Unit 4 World Music

Sub-Saharan Africa

Musical Characteristics

• often contains a dense texture

• “Buzzing” sounds as well as many layers

• Musical performances involve open-ended form - a cyclical musical form in which there is no actual beginning or ending

• Ostinatos: repeated rhythm and melodic cylce

• Call-and-response (leader followed by chorus)

• Interlocking - requiring at least two musicians to create a single part

• Rhythmically complex, often simultaneously in multiple meters

• Often contains cross-rhythms - newly percieived rhythms

• a performance is successful when everyone is participating (including audience)

• musical parts consider core and elaboration parts

Zimbabwe: east African music

Mali

• Mande people of Mali have music specialists known as Jali-musician and wordsmith

• Jali are hereditary professions and serve as oral historians prasing and critiquing individuals

• Three musical instruments are associated with the Jali:

  • Balo (xylophone)

  • Kora (bridge harp)

  • Kontigo (plucked lute; will become a banjo in US)

• Jali have two patterns. of singing, song-like and speech

• Jali accompanies himself, sometimes playing an Ostinato: instrumental break

Ghana

• Ewe people have a drumming tradition

• The core part is the Gankoqui: (double bell) which plays a twelve-pulse cycle

  In the background, a Sheker: (shaker)

• The rest of the ensemble consists of barrel-shaped drums in small, medium, and large sizes

• Musicians play rhythms patterns on the large drums

• On the medium-sized drum, musicians respond to the call of the virtuosic drummer on a small drum

• The music is extremely rhythmically complex

• Bell pattern: playing the double bell to show where you are in the cycle of the rhythm

Equatorial Forests of Sub-Saharan Africa

• BaMbuti, Bibyaki, Baka

• Impressove Polyphonic vocal tradition

• Music is primarily vocal, and consisting of interlocking, ostinatos, and call-and-response

South Africa

• Mbube: choral tradition highlights the outer voices (high and low) of an a capella male choir

• There is often a dominant lead vocalist

• overlapping ostinatos

West African Music

• brought their musical values to the western hemisphere

• cultural survivals

• music is linked to dance, instrumental playing and speech in narration

• All expected to be minimally competent in music

  • especially singing and dancing

  • talented individuals tutored in playing musical instruments

• Instruments are more than material objects

  • instruments and humans have voices

• no single performer is overly promoted in an ensemble

  • key soloists are expected to improvise against backdrop

• interlocking within asymmetrical rhythms

• small components recombined

  • density of many discrete parts

• Timbre is very important (drum strokes)

• call-and-response

  • vocal and instrumental

  • non-overlapping and overlapping

• bell patterns

• 12 beat pulse (1,3,10)

Latin America

• latinx

• hispanic

• ibero-america

• americas

• south america / central america / north america / caribbean

Ethnicity: paraphrased “shared common decent”

Race: problematic as a social construct from genetic diversity; The concept was invented largely to give low and high status in society

Tripartite Musical Culture

• the music of Latin America exhibits elements of Indigenous, European, and African culture, expressing the long history of the region

European Influences

• European musicians introduced

  • Musical scales

  • Harmony

  • Strophic song: same music difference verses, diff. rhyme scheme same music

  • Romances (epic narrative ballads)

    • Sesquialtera: Largely Spain and Italy; generally a mixed meter (1-2-3;1-2;1-2;1-2-3;1-2;1-2)

  • Stringed instruments (keyboard instruments, guitar, harp, mandolin) (there’s no historical record of stringed instruments but sure it existed)

Indigenous Influences

• Slit drum

• Conch shells

• Guiro

• Maracas

Creolization: Blending of cultural groups

Diaspora:

• the movement or displacement of populations

• notions of a shared homeland

• degree of boundary maintenance retained in cultural terms from others

Caribbean & Atlantic Coastal Region

• colonial languages: English, French, Dutch, Spanish

• Catholic and African Religions (Santeria)

• Common families of instruments: strings, drums, hand percussion

• Rhythmic cells/Building blocks/Timeline

  • Tresillo: 3+3+2

  • Cinquillo: 2+1+2+1+2

Puerto Rico (Spanish Tradition)

• Musica jibara : music country, rural music on Puerto Rico

  • Voice, stringed instruments, and percussion

  • Cuarto (5 courses)

  • Bandurria (6 courses)

  • Laud (6 courses)

  • Guitar

• Puerto Rican Seis

  • Musica Jibara

  • string based music

  • Cuarto, guiro (gourd), Cacer piquetes/flirtear (rhythmic patterns), & bass

  • Sung decimas (10 line poetry)

  • Secular

  • Dance

  • Major mode, simple harmonies, Andalusian cadences iv III II I

  • Hemiola

  • Seis Bombeao (with jokes)

  • seis choreao ( dancing version)

  • Pie Forzado (poetic line that must be in final phrase)

• Instruments

  • Pandero (frame drum) Cuatro, guiro, accordion

Salsa

• transnational music

• NYC 1970s

• Based on Cuban son, jazz, Puerto Rican traditional music

• timbales

• cascara (rhythmic pattern played on the side of the timbales)

  • Cuban Son

• Melodic instruments derived from Spain (Europe)

  • Guitar, Tres, Bass, trumpet

• Percussion modeled on African heritage

• Maracas, Bongos, Claves

• Clave rhythms

Reggaetón

• Dem Bow rhythm, originated in Jamaica

• spanglish, spanish, and or english rap

Atlantic Slave Trade

• 1492 - late 19th century

• 12 million Africans

• ages 9-20 ( not the most knowledgeable cultural bearers)

• triangular trading route: European-African-Americas

• Large percentage of population was African in the Caribbean

• After the abolishment of slavery, indentured labor: India, China, Japan

Santeria

• ancestor veneration

• powerful deities

• afro-cuban

  • Toque de guiro:

• Playing of gourds

• thanking the dieties

• conga drums

• metal bell or hoe blade

• guiros/chequeres

• clave j

Transnational Music

10% of Dominicans and Cubans live outside their homeland

50% of Puerto Ricans live outside the island of Puerto Rico

Contradanza

• European Dance

• Square, circle, line dance

• AABB (8 measure phrases)

Danzon

• Cuba

• Danzon Clave

Bahamas

• Rake-n-scrape

  • Accordion

  • Saw

  • Goombay drum

• Historically accompanied quadrille dancing (square dancing)

Trinidad

• Tamboo Bamboo

  • Inexpensive

  • loud

  • dance music

  • participatory

  • cyclical

Carnival music/ genres

• Calypso: typical song sung at carnival in English Caribbean

before lint you get to let off some steam

• Saco: a derivative of calypso (dance music)

Instruments:

Steel Pan: national instrument of trinidad

• ping pong - tenor

• Grumbler - guitar

• Grundig - cello

• Boom - bass

• Engine room (drum set, congas with mallets, metal scrappers, irons [brake drums])

• Braiding the irons (interlocking)

Andes

• Music and culture that exhibits aspects of both Indigenous and Spanish culture is known as Mestizo

• In the Andes, mestizo music of Aymara and Quechua speakers displays elements from both cultures

Indigenous musical instruments

• Siku - panpipes

  • requires at least two musicians (usually more)

  • requiring the musicians to interlock

  • the leading siku is known as the Ira

  • The siku that follows is called the Arca

  • a Wayno is a mestizo musical genre with a characteristic rhythm and musical form (AA BB CC)

• Kena - end-nothced vertical flute

• Pinkillu - Vertical duct flute

• Tarka - vertical duct flute

• Charango - chordophone

  • Solo instrument played by single men

  • reentrant tuning; comes from baroque tuning in europe. Mixed tuning not just high to low

• Wankara - bass drum

Nueva Cancion/ Nueva Trova “New Song”

• Protest song

• Victor Jara, 1932-1973