Music and Us, (Final Blog Assignment)

Welcome back to Ryan's extraordinarily nerdy views on peculiar musical subjects. We have come to my last blog post for this class and I would just like to say I have had a lot of fun writing in this more relaxed conversational genre. Today I will be embarking on a tour of the globe, researching the native musics of various places I find to be intriguing, so come along, it will be a delightfully wild ride. 

Ok, the reason behind my researching into this first location is rather bizarre. The tale begins the other day with someone ever so kindly referring to my dog Bailey as a Tasmanian Devil. As you can see here, their appearance is uncannily similar. This led to whole string of events leading to us calling Bailey Hobart after the territory's capital (plus Hobart is a near flawless name for a dog) and me having to take a look at what musical traditions the wonky-whirling-oversized-rodent (actually marsupial) infested island held.

   And well.....

In my research I found that though a beautiful place, Tasmania has very little music that is substantially different than that of mainland Australia. So, as a suitable replacement I decided to look into the music of the near(ish)by nation of New Zealand, bet you didn't see that plot twist coming. Similarly to Australia, the population of New Zealand is partly descended from the British and partly from the native Māori, Polynesians who wandered their way across the great sea to New Zealand, a land of mountains and Hobbit holes, during the era of antiquity. Of course by now this should harken a bit of familiarity to many other parts of the world, and like other places this dichotomy has created a unique syncretic culture. I will discuss briefly both the traditional Māori musics and that of the colonists. One shocking feature of the history of Māori music is their distinct lack of membranophones, in fact if grove music online isn't actively deceiving me, there is no verifiable evidence that any were in common utilization, a shocking revelation when compared to the rest of the world. They did however make use of idiophones and some very unique aerophones including a variety of flutes and wooden trumpets (yes a modern version of these would make for an elevated wind ensemble experience, but I digress) along with voice. Vocally occasioned music was assorted and ranged from intense spell-casting chants that had deadly consequences if performed badly, to dance and war music, which were oddly similar. There are a ton of different styles and subgenres and/or instruments I could go into from here but for sake of time I will refrain from elaborate elaboration. But first here is a demonstration of a unique Māori instrument, the putatara, essentially a giant seashell used as an aerophone which I find to be really cool. It was used for many purposes, primarily to signal important events or in war (Traditional, Australia/Oceania). 

If you want to see more types of native New Zealander's instruments here is a comprehensive list from the Museum of New Zealand. In a different vein entirely these Māori traditions mashed up with Australian, British and American music to create a sort of folk song unique to the island nation, while it sounds much like other British inspired folk music there is still a unique tone provided by the accent, such as demonstrated below. Side note: some similar songs even include Māori lyrics. I don't know how but even when singing Australians and New Zealanders sound so happy.

There is still much I didn't cover about this fascinating place but we shall move on for the time being.

        New continent time

Throughout the duration of this class I have been thinking, hmm we haven't seen much from the clarinet section, WELL THATS ABOUT TO CHANGE! Ahem, sorry, got a little excited there. At any rate I heard a traditional Greek Clarinetist at a festival a few years back so beginning my next area of research. I located a wonderfully helpful article published by the international clarinet association which gave me helpful context on Greek traditional music and the clarinet's role in the style. Greek music as we would recognize is the product of a litany ideas the foremost being remnants of Byzantine modes left over from ancient times, and the influence of the Ottoman empire, which like the Byzantine was based in modern day Turkey. The clarinet itself made its Greek debut in the mid 1800s where it quickly became amalgamated into the "canon" of Greek music and obviously improved it 10000%. It seems that there is a wide variety across the relatively small country in style and form of the pieces performed, but in general the clarinet is most usually considered a "pop" instrument, even if blasting away at very old pieces. Here is an example of the unique Greek clarinet sound, complete with strength 1.5 reeds (shutters from any orchestral player), he also gives a good history of the instrument's place in Greece and discusses playing techniques. If you don't want to hear the talking bit the actual playing is at the very end, about 11:30ish in the video (Traditional, but still very much in style. Europe). 

here is another example

Our next stop is a bit more obscure, we will be visiting the nation of Armenia, an ancient land just above turkey. Thanks to Britannica I was able to find some useful information regarding this fascinating country that had a richer history than I first thought. In ancient times Armenia was a vast kingdom stretching between the Caspian and black seas all the way down into Iran, since then however, the nation has shrunken into a small mountainous tract of land full of steppes in (not so) central Asia. The shrinkage of the territory is thanks mostly to invasions by varying villains throughout history most recently the Ottomans and Soviets. With all that in mind Armenia actually has a huge musical tradition including elements from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, creating a unique aural tradition. Armenia even produced one of the greatest composers of the 20th century in the persona of Aram Khachaturian, if you haven't heard of him he would be worth a google. The reason I even thought of looking into this country however is not Khachaturian, though he did write a wonderful clarinet trio, but rather one of its unique instruments I have had a weird obsession with over the years, the Duduk (pronounced du-dook). This contraption is an 8 holed (plus thumb) double reed instrument made from apricot wood and played with the most bizarre embouchure you ever did see. It is usually is played in pairs with one player sitting on a drone circular breathing while the other plays a melody. Here is a helpful video demonstrating several Armenian wind instruments beginning with the Duduk (Traditional, Asia). 

Doesn't that sound so cool? Despite being almost exclusive to Armenia, indeed so much so that it is almost part of their national identity, the Duduk has come up from time to time in movie scores, with its haunting Timbre lending a magical feel to the traditional orchestral score. Here is a famous example from Disney's worse-than-the-book adaptation of C.S. Lewis's allegory, Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Ok off we rocket to our final destination: Brazil

I feel ever so slightly unoriginal picking two nations that were the basic suggestions on the instructions but after researching incredibly obscure places to no avail (like 4 hours of no avail) I gave up and chose something a wee bit more familiar to me. Perhaps only second to the United States in terms of musical innovation in the western hemisphere is the massive country of Brazil. I think by this point it goes without saying that almost every culture we study is a mix of many others, and Brazil is no exception. Like the united states Brazil's music has African, colonial and native elements, however, it branches in that its colonial roots lie in Iberia (Spain and Portugal) rather than England and France, those ever prominent spreaders of influence. This connection can be heard throughout the various genres of Brazilian music with more exotic modes popping up here and there. The most famous single genre (probably) is the samba, which oddly enough was actually more defined by its dance steps and syncopated rhythms than with a particular musical form. The immediate predecessor of the Samba was the Choro style, which is obviously attractive because of it inclusion of the clarinet, but more importantly was one of the most formative styles in Brazilian music emerging in the 1870s. Here is a demonstration of it.

Moving forward a bit in time to the 1960s Brazil's most widely known style came into being thanks to the genius composer/pianist/guitarist Antonio Carlos Jobim, who has been called the George Gershwin of Brazil, I am of course talking about the Bossa Nova. The Bossa Nova is essentially the samba but smoother, cooler and shows direct influence from jazz in its harmonic language. Countless artists have recorded in the bossa nova style but here is one of my favorites and probably the most famous of the style, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian guitarist Joao Giberto's cover of Jobim's first piece bearing the indication Bossa Nova, Desafinado (Modern, South America). 

Ah, now that you are so relaxed from that stunning tenor sound here is one more example from Pianist Vince Guaraldi (yes the guy that did the peanuts cartoons) and Bola Sete.

Finally, only because this came to my mind when talking about choro music, probably the most syncretic thing ever, this is the (American) arranger for a my favorite big band's version a song by a Japanese composer mimicking French accordion music in a choro style. That would be 4 continents, boom.

To wrap up, it has been a simply delightful experience to curate and craft these posts and in doing so learn about the music that both effects and affects my day to day life and that which does so to others, even if they are half way across the world. Thanks so much for reading.

See you next time

    -    Ryan Reynolds