Annie Gordon

Right from the get-go I can tell that this song is in an asymmetrical meter of 7, 9, or 11. The tempo of the song is extremely quick, making it difficult for me to count out specifically what meter it is in. Instrumentally, I hear an accordian, clarinet playing the main, ornamented melody of the piece rhythmically supported by a stringed instrument in the background. For the majority of the song the clarinet and accordion play an extremely ornamented melody in unison. A few minutes into the piece they take turns soloing on their own, but always come back to playing in unison. The piece ends with the accordian soloing after the clarinet.

The quick tempo and instrumentation of this piece hints at its function – music for a dance at a social setting. The name of the piece “Horo” indicates that the dance that accompanying the song is a Bulgarian “circle dance” in which the dancers hold hands and dance in a cirlce, moving their feet in a complex pattern. This dance is used for social purposes such as weddings and parties. Often as more and more people join the circle dance the tempo of the music will speed up to increase the energy, which it does in this particular song.

The instrument in this piece immediately reminds me of a violin or viola – in fact it may be a violin that is just played in a different style than the Western music that I am used to. In the excerpt, the violin is the only instrument heard, and it is playing in a soloistic manner that allows the texture of the song to sound full depsite the fact that only one person is playing. The violin is playing at a fast tempo with a melody that is supported by the notes that the violin plays to fill in the melody – but they are not exactly harmonies, these notes are more just a countermelody that fills in the space between the main melodic notes so that a single musician can play this tune without it sounding sparse. The fact that this piece contains only a single soloist shows a distinction the Bulgarian indigenous instrumental music and other cultures’ music we have studied that values the ensemble over the soloist. In this piece it is clear that value is placed on a presentational style of music and that the virtousity and skill level of the performer are important.

Perhaps some participatory styles of this music are found through the audience participation. This sounds like music that people could possibly dance to or maybe even sing to – so that element would categorize the music as slightly more participatory.

 The beginning of this song features prominent wind instruments and percussion. The wind instruments sounds like a flute of some sort, and it sounds as though there are many people playing the same tune on this instrument. Similarly, the percussion section sounds like many people playing the same cyclical rhythm on the same type of drum – maybe a bass drum. The rhythm feels like it is out of 8 beats, possiby divided into sections of 4 and 4 beats.

Listening a second time to the entire piece I noticed a brief introduction to the cycle of beats; the wind instruments played the same note, possibly to establish the tonicization of the entire piece. Also, I notice that even though the wind instruments are playing the exact same melody with no harmonies, some  flutes are playing an octave higher than the others. Although the musicians are definitely playing a preplanned melody that they all have learned previous to the recording, some flute players seem a little less adept at playing their parts than others. I occasionally hear a flute come in late or early, crack their notes, or play considerably louder than others. This discretion may indicate that professionalism or virtuosity on an instrument is not a priority in music from the Andes.

Hwahwa from Chamunorwa – In this version of Mapfumo’s Hwahwa the guitar sound dominates the texture, establishing the song as essentially an arrangement of the original tune for a “studio” instruments. The instrumentation of the song including the guitars, a trumpet ensemble, drum set, and bass, sounds very inauthentic and pre-recorded and some sounds, like the trumpet calls, maybe have even been studio generated.

Some similarities in this tune still remain from indigenous Mbira music. The guitars and bass play an extremely repetitive patterns that cycles through the entire recording. The solo voice is also reminiscent of the importance of the voice in Mbira settings.

HwaHwa from Chimurenga – This style of the HwaHwa song is much more in tune with the original styles of Mbira performance. Many indigenous instruments and sounds are much more present within the texture such as shakers, the lamellaphones, background noises such as clapping, and the voice. The voice’s importance in this version of HwaHwa is clear because of its dominance within the texture, the use of yodeling, and the presence of more than one voice including a chorus of singers towards the end of the recording.

While there are more indigenous elements present in this version of Mapfumo’s HwaHwa, there are also some “Western” or “cosmopolitan” instruments present in the recording. I hear a guitar, bass, and drum set, which all play the cyclical pattern (sometimes improvising over it) along with the shakers and the lamellaphones. Overall this version of the song is much less recording studio-sounding than the previous version.

In this representation of Nhumamusasa, the shaker instruments are the definite forefront of the texture of the music. They are loud and overwhelm all other aspects of the music. The voice and lamellaphones are second loudest to the shakers and perhaps of equal importance. The voice trades off singing words and yodelling while the lamellaphones establish the rhythmic context of the piece, which is outlined by the shakers. The lamellaphone also establishes the cyclical pattern of the overall rhythm and embellishes it slightly with off-beats.

In the background of the main features of the musical texture are clapping and occasional vocal noises like yelling and whistling, probably from people participating in the music, but not part of the main mbira musicians.

The context of this song is probably the ancestral possession ceremony. The song is constantly high in energy, loud, and involved many people, all qualities that fit the necessary requirements for a spirit possession ceremony.

This song is an interesting blend of modern jazz, pop, and Pygmy music. The beginning of Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” closely resembles aspects of Pygmy music including the use of the reed instrument (the papaya flute?) and the cyclical, repetitious pattern of the music. The song gains momentum as more and more people and instruments enter the mix. First it is just a mix of the flute and vocal humming on the off-beats. About a minute into the song a second flute has entered along with some other interesting sounds (one sounds like a person yelping, another like a person squawking). Despite the pygmy-like qualities of the music, there is a constant Western pop influence throughout the song starting with the rhythms used between the flute and the voice. Off-beats and syncopations define the overall rhythmic structure, a structure common in jazz music. Soon, the electric bass, drums, and guitar enter and phase out the reed flutes and interesting sounds that first dominated the structure. By the end of the clip, the song has evolved into a regular Herbie Hancock jazz tune.

Learning the Javanese Gamelan instruments was an very mind-opening experience for me. The instruments, music, and concepts were extremely different from the music that I know and perform on my own instrument, so experiencing the gamelan first-hand expanded my knowledge of the concept of music on a more worldly basis. First, the instruments themselves were radically different from the instruments I know in both their simplicity and complexities. Although the majority of the individual instruments could only sound anywhere from 1 to 7 notes on its own, the collection of instrument families (i.e. the gong family or gamelan family) produced a series of tones very far-fetched from the tonal, straightforward scales that I know and play on a daily basis. Gamelan scales, I learned, consist of 5-7 notes that are played in a cyclical pattern. These patterns are played on the idiophone family (like xylophones) and then emphasized and embellished using the gong and gamelan instrument families. Although the note pattern is repeated exactly over and over again, the rhythm can be either extremely complex or extremely simple depending on the instrument you are playing. I got the chance to perform on the big gong that sounds at the beginning/end of every 16-beat pattern in the gamelan. Although my part was easy, it took intense focus and knowledge of the pattern to remember to hit the gong at 16 after every cycle. Other instruments, like the gamelan, had an extremely complex role in the music, embellishing the cycle of notes by playing on off-beats either before or after the main beat. The idiophones on the other hand, had the most straightforward part, essentially repeating the pattern of notes over and over again until the song ended; the key to performing on these instruments is memorization.

The vocalist is the focal point of this gamelan ensemble. The singer is female, and she is accompanied by the rest of the ensemble, which sounds like it includes the idiophones, flutes, and a xylophone. A minute or so in the piece, more voices enter the texture. Perhaps the solo voice in the beginning is used to emphasize a certain portion of the text. The chorus is singing homophonically without any harmony, but the background ensemble instruments create a melodic back-drop for the vocals’ melody. The ensemble is also playing in a cyclical pattern that repeats over and over behind the vocalists’ melody.

The tempo of this song is relatively slow, which possibly indicates the mood or emotion associated with the song that may also go along with text. Towards the end, the tempo rises a little bit, which again may allude to emotion. At the very end, it slows down immensely. The flute is also given periodic solos in between vocal lines, showing the importance of the instruments over some others.

At the very end, the instrumental background drops out, leaving the vocalists to end the song alone.

The instrument that opens this song sounds like a reed instrument, probably a flute of some sort. This music doesn’t resemble the talempong music we have previously listened to. It is more “Eastern” sounding; the scale patterns and intervals that are used are very modal and sound more minor and sad than the talempong music. Also, the flute and vocalist seem play/sing within a tiny range for a long period of the song, using the same notes repeatedly.

The title of this song, “Night music of West Sumatra” possible alludes to the function of this music. This song seems very fitting for a ceremony (maybe religious, but probably not because Muslims don’t mix music and religion; maybe spiritual?) that would take place during the night time because of its mysterious texture and sound. The music does not to seem to follow a strict time pattern. The vocalist and flute player sound like they are improvising their parts, the flute emulating the melismas sung by the vocalist.  This reminds me of Indian music where the instruments and vocals often improvise and imitate each other; maybe this type of Indonesian music is influenced by India.

Also, it sounds like there is more than one singer who performs during the piece. The singers are all women. (I think).

I immediately recognized three aspects of this clip:

1. The singer is male

2. There is one voice with no supporting instrumentation

3. The singer follows a strict time signature of what seems to be 4/4 time

These 3 qualities help me to guess about the differences between the indigenous-style and cosmopolitan style of talempong. Up to this point, we have only been exposed to female vocalists in the video clips we have seen in class. The male voice might possibly explain a male dominance within cosmopolitan society. Also, our previous listening excerpts have involved talempong, percussion, some reed instruments, and some vocal music, but never vocals alone. This perhaps is another difference between talempong and cosmopolitan musical ideals. Lastly, while the previous talempong audio clips have involved a steady and cyclical beat, they were not in a strict time signature and sometimes fluctuated between time signatures, unlike this song which is in 4/4 throughout the clip.

These 3 major differences show a “modernization” of the cosmopolitan style of music in Indonesia from the indigenous-style talempong because the piece as adopted qualities of music from outside of the area.