Blog 6

The music culture I shall be talking about is Japanese Noh. The thing that surprised me the most when watching the video was the lack of lyrics like India Classical Dance Songs. The arrangements of musicians contain four members that play and sing simultaneously. The only other member in the entire performance is the dance that dances according to the tempo of the background music. The mask worn by the dancer expresses a felling of mystery. The music is contains a nonpulsatile kind of melody. The high pitch noise is called the nohkan which is a flute kind instrument which provides the melody and the expressions for the drama. The song also contains three drummers; two of the three drums keep the beat of the song whilst the ko-tsuzumi (drum with strings) provides the accent points in the song.
The dance does seem to have been influenced by Chinese opera. Since both the types of drama utilizes headgear to express the emotions and mood of the space. The dance does not contain any complicated movements, rather contains simple movements such as walking and swinging of the Japanese fan. The drummers seem to have a certain pattern they play but each drummer uses a different pattern. The fact that surprised me the most was that the pattern played by the drummer is not coordinated since they have full freedom to play what they feel. The song talks about a mystery in someone’s life since all Japanese Noh songs are derived from myth or ancient narratives.
The video can be found here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUhtCLKFMx0

Indian Music

The Indian Hindustani Classical singer that I have chosen is called Pandith Ganapathi Bhat. He is one of the popular North Indian Classical singer. Hindustani Music is related to North part of India where as Carnatic Music originated in South India. Throughout the song there is a constant drone which is provided by the instrument tambura. Tambura is the long instrument at the back. In this video there where two drones playing the same notes. There were two other instruments in the music that provided the melody to the song, namely the harmonium and the Tabla. The start of the song indentifies the raga for the audience and an indication to the accompaniments to play a certain way. The song contains of major pauses to allow the singer to be able to gasp enough air for the next phrase. Some of the notes are prolonged to show the singing capability of the singer by vary the pitch of a certain note. The song is about rain and how it is time to enjoy the harvest season. There is a constant repetition of the refrain continuously throughout the song. The tabla does not join the singer for a prolonged period of time since the raga of the song is unknown till the singer starts the song. On average all classical Indian music has duration of between seven to 20 minutes for one piece of music. The singer has to be trained for at least 15 years to be able to sing at such a complex level. This very singer is trained by Pt Basav Raj Rajguru.
The song can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L11m8jiun1o
The entire concert is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohZSRHavsCE

Arabic Music

The song I choose for this blog is called “Man-amade-am”. The basic theme is about a man returning back home to his love and wanting her to leave with him. The starting of the song starts with an influence from the western world by the existence of a flute sounding instrument. As the song progresses the Arabic drums called darabukkah, pianos, and an instrument that is along the lines of the African axatse join. The darabukkah is the major accompaniment during the duration of the song like other Arabic pop songs. Having lived in Saudi Arabia for my entire life I can make an observation that drums are a major part of Arabic life. The initial being sets a happy mood and emotion aspect of the song. Googoosh’s starts to take over the polyphonic song with the first phrasing stating that “I have returned” portrays an image of an man happy to see his love after a long time. The music does contain lots of cadences for emphasis on certain phrases of the song. The range of Googoosh’s singing voice seems to be very limited in this song. From my knowledge of music I was able to determine that the structure of the song is in compound triple meter. There is also a refrain which she sings a few times throughout the song. This is sound is not considered traditional since it does not talk about the religion rather is considered as pop music. In general all Arabic music tends to have a very melodic tune allowing the listeners to dance along.
The translation of the song can be found here:
http://iraniansongstranslations.blogspot.com/2007/09/man-amade-am-ive-come-by-googoosh.html
The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78ZxtnQCyhQ&feature=related

Blog 3

The event took place on Friday night, after attending the entire event “An Evening of Latin Music”; I decided to write about the music “Suite”. The composer of the music was of French origin. I would like to classify all the performances that evening to be that of Art Music according to the 3 division of Music. From my knowledge I was able to come to the conclusion that the piano was used as harmony for the songs played. One the other hand the violin and the clarinet would take turns playing the melody. During the course of the performance I noticed that the melody played various types of melody. The three different types of melody I noticed were that of homophony, heterophony, and polyphony. The performers were from the University of Texas at Dallas Faculty. Even though they had a formal appearance they did not turn out to be as formal as orchestra players. The reason this I feel is since majority of the audience consists of students, they tended to interact more with the audience by saying jokes and etc. For most part of the audience consisted of students that are taking some sort music class since it was mandatory to attend. The audience also did contain teachers, families and friends from outside UTD. Since it was held on a Friday people were eager to leave home to meet family or even relax. I witnessed a drop in interest and quantity of the audiences. In all I feel that if the program was held on working from Monday through Thursday more people would have shown interest. Making it a free for all program made it more attractive to students.