]

[edit] In Australia

Yakuza presence in Australia at present is minimal, being restricted mainly to the Gold Coast, Queensland, where Yakuza members go to launder money in Gold Coast Casinos, or to extort money from Japanese businesses (mainly tourism). As it stands, the Yakuza have no known permanent stakes in Australia, but with new anti-gang laws appearing in Japan, some anticipate the Yakuza making plans for a permanent base in Australia, which would bring them into direct confrontation with gangs such as the Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta and the Irish Mob.

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