World Music and Culture Lecture Notes

Vocabulary flashcards covering Native American music, African drumming and vocal traditions, Balkan vocal and instrumental styles, classical Indian music components, and traditional Japanese musical forms.

Ganga

A traditional vocal song style of Bosnian Muslims in the highlands of Bosnia, characterized by an unaccompanied, harsh, edgy throat-singing style designed to project across long distances, and a narrow melodic range.

Dissonance

Harsh-sounding harmony, distinct from consonance, which sounds "nice" or "pretty."

Drone

One or two sustained or repeated notes that persist for an extended time while melody notes change above them.

Sevdalinka

Centuries-old traditional popular Bosnian songs bearing Turkish/Ottoman influence, usually centered on love and featuring highly ornamented vocals and exotic scales.

Tamburitza

A family of different stringed instruments commonly played together as an orchestra/ensemble to accompany sevdalinka singing.

Ladino

Traditional songs sung in the Ladino language by Sephardic Jewish musicians, such as Flory Jagoda.

Sympathetic strings

Strings on an instrument that are not directly plucked or played, but vibrate and produce drone tones due to their close physical proximity to the played strings.

Hindustani music

The classical art music tradition of Northern India and the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent.

Carnatic music

The classical art music tradition of Southern India.

Raga

The melodic scales or frameworks utilized in Indian classical music, numbering over 75 distinct types.

Tala

The repeating metric beat cycles established by percussion in Indian classical music.

Bhajan

A devotional religious song dedicated to a Hindu god or goddess, structured as a specific type of kriti.

Kriti

A composed song ("something created") in South Indian classical music that forms the core composition within a performance.

Mridangam

A master pitched double-headed drum used to articulate rhythm and tala in Carnatic classical Indian performance.

Komusou

Buddhist monks or priests who wore basket-like headdresses and roamed the countryside playing the shakuhachi flute to attain religious enlightenment.

Heterophony

A musical texture where two or more voices or instruments perform the same melodic line simultaneously, but in noticeably different variations.

Kakegoe

The stylized vocal shouts and calls uttered by drummers during Japanese Noh theatre performances.

Kyogen

Short, comedic theatrical skits performed as interludes between longer, serious Noh plays.

Gagaku

Traditional Japanese imperial court music featuring wind, string, and percussion instruments, sometimes accompanying formal dances (Bugaku).

Minyo

Traditional Japanese folk music, whose vocal techniques are heavily borrowed in the popular Enka genre.

Freedom and People's Rights Movement

A pro-Western democracy movement in Japan dating to the late 1800s.