Mae Mai

Another interesting blurb from A.J. Racy’s Making music in the Arab world: the culture and artistry of ṭarab

Notably, the aesthetic of individuality is consistent with timbral specialization within the traditional ensemble. The takht specifically is a collection of khāmāt ṣawtiyyah, “sound timbres,” that are individually distinguished as well as imbued with ecstatic connotations. Incorporating one of each type of instrument, for example one ‘ud, one qanun, one nay, one violin, and one riqq, the takht amounts to few layers of discernible timbral-acoustical lines. Thus, it can be contrasted with such “unitimbral” but register-separated combinations, such as Europe’s Renaissance recorder of viol consorts, or for that matter the classical string quartet.

I’m still in the middle of A.J. Racy’s Making music in the Arab world: the culture and artistry of ṭarab and it is rich and dense with information. I’m particularly enjoying the section on public performance, but especially this passage:

In turn, the singer needs to develop a general sense of who his listeners are and to establish good rapport with them. As he stands on the stage, he needs to look at the audience members and determine their overall level of musicality and general mood. In Fakhri’s words, “a mutrib must also be a psychologist.” One of Fakhri’s vocal accompanists maintains that Fakhri himself is well-known for his ability to “study” his audience. In order to create a comfortable jaww, or “atmosphere,” the mutrib may begin by saying a few words, usually familiar platitudes and prepare the listeners emotionally and arouse their enthusiasm.

Particularly in the large haflat, the mutrib also needs to locate the sammi’ah, or clusters of sammi’ah in the audience and to maintain direct visual and musical contact with them. In order to achieve that, he may make a few musical trials. As Sabah Fakhri explains, his haflah really does not begin until after about one hour of singing has passed, because until that time, he would have been trying pieces in different styles, muwashshahat, qudud, adwar and others to help him ascertain the existence and locations of the sammi’ah, as well as to sense the dominant tastes and inclinations in the audience as a whole. Fakhri adds that such musical scanning is accompanied by visual surveillance, which enables him to constantly monitor the audience’s reactions and to fashion or adjust the repertoire accordingly.

This blog post title was just one of many comments I heard about a private performance I was part of for a Lebanese engagement party last week. One of many such interesting comments from that evening.

In a period of time many many musicians are talking about declining work and number of venues for performance of for what has been the longest time considered “standard” American genres what’s happening more than ever is with the rising minority population in the US comes a rising demand for entertainment for that population.

I don’t bemoan the lack of work since in some ways I find myself not having the time to do as much work as I can because I often have many conflicting possible engagements.

That fewer and fewer of those engagements have little to do with, say, Classical music or Western popular genres is telling me as much as anything.

One of those things is that the unadaptable musician is less and less likely to find work. In the freelance world you generally have to go where the work is and in this case, with a changing demographic what that translates into is the ability to play music for the audiences that are out there.

While the competition for engagements of non-standard American entertainment is still small while the market slowly adjusts itself (a constant feedback mechanism as they would say) to changing tastes I suspect more and more musicians will eventually catch on to the trend.

I’ve seen some interesting and ingenious attempts at filling these niches–most interestingly the Asian British Music entertainment group in the UK. Catering to a rising South Asian population this company books for a number of traditional as well as “fusion” type groups. For example, the string quartet Dil Se Strings String Quartet which, while playing the standard event music repertoire that one would expect from this quintessential of Western ensembles, the ensemble also has a songlist repertoire list that includes popular Bollywood and Bhangra tunes that would be perfectly recognizable to many South Asian audiences.

So while Dil Se Strings is competing with other string quartets for the same slice of the special events pie it has another pie of its own that [for now] no one in their area can touch (other than the numerous other groups being marketed by the Asian British Music company).

Over the past couple of years I’ve played as many Arabic, Greek, Indian and Internationally themed events as anything else (if not more) so it’s always with some bemusement I listen to the gripes of underworked (or out of work) musicians.

I’m still processing some of my experience from yesterday at the Panegyri Greek Festival in Cincinnati.  I had the pleasure of sitting in on dumbek with both George Haralamos’ and Lazaros Nourtsis’ bands.

Not only was it just wonderful to play all this great Greek music and for wonderful folk dancers–it was also wonderful to play for literally hundreds of people willing to line dance to Greek music.

This complements my experience last weekend with an Arabic/Arab-American crowd for the engagement party I played.  Just seeing so many ethnic audiences mixed with the more orthodox proportion of American ethnic groups coming together to enjoy music and tunes from another culture.

And yet, at the same time, this is now a part of American culture isn’t it?   That we have to constantly talk about “Greek Music” or “Arabic Music” shows that we still have this difference from “Aermican Music”–but why exactly isn’t this music ‘American Music’?  It’s music made in America, by Americans, for Americans, right?

Alas, things just don’t quite work out that way and I really want to get into this topic in this post–hah!

In the end, though, I could really care less–I’ll just keep calling myself a musician and keep making music.

So as Ahel El Nagam is developing a recital length program I’m left with a decision about whether or not I want to focus on developing riq lines for the music rather than defaulting to the Egyptian tabla.

Certainly for the classical Egyptian tunes it would be a far more appropriate choice but the issue for me is that I just don’t have the same level of chops for the riq as I do for tabla. All the more reason for me to make the decision to switch (at least for the Classical Arabic tunes). Besides, it’s always nice to get myself out of my comfort zones and really get down to sorting through some more advanced riq techniques–it is truly an underappreciated instrument and far more versatile than many people give it credit for.

As I’m sorting through some heady ethnomusicological material, I came across in a note, some remarks by Jaap Kunst:

Jaap Kunst, after recommending ethnomusicologists transcribing exotic meodies to use bar-lines ‘for the sake of legibility…where the rhythm seems to call for’ them, observes ‘No doubt one will frequently feel, when tackling the same phonogram some days later, an inclination to distribute the bar-lines differently.  The reason for this is the fact that accentuation in the music of many exotic peoples is much weaker than that in Western music; in some cases this accentuation is put into it by the investigator, because we Westerners seem to feel the need of making what is heard more comprehensible by “phrasing” it in some way or other.’ (Kunst, 40.)

I learn this lesson everytime I go folk dancing – and while Kunst overstates the weaker accentuation (though I think he’s talking about strong downbeats here given the context of where this note appears in the text I’m reading) it’s remarkable how much you can easily get a feel for the accentuation(s) when you actually learn how to dance the steps that go to folk dance tunes.  Sometimes just having a visual cue, like a video, can be enough of reinforcement of the rhythmic accents.

This goes back to remarks I’ve made about mis-pronouncing music obviously.   As one of my groups tries to ease it’s way into a more Greek/Mediterranean type setting we’re going to have to sort through some of those music pronunciation issues. 

Maybe we’ll even pick up some Ancient Greek tunes along the way.

Going back to my roots, in a manner of speaking.  So many university trained music students detest introductory music history courses.  And especially not well liked are the sections regarding early music–no, not Baroque or Renaissance or even Medieval music.

I’m talking about the music of the Ancient Greeks.

I remember how much fun some students had mocking versions of reconstructed recordings of some of the roughly 30 or so musical fragments dating back to Greek and Roman times.  One of those tunes is the Epitaph of Seikilos – which is probably the oldest surviving complete song, though short, in the world (ca. 200BC).   The oldest surviving (nearly complete) musical piece would have to go to the Hurrian Hymn (ca. 1800BC).

I’m currently reading M.L. West’s Ancient Greek Music (not to be confused with Stefan Hagel’s Ancient Greek Music: A New Technical History which I reeeaaaaalllllyyyy want to read soon!!).  Well, maybe not reading it so much as picking it apart with a fine toothed conceptual comb.  The organization of the material leaves a little to be desired, but it’s a fine intro to the subject (heck, a two semester college course could be used to focus just on this book’s content).

But why do I bother?  Well, little did we really learn at the University, but Ancient Greek Music theory (and some of the practice) is one of the main foundations of the music theory of the Arabic Empire and through it (as well as the Byzantine Empire) to the Ottoman Empire.

Some of the fundamental concepts and even much of the terminology is still being used in countries that were within the borders of those Empires.  So, probably nothing more need be said.

We made a jump from Ancient Greek Music to the Medieval (Western) Church Music Theory and praxis.  Completely by-passing this rich tradition of music that was being practiced in ostensibly European regions.  Those regions just didn’t happen to count as European while under Arabic, Byzantine, or Ottoman rule. 

Such is how the academic university music history curriculum selective.

I’d have to go into “Ethnomusicology” to formally study this other history…

I found this humorous youtube video by cellist and composer, Zoe Keating, at David Cutler’s The Savvy Musician Blog. Enjoy!

for those of you on facebook, which doesn’t import embedded items, here is the direct link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM6zdYbwP_Q