This group is from Boston, but one of their grandparents is from Nova Scotia and really helps them to embrace the traditions of the culture. Also they get a lot of there cultural roots from the irish community in the Boston area.
I think its very interesting how the group starts with just music no dance. They give the feel of the tune and really get it going before the dancers join in. Then when they do join you already have the beat and tune in your ear so watching is so fun and easy! Even though they aren't from Ireland, I think it's really cool how they keep their eyes and ears open for any culture bearers in the area and use them as much as they can to get a feel for the music. They sound great and the dancers are almost always in sync. I would call this authentic to the best of their ability.
Two Pat Waing, hne (double reed pipe), kyi waing (small gongs), maung hsaing (large gongs), chauk lon pat (tuned drums in the back), si and wa (bell and clapper), vocals, various other hand drums on the right.
Burma
This is a very common ensemble traditionally from Burma. The Pat Waing is made up of 21 drums in a horse shoe shape hand carved and decorated in gold leaf. They're are two of them in this ensemble. The leader in the middle is the famous Kyaw Kyaw Naing. He is known as one of the best pat waing musicians, but also for bringing the hsaing waing ensembles to America. He performed at the Bang on a Can All-Stars in New York City in 2001. This drew a lot of people to recognize and get into this type of music! Music of this ensemble is categorized by its sudden changes of rhythm, meter and shifts in melody and tempo. I also wanted to point out how Kyaw Kyaw is basically the conductor and that none of this music is written down on paper. Everyone is focusing on him to get the new tempos and rhythm switches at exactly the same time. Most of the musicians can see his hands or his eyes to grasp onto these changes quickly since they happen so abruptly! Pretty freaking cool!
Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir singing Holy Is The Lord
Orchestration- not totally sure but sounds like keyboard, guitar, percussion, along with voice
Gospel music was first heard about in the 1800s. It is used by many different cultures in all sorts of ways, but most popular is in a church setting of some sort. It uses a great deal of repetition and lots of communication between the leader and the group. This group started with just 9 members and now has 280 not including the people who are singing along in the church. The leader is Carol Cymbala wife of the pastor Jim Cymbala. They have performed all over including Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden Theatre, Radio City Music Hall and many more. They won 5 Dove awards and 6 Grammys.
I think it's very interesting how the members of the church are interacting as an audience. Most of them are standing, some are clapping some are raising their hands like the leader told them to. A lot of them know the words and are also singing along. This seems like a great group to be a part of, they all seem to be very interested in the beliefs they have.
Instrumentation: Ribbon Controller and Kaisatsuko (Kai= rotation, Satsu= rub, Ko= oriental fiddle)
Hand made by Yuichi. Here is his description of the Ribbon Controller:
"This handmade electric musical instrument can change a oscillator pitch smoothly, depending on the place which you press down. Ribbon Controller was originally made as a kind of MOOG SYNTHESIZER's controller in late 60's. I made this following its example. And playing style is self-taught.
My ribbon controller is constructed three parts as follow.
"Ribbon controller" - which is made with a film of electric conductor(like black paper which include carbon , or rubber conductive bag. It is pasted to the vinyl chloride seat.) Body is made by conduit pipe which is used at office etc.
"Handmade simple analog oscilator" - which is include NE555 as main oscilator, and cmos frequency divider.
"Multi Effect(KORG AX1G)" - Sound of my analog oscilator is like poor buzzer. But it is processed various sounds by multi effect. "
Onoue, Yuichi. "Onoue Torigoya Sound." Onoue Torigoya Sound. N.p., Mar. 1996. Web. 7 Mar. 2013.
The other instrument in this piece is the kaisatsuko which he also hand made. It is played by turning the
crank which causes the wheel to spin and "bow" the strings. There are two strings on a fretless neck.
There is no key box on this instrument which makes it different from the hurdy-gurdies.
I think it is interesting the way he made these instruments and the resources he used to build them. The
way I am connecting it to the reading is the chapter on pitch. The ribbon controller can smoothly
change a oscillator pitch depending on where you press down on the instrument. This causes him to be
able to bend pitches and create interesting, different, unusual sounds on the ribbon controller. Since it is
electric I am not sure if there is anyway to tune it. I would say this instrument uses a tone of microtones
at least in the pieces I've listened too. It is so unique that Yuichi invented and hand made all of these
Culture: Soweto Gospel Choir was formed in Soweto South Africa in 2002, by David Mulovhedzi. They started out with less then 20 singers in the group and now have around 50 members who travel and sing with the group. They have won many national and international awards.
Instrumentation: Voice, percussion (drumset and hand drums), bass guitar (held in his right hand?), keyboard.
As I was listening to this piece, I heard many different languages in this one piece so i looked it up. In Soweto, many different languages are joined together making a language called tsotsitaal. The other part that grabbed my attention was how sometimes the singers were singing in english and incorporating Bob Marley's One Love original that he wrote. So not only did they infuse many of their own languages but they also incorporated Jamaican, American known music into the song as well. Their outfits are also very unique to their culture. This connects to the Abril when talking about cultural authenticity. I haven't done too much research on the Soweto culture but from what I have done this is a well know piece and many of their other pieces use this multi language way of writing; which I would consider pretty authentic to their own culture.
I am studying Southeast Asia for my final project. I decided why not listen to some music from over there! Here is a famous gamelan group that sounds to be well structured and very professional!
The piece is titled: Palawakya
Semara Ratih- gamelan group of musicians, dancers and composers from Indonesia. Director of the organization is Anak Agung Gede Anom Putra.
Gamelan is a form of musical ensemble from Indonesia. Gamelan means "musical ensemble. " There are various different forms of gamelans having to do with the different instruments and or dancers involved in the group. The word gamel means to hold or wield, thats why the instruments involved in the group are mainly percussive.
This is a picture of all the instruments included in the gamelan group. Some of them are just bigger or louder more powerful versions of the same instrument.
I see this music to be connected to the Wade chapter 2 where it was talking about how instruments provide cultural diffusion and how the craft and make of the instruments show the cultural values. Many of these specific instruments are made of wood, bamboo and other natural resources. They try to stay away from using metals and other man made materials on the instruments, obviously gongs and other instruments requiring such materials are allowed. The interaction of the performers is very high especially with the dancer! The dancer is the key figure of the group. She sings and plays the bonang. All the performers seem so comfortable with the music and almost look bored. I highly doubt they are bored, probably so used to playing in this group its just like an everyday activity!
