James Countryman

“Suite of Festival Tunes”

“Hristianova Kopanitsa”

“Pravo Horo”

Roma wedding band music is cool because of the way that musicians cleverly blend musical styles. These listening examples all feature ensembles of Western instruments playing in a style that is quite distinctive from the indigenous instrumental ensembles we’ve heard so far (not counting folk orchestras). While at the same time, this music indexes indigenous musical elements.

“Suite of Festival Tunes” is a great example of this different style. It has a jazzy, funk feel, and is played with electric guitar, electric bass, drum set, clarinet, and accordian. They play a flashy opening that immediately signals the funk style of this piece, but then they proceed to play in various assymetrical meters throughout the piece. They start out in 11/8, switch back and forth between this and 13/8 for the first half of the track, change to 7/8 in the second half, and then switch to a different meter towards the very end which I wasn’t able to distinguish. The changes in meter are marked by big pauses in the music, or in one case by the clarinet doing a long glissando (that sounds to me an awful lot like the sound of a gaida starting up), or in another case by a very flashy Western jazz-style improvised drum solo. What is really impressive is how well-coordinated these transitions are between all the instruments. This was clearly quite composed and well-rehearsed.

“Hristianova Kopanitsa” features a similar ensemble of clarinet, saxophone, accordian, drum set, and electric bass. They start out playing a fast-beat tune in 11/8 meter, followed by a series of highly virtuosic solos from the accordian, saxophone, and clarinet. With this particular instrumentation and the frequency of virtuosic solos, this piece also sounds very jazz influenced.

“Pravo Horo” is also played by a clarinet-accordian-electric-bass-drum kit ensemble (this is clearly the standard set-up). This example sounds the most “Balkan” to me, or at least the most Central European. But it too contains distinctive stylistic features that are different from other types of Bulgarian music. Like the pieces above, this piece has a very tight, homophonic texture. The instruments play right together, there is none of the heterophony we hear in the older-style Bulgarian village instrumental music. There is also a much steadier tempo, no speeding up then drawing out the beats. The clarinet and accordian both take solos that highlight the virtuosity of these musicians. The beats and chords played by the bass gives this music a bounciness that I haven’t really heard in any of the other Bulgarian instrumental musics.

All of these pieces display great virtuosity of the musicians and are clearly very composed. The instruments play together in homophony, always on the beat and always “in tune”. The pieces also feature composed and rehearsed openings and transitions. This may be participatory music in the sense that it is designed to get people to dance (usually – I have my doubts about “Suite of Festival Tunes”), but it contains a lot of presentational features. These pieces show clearly that wedding music is the domain of skilled proffessional musicians.

Thracian gudulka

Tsokinata

Daichovo Horo

Krivo Plovdivsko Horo (folk orchestra)

Having studied and listened to this music a lot last semester, it’s hard for me to say much new about these examples of Bulgarian instrumental music. But it is fun to hear some familiar sounds, and I have been able to pick up on some of the details of the music that I didn’t pay much attention to the last time around. These pieces all share common stylistic features – the much-discussed asymmetrical meters and rich melodic ornamentation for starters. But beyond that, I tried to listen in these pieces to how the melodies themselves are composed, and I noticed some common melodic features as well. The melodies usually consist of a few of the same phrases repeated again and again. The tunes are put together in sections, usually an A and B, maybe a C, and a couple of other shorter sections or variations of the tune.  The sectional structure I heard in the solo gudulka piece was AABBAABBCDEE, and the structure I could pick out for the solo gaida piece was something roughly along the lines of AABBAACCBBABBABACCAABBAACDAABA. In both instances the A and B sections show up a LOT. They are usually repeated twice in the beginning before introducing other sections, and then reprised throughout. “Daichovo Horo”, played by an ensemble of kaval, gaida, tapan, gudulka, and tambura, had a similar AABBCCetc. structure, but this is also a medley of different sets of tunes in different meters. “Krivo Plovdivsko Horo”, played by a folk orchestra, also has two main A and B sections. The main structural difference here however, is that these sections are played by the whole orchestra and interspersed with solo passages played by a kaval. The melodies always tend to cover a fairly narrow range of notes. The different phrases and sections of a tune end up sounding rather similar because they are composed from the same 5 to 8 notes. I noticed particularly in the gaida example and the gudulka example that the melody emphasizes one specific pitch that serves as the anchor and focal point. The gudulka tune uses the tonic as a jumping-off point, moves up to the fifth and frequently dips back down to the tonic. This emphasizing of a few central pitches makes it sound like the solo melody is providing a kind of drone for itself. That quintessential Balkan drone is ever-pervasive.

I still get lost in the compound meters. I feel like I can pick them out better than I could at the start of Music of the Balkans last semester, but they are still hard to follow. I think a lot of the difficulty with hearing these is because the instrumentalists don’t really follow a steady tempo. They stretch out the beat and then speed up unpredictably (I hear this in the music, and I also remember a musician mentioning this at one of the workshops last semester), and this makes listening for the assymetrical meters all the more challenging.

Siku Lento

Siku Ligero

Siku Choclo

Siku Illimani

Pitu

Pinkillu

These listening examples, each a different genre of indigenous Andean flute music, share a number of key stylistic similarities. The musical features of these pieces – in terms of timbre, texture, and structure – show that Aymara flute ensembles fit firmly into Turino’s Participatory framework of music making.

In “Siku Lento” for example, the piece is played by lots of flutes, accompanied by a deep drum. The size of the ensemble is obvious because of the wide intonation and thick texture due to the fact that there are many flutes playing and they are not all in tune with each other. They are also playing in multiple registers, with some flutes playing in a lower octave and others in a higher octave; a few even seem to be playing in parallel 4ths/5ths. The melody is repetitive, with the same motives and intervals heard frequently. The tune seems to be in a more or less straight meter, but there is some syncopation in the flute melody. While everyone is playing generally the same melody line, not everyone is doing exactly the same thing. There is a core group playing a consistent melody, while others seem enter and drop out, even play variations (that may be intentional or unintentional! given how quickly these pieces are learned and then played) Everyone follows along and gives a general impression of the melody, even though the group is definitely not always together. The impression is of a very loose sound.

“Siku Ligero” has similar sound qualities as “Siku Lento” above, but it is a faster piece, and most of the players seem to have a clearer  sense of the melody line. The soundis still thick and fuzzy, but the ensemble is much tighter here than in “Siku Lento”. It sounds like the core melody is in the low flutes. A few of the high flutes aren’t playing the exact melody line; one high flute occasionally likes to add notes on the off-beats.

The other four pieces follow the same stylistic features outlined above: wide intonation, dense texture, and repetitive melodies. All the ensembles have that loose sound, where it is apparent that some players know the melody better than others. There are always a few flutes who just sort of play along on the side, with lots of squeaks and toots, not quite playing the exact melody, but following along as best they can. The ensemble playing in “Pitu”has particularly wide intonation. One flute seems to be playing almost half a tone higher thn everybody else! The drum has a similar role in all these examples: it lays out the basic pulse of the piece, with very little variation or flourish. In “Siku Illimani”, the drummer plays a very simple 3-beat pulse, just striking the drum for each beat, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, putting emphasis on beat 1. The function of the drum seems more to establish pulse than rhythm. The pieces vary in how straight or syncopated the rhythm of the melody is, and how clearly delineated the different sections of the melody are. But all the melodies share a simple, cyclical form, with a few key phrases and motives that are played repetitively. These distinguishing musical qualities are a result of the participatory nature of this music. If we look at the essential features Turino identifies for participatory music – dense texture, wide intonation (and the resulting “cloaking function”), core and elaboration, and cyclical form – Aymara flute ensembles fit the Participatory frame perfectly.

“Hwahwa” from Best of Thomas Mapfumo: Chimurenga Forever

Thomas Mapfumo: “Hwa Hwa” from Chamunorwa

For two pieces with the same title and by the same artist, these two versions of “Hwahwa” are  quite different from each other. The Chimurenga version has distinct continuities with indigenous mbira music. “Hwa Hwa” from Chamunorwa seems to depart from indigenous music significantly, maintaining only abstract similarities.

The first version of “Hwahwa”, from Chimurenga Forever, is heavily grounded in mbira music. This track features two mbiras, shakers, drum kit, an electronic instrument (I don’t know exactly what it is), and vocals – one prominent male voice (Thomas Mapfumo?) and a chorus of mostly female voices. As with indigenous mbira pieces, the two mbiras form the core part, which is played constantly and continuously. What the other instruments are doing serves largely to elaborate on the core mbira part. The two mbiras also establish the polyrhythmic composition of this piece, which is very remeniscent of the polyrhythmic mbira playing used in spirit possession ceremonies. The rhythmic feel here is 2 against 3. The basic pulse seems to be a cycle of 8 beats, and then within each of these larger beats are 6 subdivisions. These 6 subdivisions are divided up into three groups of 2 or two groups of 3, so you can feel the beat either as  2+2+2 OR 3+3. The full chord progression cycle is 8 of these 6-beat pulses, so 24 smaller beats. This type of polyrhythmic drive is very indexical of Shona spirit possession music. Even though there are modern electronic instruments used in this piece, it seems very much to be in an indigenous Shona idiom.

The second version of “Hwa Hwa”, from Chamunorwa, is very different from indigenous music in instrumentation and style. This track is played with twangy (electronic?) string instruments, electric bass, drum kit, a solo male singer, and trumpets interspersed throughout the piece. The pulse leans much more towards a straight 4-beat feel. There is no polyrhythm here, and no indigenous instruments that I can hear. I do hear some continuities with mbira music in the two twangy electric guitar parts. One plays a repetative melody that cycles continuously, remeniscent of the core mbira part. The other guitar plays a more elaborative part, and these together support the vocals. This piece then, also seems to have a special kind of balance between core and elaboration that is rooted in indigenous mbira music, even if the instruments here are completely different.

“Nhemamusasa (at bira)”

“Nhemamusasa (polyphony and polyrhythm)”

“Demonstration of Form in ‘Nhemamusasa’”

I found listening to Turino’s demonstration of “Nhemamusasa” very helpful in understanding the form of this piece and the musical idiom of Mbira playing – the cycle of the four phrases, the three descending tones in each phrase, and the chordal progression of the piece. The demonstration also keyed me into the variation that goes on in Mbira playing. I noticed that as Turino plays, the basic chordal progression – the four note phrases and the three leading tones in each one – remains constant throughout the entire piece. But the “off-beats” following the 3 main tones in each phrase, the 2-3-4, 6-7-8, and 10-11-12 beats in the 12 beat cycle – these are changed, varied, elaborated upon as the piece progresses. I also noticed that the music gradually grows in intensity – he gradually plays faster, and louder, which also makes the bottle caps attached to the sound board vibrate more. When I went back and listened to the “Nhemamusasa (polyrhythm and polyphony)” example, I heard these same features being used. The first mbira begins slowly, laying out the basic phrases. Then as the piece progresses, as in the demonstration, the off-beats of the 12-note cycle are where the musician plays around, varying and elaborating the melody with different notes on top of this. (This would be intensive variation, as befitting participatory music – I suppose this is essential for keeping the music interesting for the player when they are playing  through all hours of the night!) When the second mbira enters, it adds even more elaboration on top of the main melody, as it plays in a 3-against-4 meter, which is what gives this piece its “polyrhythm” aspect.

It is so interesting, considering the mbira’s tone quality, its timbre and volume, that this is the core instrument used in spirit possession ceremonies. The goal of the ceremonies seems to be to create a mass of sound and movement that will create an intense ecstatic state and induce possession. But listening to the mbira played by itself, the sound is soft, subdued, relaxing almost – not something I would instinctively associate with spirit possession ceremonies. Listening to examples like the first example of Nhemamusasa, which sounds more like an actual possession ceremony, it is quite hard to hear the intricacies of structure and variation in the mbira playing underneath all the singing, ululating, and loud gourd shaking. (even with the large resonators attached to the mbira during ceremonies). Yet the mbira is the central instrument, the sound that is supposed to draw forth the ancestor to enter the body of the medium. Of course it’s hard to get a full sense of what the sounds of the ceremony are really like just from recordings and videos, but I can’t help but wonder how the ancestors can even hear the mbira!

 The listening selections of “Pygmy Pop” seem a perfect case study of the diverse ways in which a set of musical practices can be altered, adapted and otherwise removed from their original context to be appropriated into completely different types of music.

To look first at some of the listening examples from Wednesday – “Makala” and “Bibayak Styles of Yodeling”- highlighting a few basic features of BaAka music: the “Styles of Yodeling” recording seems to be a compilation of several different sets of singers demonstrating (as the title would indicate) various different vocal techniques. The styles have general similarities. The melodic form is very repetitive/cyclical, and characterized by rapid and frequent swings back and forth between low and high notes. In the segments with multiple singers, they sing in many different parts, and it seems the more singers there are, the more vocal lines there are. The parts seem to be quite different from each other, with different notes and often completely different rhythms, yet they overlap, weave together and interlock in a way that almost reminds of talempong cycles. “Makala” shows this music in what sounds like a more natural setting. It begins with people talking in the background and some drums getting a beat going. A group of male voices sings an underlying vocal ostinato and other voices are added on top of this. The sound increases as more and more voices gradually add to the mix. There are a few groups of people singing “chorus” type parts, and then there are a number of other vocal lines above this sung by individual singers. Each sings their own distinct part. (Its hard to say how formulaic the melodies or if they are being improvised to any degree.) The general impression is of a mass of sound, where everyone present has joined in the song. It is easy to see how this is “Participatory” music in its fullest sense. The structure is highly repetitive with no set form. People join in as they please and there is a part for everyone.

The listening examples of Pygmy Pop are quite a departure from this character of music. Most of them contain some sort of element(s) of BaAka vocals, that are set with other, non-indigenous instruments and lots and lots of synthesizers. In “Watermelon Man”, the original piece “Hindewhu” is used as a background, with some other added sound effects that seem to be trying to evoke “the forest”. On top of this is added drum set, electric guitar, and then electric keyboard, saxophone, and some other percussion and synth effects, giving a very jazzy sound that has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of Pygmy music. “Deep Forest” is extremely heavy on the synthesizers and uses loops of various little pieces of (presumably) BaAka vocals to make a background for sung lyrics. I’m not sure what exactly this song is supposed to be. It doesn’t sound like any kind of original BaAka singing, but I get the impression that is intended to be some sort of Pygmy music. “Sanctuary”, like “Deep Forest”, includes loops of BaAka music as part of a highly synthesized, electronica-type composition. It uses the same flute piece that “Watermelon Man” uses. But this loop plays a very small role in the overall piece, and it is only this one element of the track that is drawn from BaAka music. All of these examples take very small fragments of BaAka music and fuse them into synthesized, studio recorded compositions that are completely divorced from any kind of BaAka context. It is quite hard to tell just from listening what these pieces have to do with Pygmy music. “Deep Forest” is the only one that makes direct reference, with its absurd “Somewhere deep in the jungle…”  prologue. It’s not clear what these pieces are trying to accomplish through their various appropriations of this music.

Baburan “Kembang Pacar”

Ladrang “Wilujeng”

In thinking about the structure of some of the Gamelan listening examples, like with the forms of West Sumatran Talempong, the most imediately striking feature is the repetitive, cyclical nature of the music. In Baburan “Kembang Pacar”, the melody consists of just two or three main fragments – very  short motives. Each little bit seems to be played and repeated a number of times, then the next one is played, and then the next one, and so on, cycling through over and over again. The melody is augmented with many other patterns. The instruments of the ensemble range from very low to very high pitched, and it seems most of them are used to play repeating, ostinato-like patterns around the melody. All the parts utilize a small range of just a few pitches. The melody seems to only use about four. The “Demonstration” example of this piece really highlights a layering effect of gong parts on top of and underneath the central melody. The piece begins with just melody and extra parts are added on one by one.

Ladrang “Wilujeng” also illustrates this layering quality. The piece begins with just the bowed string instrument playing the melody, then successively adds drums, gongs, and voice. As the piece progresses, gradually more and more gongs are added, and multiple singers added to the one. As with the piece above, the music consists of many different parts, all very cyclical and repetitive. The gongs play short cyclical patterns in many different pitch ranges (from deep bass to high gongs), while the melody is sung above them. All though all the parts are highly repetitive, the vocal cycles seem to last much longer. The vocal melody moves in long sweeping phrases over the rapidly cycling gong parts. Also in common with “Kembang Pacar”, this piece utilizes a fairly small range of tones. The gong parts use just a few notes, and the vocal melody spans a range of around and octave (<–?)

Although we’ve emphasized in class the differeneces between this type of an ensemble and the way we think of an orchestra here in the West, I think there are also some key similarities. Both emphasize an array of instruments filling a wide range of pitch registers. Both emphasize polyphonic texture, with many different parts, where the melody is not the sole focus, but rather it is the dynamic interplay between melody and countermelody. Of course an essential difference, structurally speaking, is the repetitive, cyclical nature of Gamelan music.

Sidi (Talempong Pacik)

Urang Halaban

Lubuk Sao TK

Talempong is quite different from any music that I’ve listened to before. What struck me most about the listening samples of indigenous talempong is the sheer rhythmic and repetetive qualities of the music. Even though different tones among the gongs are used, they are not used to create any sort of melody per se, exept for one short phrase that is cycled over and over again. For the most part, this is pure rhythm. Even in the “Sidi” excerpt, which features a reedwind instrument, the melody played by this instrument is, like the gong parts, highly repetitive, consisting of one short phrase cycled continuously with slight variation (and long sustained notes).

How then, to approach this kind of music? There is not much “development” as we would think of it in Western, or even Arab or Indian musics, particularly in terms of melody. The variation in the repetitive, cyclical structure of the music is subtle. In Urang Halaban for example, there are three parts (I think), plus a few drums providing a steady meter and pulse. One part plays what could be called a “melody”, while the other two play ostinato type patterns which repeat continuously. The melody part consists of essentially one short motive which occupies the same amount of metric space as the other rhythmic cycles. For the most part, it seems to just repeat over and over again, but subtle variation is added by adding notes in between the main notes of the cycle and by alternately descending and ascending between the principal tones.What seems to make this music interesting is the interplay between the gong parts – the points in the music where all the gongs sound together (each gong part striking a note on the same beat), offset by the times when each part seems to be doing something completely different.

The “Cosmopolitan” Talempong style is a radical departure from the indigenous forms in many ways. “Lubak Sao” for example, is played by a large ensemble, rather than just a few players, consisting of many different instruments: many types of gongs and drums, and a flute. The flute in particular is a sound that was not present in the indigenous examples. What is particularly striking is how much more melodic in character this piece is than the indigenous pieces. The gongs employ a much wider range of tones and are used to create melodies in a way that they are not in the indigenous talempong examples. The piece is laid out in a roughly ABA format. The gong parts begin with a couple of ostinato patterns and lay out the basic melody. The flute enters in the middle with a second melodic section, and then the gongs reprise the main melody. (On a side note, the flute seems very out of tune with the rest of the ensemble. At least a quarter tone sharp. I’m not sure what the significanceof that is.) This music is much more consonant than the indigenous styles of playing. The gong parts play rhythms that are more similar to each other and lock together in a more deliberate way. To me this gives the music a feeling of being more heavy (the larger size of the ensemble also plays into this). One thing I notice about Lubak Sao in particular is that all the parts play on the same beat every four beats – what we might think of as a “down beat” in Western terms. And very noticeably at the end of the piece, all the instruments together strike four accented notes/beats in a row. While the cosmopolitan style of talempong is somewhat more melodically interesting (though the melody is still quite cyclical and repetitive), it loses a lot of the dynamic interplay of rhythms that makes the indigenous talempong music distinctive.

After Wednesday’s lesson in keeping tal, I decided to practice some of the teental claps and waves while listening to one of the Ragas for Friday. Here are some things I noticed about the raga structure while keeping tal to “Raga Nat Bhainav”.

In the transition from the alap section to the gat, I noticed that the tabla does not enter on the first “dha” beat of the cycle. Rather it comes in with a flourish a few beats before, then with a deep, resonant drum stroke marking the first beat of the cycle. Keeping tal during this middle segment of the performance made me realize how much syncopation and ebb-and-flow there is in the rhythm of the melody. The mohan vina often plays off the main beats, also slowing down, rushing forward, drawing out certain notes (what we would call rubato inWestern terms)  It also seemed like the melody followed the pulse of the tihai sections along with the drums. It is easy to tell when a tihai comes along because the rhythm of both the melodic and precussion instruments is off from the rhythm I’m trying to clap. I also found that the whole rag speeds up as the piece progresses. By the end, the tempo is almost double what it was at the beginning of the alap. With the climactic tihai going on at the same time, keeping the tala towards the end becomes especially difficult.

The listening examples from this week were drawn from a wide range of different types of Indian music. I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that makes all of these pieces “Indian”. Because there is definitely something characteristic that is binding all of them together. Even though they each come from very different contexts and embody different styles & genres, they are all distinctly Indian. Hearing these pieces without any context whatsoever, in each case, I can immediately recognize, “ah, this is Indian music.” What is this peculiar quality in the music that makes it so recognizable?

Take the Sufi “Ishq”, for example.  This piece shows a clear melding of styles and musical influences. The main melody is provided by a male vocalist, accompanied by a harmonium (NOT a native Indian instrument). The accordian-like timbre of the harmonium with the hijaz-like mode of the vocal melody, sounds as though it could be at home somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean – Turkey, for instance. But this is clearly not a Turkish piece, it is Indian. Part of it is the drone. The twangy, steel-string droning sound is particularly prominent in the beginning, and continues to pulsate throughout the piece. It’s the same type of sound heard in many other examples. The tambura drone seems to be one uniting feature of Indian music. The slow opening is also characteristic. The singer delivers a slow, lush melody, richly ornamented with vibrato, melismas, and slides between notes. These stylistic features are also found in other examples, both in singing and in the ragas delivered on the sitar, sarod, or veena. When the music moves into the rhythmic section, the melody becomes more formulaic, with repeated melodic motives and phrases, but still varied and ornamented by the singer. Perhaps the Indian character is in the formulation of melody. To me, though, the most distinctively Indian feature of this particular piece is the percussion. There is something in the sound of the tablas. When they enter is when it really clicks – “ah, this is Indian.”

“Kudi Kudi” is one of the most interesting examples in the listening selection from this week. It is full of very non-typically-Indian sounds, but it maintains its Indian character while using lots of synthesized instruments (both for melody and rhythm). The song is sung by a male soloist and a chors of male voices. There is no slow melodic opening. It is pure rhythmic, precomposed melody. There is not even a drone. But there are tablas. And once again, to my ears at least, it’s something in the rhythm that really gives no doubt that this is some kind of “Indian” music. I’m not sure if it is the peculiar tibre of the tablas, or the hythms themselves (probably both). There is just some kind of Indian Groove that this piece has, along with the other examples. I don’t know how to describe it. Perhaps as we learn more about tala in class it will beome clear what it is about the rhythm that is so iconic of Indian music.