Musics of the World Final Exam

Indigenous practice of mbira music in Shona villages

Mbira

• mbira: an idiophone, 22 flat metal “keys” attached to a baord with a metal bridge (played with gourd resonator; often accompanied by hosho/drums)

General musical traits of Zimbabwean Indigenous music

• interlocking (players create different rhythmic and melodic patterns simultaneously)

• call & response signaling

• dense sound (overlapping textures, buzzy timbres, wide tuning),

• cyclical + open-ended form,

• juxtaposed rhythmic patterns,

• music-dance & piece-performance continuum

Mbira in Bira ceremony as participatory music

• interlocking; all participants are involved

• core and elaboration parts in mbira, singing, clapping, hosho, and dancing allow everyone to participate (simple roles are important)

• dense sound creates heightened atmosphere conducive to possession

• open form allows performances to last as long as necessary

• spirits enjoy mbira, have favorite songs, and mediums

• everybody dances: without dancing, spirits won’t come

cosmopolitanism in Zimbabwean music

modify existing traditions to make them relevant for new nationalist identities

• incorporation of presentational music and high-fidelity recordings

• traditional + modern

Musical characterisitcs/indices of Zimbabwean concert music

• humor of the comic skits (some of themes in song texts, lyrics in local indigenous languages)

• subtle aspects of the rhythms and instrumental solos

• ascent of the singing'

• the choreographic movement

• African middle class

• recognition and acceptance of Western influences; hierarchical understanding of cultural values

Nationalism

a political discourse that makes people feel connected to an identity group called “nation” and therefore feel the need that they have a right to have a state (generates national senteiment)

it does not have to replace other identifications (family, village, neighborhood)

mbira as a source for national music

• symbolizes traditional roots connected to national/cosmpolitan music

• symbolizes Shona people's resilience and cultural pride during colonial oppression

• promotes Zimbabwean culture to the audience

• creating a national culture (traditional + modern)

Thomas Mapfumo and Chimurenga music

• Hallelujah Chicken Run: began to explore mbira music

• arrangements: of major mbira repertoires and playing them on modern instruments

• contrafactum: a musical technique, keeping the melody of the original song and adding new words

• Chimurenga music (1970-1980s): comes from guerrilla armies from the black population who fight for the white-minority rule —> professional career in music ; use of mbira

• symbol of liberation against Rhodesian government

• after liberation, songs critiqued Mugabe’s administration (social issues caused by corrupt government)

• transformed identity representing Zimbabwe (mbira and rural songs modernized)

general musical traits of Hillbilly music

• covers a variety of musical genres

• use of string instruments often including five-string banjos, guitars, and mandolins as accompanying instruments (no electronic instruments)

• simple harmonic progression, homophonic texture preferred

• presentational performance

• use of dance tunes, typically in AABB form; 4/4 rhythm

• no virtuosic instrumental playing or vocal singing

• simplicity: signifying the rural lifestyles, people’s desires to go back to the pre-industrial period, romanticism toward the past time (home)

Jimmie Rogers & the Carter Family

• known for creating Hillbilly music

• Jimmie Rogers = “The Singing Brakeman” or “The Blue Yodeler” - used blues progression (12 bar-blues), yodeling —> “Blue Yodel #11”

general musical traits of bluegrass

• emerged in 1940s, Irish, English, Scottish folk elements

• uses fiddle, banjo, guitar, and mandolin

• Bill Monroe

• Voices (sing in harmonies, sometimes echo-like response, high pitch preferred)

• fast tempos

• homophonic texture preferred

• active bassline

• mandolin provides rhyhtmic drive

• guitar takes melodic fragments in bass and high register

• presentational music (virtuoso performance, alternating verses and soloing)

Bill Monroe

• a mandolin player and singer; most prominent figure of bluegrass

• father of bluegrass

• 1945, hired Earl Scruggs for banjo

• virtuosic mandolin player, high voice

Old time music (participatory music-making)

• caller, musicians, dancers (experienced and less experienced

• cyclical, but allows for variation (to keep musicians engaged)

• stable forms AABB or AABBCC

• music is often in a simple homphonic texture with a clear division between the accompaniment and the melody

old time music (performance practice of music and dance)

• basis for experience of alternative community

• everybody is welcome (despite majority white and middle class)

• local rural people: events and music are part of community’s social life; part of cultural formation, normal and longstanding feature

• middle class and sometimes suburbanite participants; basis for cultural cohort

Folk Revival in the 1950s

• not a revival of something that died, but an adoption of musical influences, styles, and imagery of rural and working-class musics

• binary between rural vs. metropolitan lifestyles (simplicity vs. complexity)

• migration to the cities

• canon formation by the leading musicians; archiving and collecting the repertoires from the past

• music back for connecting with places, a past, and other people, with home

• no ambition for stardom and professional success (even though some singer-songwriters got great fame and stardom)

• singer-songwriters: perform stylistic persona, accumulate other voices, and are sociocultural agency, complicating the notion of authorship

• ex. Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, Lost in Highway

elements of jazz

• swing (or groove)

• instrumentation (horns (melody; trumpet, saxophone, clarinet. trombone, cornet), rhythm (piano, guitar, bass, drums), vocalists)

• composition and arrangement

• improvisation (collective improvisation, solo improvisation)

• rhythm (polyrhythm and syncopation)

• originally dance music; most common meter in jazz, 4/4

precursors of jazz

the blues

• field hollers (tobacco/cotton picking workers singing to each other or alone in fields as means of communication to pass time)

• 12 bar blues (a chord progression in 12 bars)

• Alan Lomax - compiled folk blues of African Americans

• Preachin’s blues, Tangle Eye Blues, Black water blues

ragtime

• musical style from 1800s that adopted the traditional multi-part form of marches of the 19th century

• originally evolved as African American dance music, but became popular in the general public

• syncopated rhythm (ragging) created a new swing style for dancing

• Scott Joplin

General musical Traits of New Orleans Jazz

• use of wide array of musical styles: popular tunes, marches, rags, light opera, hymns and spirituals, brass band music

• the playing style came out of the black community

• dance and party music

• collective improvisation and solo improvisation

• group polyphony and dense texture

• the birth of virtuosos

• smaller ensembles than big band preferred: 6-8 players were common (middle size)

• trumpet and clarinet as common horns

• presentational performance spectrum/performance attire

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band

• the first jazz record in 1917

• the all-white jazz band

• they opened the door for black and white musicians to record, but many felt that they built the sound at the expense of the black musicians who originated music

• an early example of white musicians gaining fame and financial success at the expense of blacks

Louis Armstrong

• Trumpeter in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band

• the birth of virtuoso

• elasticity of his rhythmic approach to phrasing

• melodici lyricism

• inventor of scat singing

• the first pop star as a jazz musician to appeal to a pop audience

The Swing Era (Big-Band Era) in 1935-1945

Great Depression in 1929 and the growing popularity of radio

Racial issues:

• white big bands enjoyed great economic success; black bands struggled

• limited opportunities for black and Latinx musicians

• Left-learning social movements for improving black musicans’ working conditions. As a result, some bandleaders opened the door to black musicians (the integrated band); some clubs were the first to be open to integrated audiences, featuring a mix of black and white musicians

gender issues

• WWII: the rise of all girl bands (gender issue)

• the rise of vocalists (canaries)

• reproducd images of idealized womanhood = not only sound but also “look good”

• instrumental players were marginalized; stereotypes and prejudices to women’s physical limitation

Duke Ellington

• composed and bandleader

• hired Billy Strayhorn (opened the door for the black gay musicians & collective composition of both composers)

• wrote music in genres in many genres: jazz, blues, pop, film and tv soundtracks, suites, ballets, and extended works

• expanded the size of band

• motivic writing (influence of Western Classical music, longer composition)

bepop

• the birth of bepop was a reaction against racial and economic inequality

• black musicians’ rejection against society norms

• jam sessions

Musical traits of bepop

• use of the same tunes that the swing era popularized

• small ensemble preferred: 4-6 players were common

• walking bass in the piano

• fast and aggressive rhythms

• angular melodies

• disregard for pleasing audiences

• jazz no longer for dancing

• virtuosic improvising solos

• piano no longer had to supply both bass notes and chords

Charlie Parker

• an alto saxophonist

• extraordinary melodic gift

• use of unique melodic formula based on complex harmonic progressions

Dizzy Gillepsie

• virtuoso trumpeter

• had a great rapport with Charlie Parker

• Exciting and flashy style

• showmanship with great humor

• played a trumpet with a bell bent upward; cheeks puffed out

• incorporated Afro-Cuban music into his band

Cubop in the 1940s

• Afro-Cuban influences + bepop

• Mario Bauza (a Cuban trumpeter), Chano Pozo (a Cuban percussionist), and Dizzy Gillepsie (a trumpeter)

• Manteca (1947) by the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra featuring Chano Pozo (a conga drum rhyhmic pattern, typico, polyrhythms, ostinato)

Marginalization and the discourse politics

• unequal distribution of power structure

• Latin American and Caribbean-influenced jazz segregated from black vs. white jazz or US real jazz

• if jazz encompassed diverse ethnic and racial influences, why doesn’t jazz the word itself explicitly explain all these influences, why must we label Afro-Caribbean and Latin influences into Afro-Latin jazz etc.

Spanish-Caribbean (Latin) influences

Tipico

• traditional improvisational style in Latin context

• uncomplicated melodic playing with a laid-back feel, most often over chord progressions with one or two chords

Charanga

• a Cuban ensemble featuring flute and violin along with a vocalist and rhythm section

Clave and Polyrhythms

• influences from rumba, son, guaguanco, chachacha, or mambo

• Clave: Alternation of two different rhythmic (a 3-side and a 2-side)

• triple rhythmic pattern is employed onto the regular 4/4 duple rhythmic pattern of jazz = creating polyrhythms

Orientalism (Edward Said)

• essentializes the East as static, undeveloped, salvage, and seductive

• the human-made quality of the “Orient vs. Occident” binary (orient: undeveloped/static ; occident: rational, developed, flexible, and superior)

Problems of Orientalism

• the identity of the “Orient” determined through a lens of European gaze and perspectives

• fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted, and reproduced in the service of imperial power

Oriental riff (nine-note riff)

a 9-note figure traced back to the 19th century by Martin Nilsson that does not come from Chinese folk music actually but is just a caricature of how Westerners think Chinese music would