Maira Clancy

Maira Clancy
Ethno100 Fraser
May 6, 2009
Listening Journal #12
Response to theme song from Xena: Warrior Princess

A bagpipe “solo” starts this song off in a very dramatic way, which helps me realize from the very beginning that the creators of this song were going for an “epic” (outstanding, heroic) theme song. The quality of the bagpipe lends itself to the traditional aspect of this song because bagpipes became more iconic in Bulgarian folk music when everyone seemed to fall in love with the extremely loud, droning instrument, and they became almost necessary in the smaller Bulgarian folk orchestras.

The song writers incorporated a choir of (what sounds like) younger people singing in perfect, haunting harmonies. Of course, this is an embellishment on the traditional idea of a Bulgarian folksong, where there would usually be maybe one singer to handle the melody. The choir is matched with an equally huge and impressive string and horn orchestra, which make the song sound like it came out of Star Wars (atleast during the parts where there are no vocals). The integration of such a western styled orchestra (which are big, loud, and with many instrumentalists playing the same part/notes to build up an enormous and full sounding texture) instead of the traditional, smaller Bulgarian folk orchestras (where they usually had only about one person playing one type of instrument, ex/ there wouldn’t be two violinists, etc.) illustrates how Bulgarian folk music began to lean to the West for influence and started adopting common practices in Western music.

Maira Clancy
Ethno100 Fraser
April 29, 2009
Listening Journal #11
Response to: Wayno: “Valicha” by Julio Benavente
Vs.
Chica: “Valicha” by Los Destellos

These two interpretations of the same song (presumably an old Andean folk song) are strikingly different. The more modern-sounding version by Los Destellos utilizes two harmonizing electric tremolo guitars to play the main melody of the song, which was played by a charanga (I believe) in the version by Julio Benavente. This seems to be a common trend in some of the songs we’ve been listening to, where the more technologically-driven bands pick up old folk songs and rework them with their tools at hand (being electric instruments).

The Julio Benavente version is very stripped down. It sounds like there are only one or two acoustic instruments playing (it could be one charanga and an acoustic guitar, or two charangas), and there is zero percussion. The texture of the song is comprised up of the many unison notes that are being played, due to the large number of duplicate strings on a charanga. The only reason I know anything about this instrument is because I visited Ecuador last summer, and a girl I was traveling with bought a charanga at a flea market, and we tried to learn how to play it (it came with a manual, but it was in Spanish, which I cannot read). It’s a gorgeous instrument, and though it is small, the many strings (which span a large range of notes from pretty low to very high) create a rich and full quality within the timbre of the song, making it seem like there is more to the composition (more layers, voices, etc.) than just that of a small little instrument.

Another interesting twist that Los Destellos plays with is the use of a wah-wah petal in their guitar work. A wah-wah petal seems to be the antithesis of acoustic music playing, because not only does it only function with the electrical amplication of the guitar, but also, because it distorts even the amplified version of what you’re hearing and synthesizes elements of the song that were not there originally, like a delayed sustain on a certain guitar riff, or the bending of a note without actually bending it (instead, bending notes with the manipulation of frequencies through use of the wah-wah petal). A traditional drum kit is incorporated in this Los Destellos track, possibly to make it more accessible to a wider audience, and to make it more steadily danceable (with a drum kit comes a certain level of predictability in beat, which lends itself to more fearless dancing audience members). Along with the drum kit, a set of congos (or some other kind of South American auxiliary percussion, I can’t quite tell) set the pace for this song. The congos have a dual role, of spicing up their version of “Valicha” and making it more “groovy” and hip, as well as anchoring the band down with a more culturally traditional form of rhythm keeping (as opposed to simply relying on the standard rock drum kit that gets to be so boring after a while).

Maira Clancy
Ethno100: Fraser
Music Journal 6:
The class when we played gamelan was my favorite class yet. I had no idea how huge the entire set up was, and I thought it was great that everyone got an instrument to play by themselves (mostly) and everyone learned the rules of playing with a gamelan set (such as, never stepping over the instruments because that’s disrespectful to them).
Being able to apply what we’ve been learning in class was extremely helpful in my understanding the structure of gamelan music. Even though we had been practicing the cycles together that week in class, it was all just shouting the numbers and sounds that were appropriate, but we never really got a chance to hear what we would have been creating as a real song. After you taught us the simple song structure for the class in Asia house, I got to finally hear and feel the building up and cycling of a song in its full beauty and I finally got to hear all the rich instruments in real time. It was so enjoyable.
I also loved the fact that we got a chance to move around on instruments. I got to play a (main) melodic and rhythmic instrument back to back, so I could sense the differences of playing that two different instrumentalists in a gamelan set might have from each other: how one would need better timing or one might need better concentration, etc.

Maira Clancy
February 2, 2009
Intro. To Music of the Worlds – Fraser
1) Iconic song: “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane
Whenever I listen to “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane, I automatically feel transported into another dimension – that of 1960s America – in the basement of some awesome “hippy” friend who is offering to drop LCD onto my tongue from some shady vile. The entire song references Lewis Carroll’s children’s books, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, as allegories to convey a larger social message. Grace Slick was criticizing the complaining parents who worried over their children falling into the drug culture of the times, while simultaneously exposing them to literature that condoned experimental behavior and drug usage (hookah-smoking caterpillar, mushrooms that make Alice change size, vials of mind-expanding liquid, etc.).
The band utilizes a marching drum roll to remind listeners of the driving force behind the psychedelic drug/”hippy” movement, which was, of course, the Vietnam War. The electric guitar riffs are written in a dark, tango-like fashion that embodies the fearless nature of courageous trippers: adventurers lost in a world of hallucinations and acid rock (psychedelic cowboys, if you will). But the guitar parts also instill me, the listener, with a feeling both of being badass and enjoying it, due to the distortion and reverb on the instrument. The voice of Grace Slick floats hauntingly above the instruments, wailing advice to the listener about how to survive and enjoy the wonderland of drug experimentation. Drug references are laced throughout the song (pills, hookahs, magic mushrooms), and combined with lyrics explaining their effects (changing in size, mind expansion, loss of logic/proportion, talking backwards, etc.), this song is a portrait of the desires and experiences of drug users in the 1960s. Another interesting aspect of the lyrics is that they do not repeat at all, perhaps suggesting the band’s intentional evasion of the conventional structure of songs, much like the hippies’ revolt against the norm.
In fact, the popular phrase “feed your head” was coined from this song. It summed up a common mentality of drug users: that we should just do what feels pleasurable to us, whether or not it’s illegal or unconventional. Music fans have clung unto this lyric and have made it the most popular in the song. “White Rabbit” experiences a beautiful crescendo in its last thirty seconds, which is imitative and reflective of the “peak” in any drug experience, after which the high is finished (as with the song). This is where the line “feed your head” is being belted out by Grace Slick, and this finale is also comparable to a human orgasm, which would make sense because of the close link between the sexual and drug revolutions of this time.

2.) Indexical Song: “Hey Jude” by the Beatles
Ever since I can remember, the Beatles have been making music in my house through the record player. Every night that my family and I would eat dinner together, John, George, Paul, and Ringo all were accompanying us with their heart-wrenching lyrics and perfectly arranged harmonies. My dad has been obsessed with the Beatles since they came to America in 1964, and naturally his love for rock’s greatest and most influential band of all time rubbed off on each any every one of his five daughters.
So it’s no surprise that my earliest albums were stolen from his personal collection, and I would listen repeatedly on the boom box that I inherited during kindergarten to the music of these four ingenious Liverpoolians. My dad, a Beatles expert, would tell me what each song was about (at least to his best knowledge), and the songs’ meanings would stick inside of my mind forever. I still remember all that he told me.
When I was seven years old, my parents divorced, and my father left the home for two years. Our mother was severely depressed and anorexic at this point, and she was such a wreck that we young girls had to take care of her, instead of having it the other way around. I remember how my dad told me that Paul McCartney wrote “Hey Jude” for John Lennon’s son, Julien, when Lennon left his wife Cynthia for Yoko Ono. I immediately turned to the Beatles to comfort me in my time of sadness, and I was so young and inarticulate at that age that listening to music was my only real option of dealing with emotion. The song touched me in such a unique way because it was written for exactly the reason that I felt the pain and for exactly the reason that I needed the comfort. Plus, the Beatles were such a paternal influence in my life already that when my father was gone, they felt like an adequate replacement.
Paul McCartney starts the song off as an intimate duet between him and his piano. It is so personalized and straightforward that it almost resembles a hand-drawn and hand-written “Get Better” card, which is exactly what someone needs during a rough spot in their life. The song ends with the whole band fading out to a “Na na na na” chant. The chant is so familiar and comforting in note arrangement that it just adds to the reassuring nature of the song. And the passionate screams of Paul McCartney let me know that he really feels genuinely about what he’s singing, and that I should trust him and his advice too. Paul let me know that I couldn’t blame myself and that things would get better for me.

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