Traditional Ethnic or World Music

Hi, Lily!... Hi, Lily! Hi, Lo! (Sorry. Once you get those old tunes started, it's hard to stop! :perplexed:) In case you don't know what tune I'm referring to, here's a clip from the movie ("Lili")...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLzGtDh0DfI

I'm Samm, melonkali's husband, and she asked me to get the kulning video to you, as she is under the weather. An odd little saying that, "under the weather," as if any of us were above it. So here we go with kulning, part one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2DIdfIe5MY

I am told that the Japanese are big fans of kulning. Uh huh. They probably think its a long lost Kubuki masterpiece. But then, kulning more closely resembles music.

Samm

Wow, I've just been catching up on all this wonderful music. What a magnificent variety of sounds and rhythms.

The first nordic song Lily posted sounded like the description the "ethnomusicologists" apply to old pre-Christian norse -- I know zip about more modern norse folk, and was glad to learn more.

The Sufi (?) sounds by Salima seem to me akin to the "acquired" taste I've developed for the true-Georgian-scale less-Western-consonant Georgian music. I couldn't have started there, but now it's my favorite sound.

I love those Greek rhythms, never heard them before. And of course those lovely Belgian ladies -- though I must admit I preferred that sailor-ish song in its French version.

Samm it seems prefers simplicity, probably like Xris?

I was glad Samm mentioned the Georgian "community singing" style helping the street children there -- full-participatory singing of traditional songs is really a "glue" that's held Georgian culture together for centuries, perhaps millenia. There are Youtube vids showing even modern teenage Georgians out in a restaurant suddenly breaking into traditional song and dance, with some occasional old fat guy occasionally jumping in,and everyone else in the restaurant clapping along.

I'll end with a favorite silly 1:28 mn video showing a couple of Georgian teenage boys out on a frozen lake, goofing around, and by 40 seconds into the vid they've started clowning around singing AND trying to perform the correct dance steps, on the slippery ice, to the well known Shina Vorgil round dance. Sure it's dumb, but the heritage lives on...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVN8a0EU-fM

Rebecca

so i guess no one appreciates nusrat. that is understandable actually, because it is music from another world, not this one! outside the bounds of space and time, unbound by any rules of meter or rhyme...what was i thinking anyway?!

Salima, there is our personal appreciation and there is the real greatness of an artist. I personally don't like Mozart and Beethoven, but of course I will not deny their real "objective" greatness. If I say "I don't like..." I say nothing more or less than that, it's probably only stating that I'm not there yet. But I have the right to say it, no? As well as I have a duty to listen to what I don't like, and with an open mind, to find out if I like it or not. Honesty is not prejudice...

agreed. i also dont care for mozart or beethoven. or chopin, he was the worst in my opinion. and i deny there being any objective greatness in art!

Salima,

I must beg your patience, Salima -- some of us have to take the slow lane. My statement about Nusrat being an "acquired taste", I can see in retrospect, sounded like I was being dismissive. I should have been clearer that while I had a learning process to undergo, I was prepared to begin the journey.

I know ZIP about Qawwali music, and don't have your natural intuition for it, so I'm working at it in baby steps at Youtube. I've been over at Youtube, listening and reading the comments -- someone's uploaded a multipart documentary on Nusrat called "Voice of Heaven".

I'm beginning to "get" some of what several commentors (at Youtube) consider Nusrat's lesser works, umm... Mahya Pardesi Ho Gaya(?) and some of the songs called Raaga (?) and a popular number Tere Bin from a feature film, I think?

It may take a while for me to work up to a higher level of understanding, if indeed I ever can, but clearly "something's there", and I'm closer to it today than I was yesterday. So thank you, and I apologize for the misunderstanding.

I'm also at Youtube listening to the very first (turn of the 20th century) recordings of authentic Georgian music before it became a little more Western-consonant for the concert stage. I LOVE the dissonant sound and crave more -- but I wouldn't have felt that way a year ago. I seem bound to perpetually travel the slow lane...

rebecca

Hi everybody. I think it is important to learn the "general theory" behind certain forms of music. Western music is probably more individual and "subjective". There's no "official intention", here's my tune and you can do with it as you please, and if you see God in it that's your interpretation, another perception could be different and but is equally valuable. Like most westerners who hear it the first time I experienced Nusrat's music as just "very indian", stimulating my imagination, evoking images of turbaned crowds in the spicy smelling streets of Calcutta or Bombay (I imagine Salima smiling... ). I also have to learn more about Sufi music, and its intention may be very consistent with my personal experience and conception of music, being a revelation and an expression of the Divine. As to raga's don't they have to be performed at a certain hour of the day? Fascinating idea, but what could be the explanation? I could invent a few explanations myself, but perhaps there is one that is "generally accepted"? But all this is just theory. Let's have some music. This is a short clip from a hypnotising sound...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC9w4KWEgJE&feature=fvw

hi melon-
no problem, and i appreciate your taking the time to mention it.

i dont think it is a requisite that we must all learn to appreciate everything-there isnt enough time in one life to do that anyway! usually nusrat either appeals to someone instantly or he doesnt. but those whom he reaches become devotees in a sense, and comrades across world cultures. my best friends in the world are that because of this common thread in our lives. sounds silly, and maybe it is. it is amazing to me when i come across a fan of his because you would never suspect who they might be-young and old, educated and un, rich and poor, any country and language-but finding that common denominator, all other differences become meaningless. actually it isnt even something that belongs in a music discussion because it is more of a meditation or mind-altering method. so when i listen, i dont do something else while i am listening, i only listen. and i wouldnt play it for anyone else unless i was deeply into beginning a serious relationship...it isnt just something to leave in the background.

i used to play it at work, sometimes the same song over and over the entire day, and at first i thought it would be disrespectful not to give all my attention to the music, and that i would become annoyed having to stop and answer the telephone when customers called. but instead, what happened was that i was able to give 100% attention to the music, and some other extra mechanical part of me did my work. my fingers used to fly across the keyboard, and people would hear the sound and come and stand and watch me. i found it effortless to come down and answer the phone and have my thoughts grounded and then return to where i left off. i became virtually flawless in my typing and decision making, and when the day was over i couldnt even remember what i had done.

catch-i love the didgeridoo by the way, that was something that instantly appealed to me. and remind me, when you get your computer back and email going i will send you a picture of me i call 'nusrat eyes' which i took while i was off in the ozone at work. i still cant believe it is me...

HI UR talks r meningful and i appreciate the same

Salima, I agree there's not enough time for anyone to learn to appreciate all types of music, that we all have favored sounds which almost instantly evoke a strong, intuitive response in our hearts and souls. We hear other sounds which immediately create such a strong negative reaction that we know there's "no hope" for us down that path.

On the other hand, when someone like Nusrat has a huge international following of devotees from many different backgrounds, there's a part of me that longs to hear and feel and somehow "understand" the special enchantment which is obviously there.

I have an MP3 album -- YoYo Ma, Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer -- which I've been trying to "get" for two years now. Why? Because the customer reviews (at Amazon) which prompted me to buy it were filled with genuine passion from people moved by an almost other-worldly beauty. One gentleman related that on first hearing, he had to pull his car over to the side of the road because he was sobbing uncontrollably. I still cannot hear what they heard, but I keep trying because I continue hoping that if I ever "get it", then perhaps I, too, may share in this music's unique, intense flavor of magic.

Catch, who can resist a didgeridoo? It must be a universal phenomenon. I'll use your post as an excuse to segue from the sublime to the ridiculous (which carries its own kind of magic), an absurd, shocking yet wonderful moment in musical cinema history. Unfortunately you can't hear the didgeridoo sound as clearly (in this Youtube video) as we first heard it onscreen when the entire audience "en masse" dropped our jaws (and our popcorn).

For those unfamiliar, the movie is "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", shot in 25-days by an independent Australian film company, using a then-unknown cast almost literally picked off the streets. The following scene begins after three professional "drag show" performers, stranded in the Australian outback, have lucked upon a small group of aborigines.

I strongly suggest clicking on the url/http (at the very top of the video picture) which takes you to its Youtube site -- this particular video really needs the larger screen there.

You have to listen hard for the didgeridoo (which comes in about the middle of the song), but it's worth it. Don't overlook those now-famous "footless" costume-pants. Can you spot Hugo Weaving (later famed as elf-king Elrond in LOTR) and Guy Pearce (The Count of Monte Cristo)? Perhaps they'd both prefer you didn't...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DJC-ECU8IE

rebecca

Rebecca, that is an amazing meditational piece you have found, secluded in that low-budget movie. I must say I never realized that song could be so moving. The two types of transcendence are called Apollonian and Dionysian, the former identified by quiet (or even silent) internal meditation, the kind where one attempts to shut down the senses and mental activity to contact that reality that hides beneath all such activity, abiding in the core of our being. The latter, Dionysian, means of transcendence is ecstatic and wildly sensual and active, characterized by the ritual dances of voodoo where the dancer is bathed in the blood of a sacrificial animal and dances herself to complete exhaustion to the fast, hard rhythm of the drums and music, elevating her consciousness to an ecstatic plane not accessible through normal activity. This video is a Dionysian meditation. Party down to the extreme. They won't find God or experience union with the cosmos, but they'll know something of ecstasy and transcendence of self perhaps. :-)

This tells me that music need not be intended for aesthetic beauty or meditational purpose to still have such values within it in the context of personal experience. We find music that touches the heart in many ways in many places, and music with meditational affect even where meditational affect was not intended. This "ethnic music" happens to be a gay classic that indulges the out-of-the-closet openness that many gay people long to achieve. That too is an achievement of a higher state of consciousness, is it not?

Samm

YouTube - wannes van de velde ik wil deze nacht in de straten verdwalen


YouTube - Walter De Buck : In Mijn Stroatse Zijn 'T Allemaal Komeren (Dutch Song)


Oh, and this is the anthem of Flanders, the dutch-speaking part of Belgium. God, how I love the place where I live and probably will die. That so many flemish feel the same about their country must prove something, no?


YouTube - De Vlaamse Leeuw

Catchcabula, that was about all it took. Becky listened to the music and is now looking determinedly to see what we have to do to get political asylum in Belgium. I suppose they are still staunch (?) allies of the US which could certainly complicate the process. I believe the plan for right now is to fly to Belgium by way of Afghanistan where we would stop long enough to insult the Taliban and the Ayatollah, then proceed to Belgium asking Asylum from Afghanistan. Sure it's a flawed plan, but we're desperate to settle in somewhere in Belgium before the Kampucheans find out about it and get all the good trailer park sites.

Samm