Hsaing Waing

Music and Dance of Myanmar
Hsaing Waing ensemble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quZEfCaTyCU 

sorry I couldn't find it in add video!


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 Choir

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.

Listening Yuichi Onoue

Title: Soft Rime

Composer: Yuichi Onoue

Musician: Yiuchi Onoue

Culture: Japan

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 

instruments and tunes he plays. 

Soweto Gospel Choir

Title: Avulekile Amasango (One Love)

Performers: Soweto Gospel Choir

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.