Cool Stuff #3

This is a clip of my favorite Bollywood movie, called Lagaan. It was the first one I'd ever seen, and I sort of fell in love...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wTxAFlbnJ0

So, I got really excited when I found this clip on youtube. It is of a gamelan playing music from Mission Impossible. It starts out with the normal bass line, but then shifts into gamelan music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h5dcjRIQ-E

This is a clip of Indonesian Idol that I really like. It shows the evolution from traditional music to the pop music of Western culture...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PFXz-UNv0E

Bye.

Cool Stuff #2

This link is to a Latin American Duo playing Bolivian folk music in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The guy on the left is playing a Quena and the guy on the right is playing a charango.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PudyB3vhcHg

I had to laugh when I saw this video. It is a bootleg recording of another Bolivian folk song. This time there are pan pipes and dancers! Get ready for an entertaining tour of Bolivia!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B9FJ3AwriM

I was really interested in hearing more about the tabla Matt told us about in his presentation. I found this first video of a man playing the tabla along with what I think is an oud. When I kept looking at tabla videos, I found one of a really young Nepalese kid who can play the poo out of a tabla.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gwivcQEGtM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0u9e8p-zq4

Bye.

Music and Rites

I have never in my life participated in or witnessed any sort of rite that did not in some way involve music. That is not to say that music is involved in every single rite known to humankind. The first rite that I can really remember is that of my baptism as a child. I was five years old and I can still vaguely remember the hymn being sung as I was presented to the congregation saying “Wash me whiter than snow”. Since then, I have constantly been exposed to ‘rites’ of sorts and the music that always seems to accompany them.

What would graduation be like without “Pomp and Circumstance” blaring through the auditorium? What would a wedding be like without a small chamber ensemble playing Pachebel’s Canon in D or the Wedding March? Pretty boring, I bet, and most defiantly not as meaningful. In my extensive experience of my eight or so years playing music, the venue of the rite is never quite the same without a group of musicians, or just a single one, plunking merrily along in the background. One of the rites I believe music plays by far the largest role in is the rite of marriage. I mean, who would want to go to a wedding that had little or no music in it? I know I wouldn’t. The musicians the wedding party employs have the power to make or break the ceremony for the family and friends of the bride and groom.

I think it would be quite interesting to experience or witness any sort of common rite, or any sort of unknown rite, without the aid of music. I wonder what it would be like. Would I be bored out my mind, feeling like whatever is going on may possibly last forever, or will I be more enraptured by the essence of the ritual? Who knows.

Music and Religion

When I am at home in Nashville, I attend a church that is a part of the fairly small Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination. While the services at Vine Street Christian Church cannot be considered fantastic venues, the presence of music within them is vital to the melding of the worship experience. At my church now, and at past churches I have attended, music is used to bring together different aspects of the service, in preparation for a new part of the service or to fill the times when a person is not speaking (such as Communion). Nothing can be too crazy or out of the norm though, the church elders would not like that. You must, of course, dress to fit the part of a church musician. Choir robes are a must. There is a sort of praise band thing at my church called The Joyful Noise, however. You know, the whole “Make a joyful noise unto the Earth” thing. They are a little, informal folk band of anyone who wants to join, who sing to and with the congregation one Sunday a month. That is pretty much the extent of non-classical or non-church music heard there.

Aesthetics wise, the music I hear at church doesn’t really affect what I find aesthetically pleasing in the music I play or hear everyday. I have separated the two different types of music into two different lives. I hear church music in my religious life and I hear classical, pop and others in my life outside of church.

Religion in general, though, is a fundamental component in my philosophy on music. I believe that each person gifted with musical skills of any sort is given that gift for a higher purpose. You may never figure out on your own what that purpose is though, I think. And that’s okay. We may have multiple musical purposes! Who knows? I guess it is all up to the way the spirit speaks to you and guides you to where you need to be on your journey.

This link is to a very interesting video of a dance done by women in Benin. I thought it was fantiastic until I noticed what the women were wearing on their backs....



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4gPp067GE



This next link is to a Native American Church Peyote prayer song.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NohJtT-m7_8

I love watching this guy's hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5CejIwPbg0

Bye.

Dance to the Music

Haven’t you ever just started to sway when you give control of your body over to the music you hear? Don’t you always find your foot tapping, just a little bit, to the beat of a song you find vaguely interesting? I do, and I can’t bring myself to control it. This lack of control however, can become somewhat of an issue when driving, or even when attempting to accomplish the simplest of daily tasks. I will not say that I have the greatest dance skills the world has ever seen, but get me in a room where dancing needs to happen, and it will most certainly come to pass.

As someone counsels church camps, I often find myself as a sort of song leader and dance partner. Almost every single camp song I have ever heard of has some sort of motion attached to it, whether it is hand claps or a full blown dance routine. These sorts of activities are a perfect way to get the campers on their feet and engaged in the world around them. At the end of every camp week for every age group, there is a dance. We all know that pre teen people are not very inclined to be the first to join in a dance, so it is up to the counselors to make dancing to the music look like the most fun we have had in our entire lives. We dance like fools to show the campers that it is okay to dance to music, and it’s even okay to dance when there is no music at all.

In seriousness, music in my life is inseparably linked to movement, much to the dismay of Dean Hoffman. When I play viola, I cannot help but move with the music. I bounce, sway and rock with the phrases of the piece I play. Each passing measure seems to bring along an automatic movement with it. When I force myself into stillness, I can hear the passion leave the music. Though my so-called “violent movement” has decreased, I occasionally find myself lost to the motion that takes over my body, regardless of the negative effect it has on my performance as a musician. Right now however, the music I play still relies on those subtle and not so subtle, bounces and sways.

Living in Nashville, I am constantly exposed to the world of Country music. It is difficult to walk down any street in town and not hear Tim McGraw or Taylor Swift songs echoing out of someone’s home. When I was younger, in about sixth or seventh grade, my mother would force me to go with her to these things called Full Moon Festivals. What they were was basically a huge crowd of wannabe country singers and songwriters hanging in a field and jamming with their friends. There I experienced the ins and outs of the country music world and learned to appreciate it for all the work and talent that goes into it, rather than disregarding it because the style and sound didn’t appeal to my tastes. Along those lines, my high school orchestra performed ‘Bile ‘em Cabbage Down’ with the lower school strings class as they played improvisations.

My sophomore year in high school, however, gifted me with an incredible experience with the music of Indian film and Hinduism. I took a Winterim (It is the same thing as January Term) course on Bollywood film. I spent three weeks immersed in films which are riddled with crazy plots and rife with song and dance numbers. I became slightly addicted to Bollywood just because of the fabulous music you can experience just by watching their films. Even without understanding the words and phrases (There were subtitles, but the wording was often highly confusing), the melodies and dances made the story a little more clear. Near the end of the course the teacher, who was a good friend of a wife of a Hindu priest, took us to the local temple called Sri Ganesha. There, my class was able to observe the priest as he chanted and ritualistically cleaned the statue of the god Ganesha. This was one of those experiences that few are able to see and hear. The chants were so melodic and complicated that you cannot help but appreciate them.