What is Culture? Yogurt? Sour Dough Bread? Yeast? Movies and Music Today

 

As we move into a new world emerging from our post-pandemic digital daze, it becomes clear that culture, arising from the grass roots of our existence must lead the way and that war, arising out of old male hierarchies, must give way.

Technology democratizes and now is the time that its artificial intelligence join with authentic emotion to create new expanded cultural boundaries to cut across artificial borders.

Music and Cinema, primal arts with the deepest roots, are about to be conjoined. Cinema’s link to music is developing along with the re-establishment of our commonly rooted world culture.

During the Berlinale this year, I wrote about Nordic Film Music Daysentering the international film market. More will be written as Prudence Kolong’s AfroCannes announced the emergence of Afro Film Music Days to be held during AfroBerlin in February 2025.

AfroCannes, in its second year, took place all day May 16 and 17 at the Grey d’Albion Hotel in Cannes.

Film festivals — Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Venice and Sundance — are taking a new lead in cultivating grassroots growth of [one of] the most popular of the arts, cinema. TIFF’s recent government infusion of $23 million to help bolster the market aspect of the festival, a market that sees $70 million in sales during the festival is a beacon to all. The festivals’ markets follow those leads. A market without a festival, e.g., American Film Market at the same time is moving from the movie capital of the world to Las Vegas, perhaps the convention capital of the world…what is a market without a festival? It’s a trade show. Its classification devolves from culture to a commodity.

However, Cinema, the Seventh Art is not the only lead actor in arts and culture. The seven arts, inspired by The Muses are Music, Sculpture, Painting, Literature, Architecture, Performing, and Film.

The Muses, a group of sister goddesses at the roots of Western Civilization, Greco-Roman religion and mythology, were a group of sisters born at the foot of Mount Olympus. Homer cited nine. The 8th-century-BCE poet Hesiodnamed them and their names are significant: Clio the “Proclaimer”, Euterpe the “Well Pleasing”, Thalia the “Blooming” or “Luxuriant”, Melpomene the “Songstress”, Erato the “Lovely”, Polymnia (Polyhymnia) “She of the Many Hymns”, Urania the “Heavenly”, Terpsichore “Delighting in the Dance” and Calliope “She of the Beautiful Voice”, who was their chief. Their father was Zeus the Master of all the Gods, and their mother was Mnemosyne “Memory”, the very thing that allows us to return to our roots through the arts.

The Muses are often spoken of as unmarried, and they are repeatedly referred to as the mothers of famous sons, such as Orpheus, Rhesus, Eumolpus, and others connected to the arts, led by music and poetry.

Back to Our Roots

Cinema of course did not exist during the Greek times, but moving pictures have existed from the times of the earliest cave paintings. Men, returning to the caves described by Plato, told stories of their heroic hunts, chasing animals which, on the good days when (if) they returned, served as meals to their wives and children, thus staving off starvation.

Walter Benjamin — or was is Simone Weil — said that when we are confused, we should return to our beginnings when all things are possible. Are we confused enough yet? As we return to the roots of our existence, the new ways must clear away the debris of war by telling stories beginning in Africa and Asia of migrations reaching all the way up to the Nordic territories. These are the forces making themselves known today, and they are not new. They are as old as humanity.

Thus music and movies create real new ways of combining cultures. And with women leading the way, we can pave a way toward peace through Creator Economics.

Pay attention to AfroCannes and watch for AfroBerlin under the guidance of the brilliant Prudence Kolong. You will be hearing more about her soon.