I’ve had at least one response at Greg’s site get eaten, so i thought I’d go ahead and post my short response to his post here, just in case:

Hmm–I actually thought I posted a comment about this issue on your “City Opera’s back — with an improvising orchestra!” blog post, Greg.  But it seems to have been eaten or something.

I’ve been seeing something along these lines for some years now–having worked on the inside of some presenting organizations and now just playing with non-standard (read: non-Euro-American) ensembles I’m not at all surprised that this would be a trend.

See, when you say “Alt-classical” for years i referred to non-Western “Art” music (e.g. Hindustani raga; Ottoman fasil; Egyptian waslah; Thai piphat) as “Alternative Classical” music.  I guess even wiki has just defaulted to the more cumbersome “Non-Western Classical Music” so…

Point being, with changing demographics, there’s going to be little reason for folks of non-European descent and heritage to favor Western Classical music when they may very well have their own art music traditions (same with pop music).  I think we in the states (and possibly other European countries) overestimate the popularity of both our “high  (e.g. Classical Music) and “low” (e.g. Pop/Rock) art.

There’s a fascinating study of popular music by Deanna Robinson that set out to test the “cultural imperialism hypothesis” (basically the idea that cultural transmission is a one way affair from Western culture to the rest of the world) called Music at the Margins: Popular Music and Global Cultural Diversity that sought to demonstrate how pervasive the cultural imperialism is only to come out with the tentative conclusion that Western pop music isn’t nearly as popular as most people and cultural critics thought.  I tend to agree with that conclusion given my own experiences and what little research I’ve done on my own on the subject matter.

And though it looks as if my response Ramon’s post did indeed get posted, I’ll go ahead and post it here too, for posterity’s sake:

Show info follows:

il Troubadore at Greyhouse Coffee & Supply Co.
100 Northwestern Avenue
West Lafayette, IN
(765) 743-5613
http://www.greyhousecoffee.com

music begins at 9:00pm and ends at 11:00pm
There is no cover for the event and is all-ages appropriate

il Troubadore is:

(from upper left to lower right): Jon Silpayamanant - cello, vocals Robert Bruce Scott - vocals, mandolin Wendi Wamler (aka Amirah) - clarinet, bellydance, riq Paul Radecki - Egyptian tabla, djembe, vocals

Raks Makam

In it the development of cello techniques is traced through the Darmstadt experimental era covering the uses of different bows and preparations, new repertoire, percussives, use of the voice and new uses of both hands.

http://uitti.org/publications.html

I would still love to read a book length (or maybe dissertation length?) treatment of the subject, but as I was walking into the office debating whether to practice or do a little more organizing I had a tiny revelation that I should be documenting non-Western cello techniques in some form or another. I immediately told the wife of my plan to compile a glossary of world music terms that are relevant to the techniques and skills I’ve had to learn outside of orthodox music instruction channels.

Basically, the idea would be to have a place I can direct people to online (or in handout form for classes and workshops) to terminology from specific cultures so that I don’t have to continually define each and every term whenever I might write or talk about it. Ideally it would also give a description of how it can be done on the cello as well, and eventually might have audio if I get adventurous enough.

The biggest obstacle, is that I just do not know what all these ornaments, or techniques are called in the various countries. When I talk to Wendi (il Troubadore’s clarinetist) about some of the issues of translating non-Western folk music techniques to modern Western instruments we might refer to things like “that weird Bulgarian trill” (which I actually do know the name for: “tresene“) or what have you.

Knowing the terminology will just ease the issue of presentation, or even communication, but most importantly will also give some indication of the culture’s music of the technique from which it is being borrowed.

I realize that I haven’t gotten to blogging about the meat of anything here yet. Mostly I’m letting people smell the meal before it’s cooked, or maybe these posts are appetizers? Either way, keep reading folks, I’m sure I’ll have something with more substance here soon.

Earth House

Show info follows:

il Troubadore at the Earth House
237 North East Street
Indianapolis, IN 46204
(317) 636-4060

music begins at 8:00pm and ends at 10:00pm (or later depending)
The cover for the event is $7 and is all-ages appropriate

Sparrow Quartet

The Sparrow Quartet is, for all intents and purposes, a chamber ensemble. Some of their arrangements just aren’t necessarily pop-radio friendly. This is no criticism as their tunes just sparkle with energy and are incredibly interesting and entertaining. Also, their selection of the old and new (they also perform their own–or primarily Abigail’s–tunes) are a perfect balance between Presentation and Preservation (IMO, the two functions primary functions of any art music ensemble–more about this in a future post). This is, I believe, should be what all Classical (I understand the usage of “Classical” is a bit contentious, here) music ensembles should be striving for in a climate of dwindling audiences (and correspondingly, funds) and relatively static institutions (e.g. Symphony Orchestras, Opera companies, Stadium Rock shows).

I have to say that I really, really dug the Chinese tunes. I hope that at least Abby will continue to write more of her own and perform more Chinese folk music in the future.

Show info follows:

Zorba’s Valentine’s Day Hafla
30 North Main Street
Zionsville, IN 46077
(317) 733-0633

Zorba’s opens at 5:00pm
music begins at 6:00pm and ends at 9:00pm (or later depending)
The event is free and all-ages appropriate

il Troubadore, Ja'Niesa, and members of the Ball State University Bellydance Club at Issa Mustaklem's Birthday Hafla (2009 January 23)

A cello (Turkish) taksim:

If you like the above, then visit Uğur Işık’s MySpace page (I especially love his Alamanti–I’ve already downloaded it from Amazon.com and have started learning it).

Shubhendra Rao and cellist, Saskia Rao-de Haas, playing (Indian) Hindustani music:

Visit Saskia’s website and check out her really cool modified cello

Nancy Kulkarni playing (Indian) Dhrupad:

Enjoy!

A powerfool tool programmed by Manuel op de Coul, for the experimentation, creation, editing, comparison, analysis, storage, digital adjustment, and MIDI sounding and recording of Western & non-Western, just intonation, equal, microtonal, and macrotonal tunings. SCALA is accompanied by a library of more than three thousand scales, is free of charge, and is downloadable from the internet.

I came across it while reading Ozan Yarman‘s Doctoral Dissertation, 79-tone Tuning & Theory For Turkish Maqam Music (from where the comment about Scala above is quoted).