Japanese Noh Theatre

Japanese Noh Theatre is easily the hardest thing I've been asked to describe in a long time. The act of the play itself is lost on most Americans, since it is about the beauty of the text along with the dance. The dancing, while seen as elegant, is extremely slow, making an understanding of the act of performing Noh necessary to enjoy watching it.

The elements of the plays include very nonpulsatile music from three different drummers and a flute, called the nohkhan, which works differently than the standard flute. This small ensemble is known as the hayashi and accompanies the actors. Another very frequent aspect of the performance I saw was kagekoe, which are the loud shouts from the different drummers in the performance. Another element was the singing style, where the pitch did not seem to be the main focus of the song. The play is performed on a stage with three open sides and a different back, much like many types of Western plays. However, Noh has no changes in the back ground never changes throughout the play and the props are minimal. Lastly, the masks in the plays obviously play a huge role, though a boy will never wear a mask in Noh theatre according to this site.

Indian Classical Sitar

After finding what I assume to be Indian classical music, I still don't understand how the behemoth of a chordophone that is the sitar is played at all. Though my song might be nameless, it certainly has the qualities of Indian classical music.

The accompaniment in the piece is very light, as it seems to just have the sitar playing along with a few drone notes throughout the piece. Even without the drumming the piece is very obviously Indian with the sitar, who seems to be improvising by doing different embellishments throughout the entirety of the piece. Much of this particular song seems to be going between a lower monophonic melody and a high chord back and forth, though most of the melody itself is the ornamentation.

Another interesting thing about the piece is its rhythm. I would say it is nonpulsatile, but the speed of the subdivisions in the music seem to be the same. The eighth notes always happen the same length apart from each other, but each phrase seems to come in at a random point. Because of this and normal Indian classical music tendencies, it is hard to tell if the song has a quasipulsatile beat or if is going through systems in its tala. Even though I don't know how to tell, I do really enjoy the sporadic rhythm of the piece, and personally find the song itself rather calming.

Googoosh: Man Amadan

Throughout Iran, the famous actor and singer Googoosh is very popular, and used to make pop music that was extremely well known in the 1960's and 1970's. In the song Man Ramadan, it is very obvious that the music is based in the Middle East, while still borrowing many more Western elements.

The first very noticeable thing about the piece that makes it so clearly Middle Eastern are the very quick melismas that appear frequently throughout the song. Both Googoosh's voice and the instruments do many of these at the very beginning of the song. Another big Middle Eastern element is the heterophonic melodies, played by many instruments at once with different embellishments. Usually the largest amount of embellishments come from Googoosh herself. Lastly, the instrumentation is very Middle Eastern, with stringed instruments rather than electric guitars accompanying the pop singer throughout the song.

As previously stated, the song has some Western elements too. The most noticeable is arrangement of the song itself, which seems to follow the standard verse refrain verse refrain pattern. Also, the refrain seems to have a more Western melody, without the complex and fast melismas occurring throughout the song. These multiple elements together mix to make a very interesting Iranian pop song.

My Time Learning About Chinese Music and Its Culture

This Thursday, we as a class got to meet a group of children from China that were in Dallas for a performance and to learn about American culture. They came and talked with us for a while on Thursday. The conversation was extremely interesting and said a lot about the differences between the two cultures.

The biggest difference was the much bigger focus in their culture on folk music. When we were asked, outside of popularized folk music, we had literally zero examples to give back to their class. Since America has really never been as big on traditions, outside of maybe the recent super bowl, it makes since. This could be because of the countries extremely young age, or just a difference in culture overall.

Both cultures definitely had a huge amount of diversity in both their music, and many regions that enjoy different types of music. Also, just as a side note, the fact that they mentioned Michael Jackson as a well known favorite artist makes me wonder how long he has been popular in China, and if he is viewed in the same light as bands in America that have been around for a long time like the Beatles, or as something on the radio like other popular music.

UTD Faculty Concert: How Insensitive

On Saturday night, the UTD faculty and staff played different songs they had been working on for the students and to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the school. While I enjoyed pretty much all of it, I really enjoyed Jobim's How Insensitive. The song itself is a slower jazz tune with the melody handed over to the electric guitar, in this case a hollow-bodied one.

In my discussion of music, performers, audience, and time and space, I will go in a bit of a backwards order. The time and space, like most formal concerts was during the night of a weekend. As usual with these concerts, it was played in an acoustically treated large room with a stage and a large amount of seating. The audience also acted as normal in this type of concert, just clapping in between songs as the main focus in this type of performance is on the music, with a small focus on performers.

The performers themselves all did quite a bit of pulsing along with the beat of the music but otherwise were pretty much completely stationary. The music itself on the other hand was extremely complex. It started out in a very slow groove, with the guitar providing relatively slow melody in parallel octaves, with others playing jazz accompaniment. After a few bars the guitar started doing much faster runs in jazz scales, and the drums went from the quite rim clicks to more complex patterns on the ride cymbal as well. This faster energy continued at this same tempo until the end of the song.

As a quick side note, the concert made me realize i dont know enough jazz, which is very close to blues in many ways, so I am pursuing learning jazz guitar thanks to the UTD faculty and staff.