Listening Assignment One
There are ten things we would like you to listen to and fill out a listening assignment form on for this assignment. Some of them you can access directly from this page, if you are either on campus or have accessed this site through VPN—virtual private networking (see BOL for information on this). Others you can only access through the music library online listening site (tracks 1,2, 7, 8, and 9. http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/dlib/audio_reserves/current.cfm?i=1 Once you have logged on, look for the tracks by name. Check the titles carefully. They are mostly in order, except for a few tracks not up yet. For the tracks that have static URLs to Smithsonian Global Sound or the Classical Music site, be sure you set the listening quality to the “high” level if you possibly can. You should be able to click on the static URLs and be taken directly to the track. Read the instructions on the Listening Assignment form that we have posted separately and answer the questions briefly, in just a few words.
1.Upper Xingu Sacred Flutes Jakui flutes (sacred flutes), from Xingu, Cantos e Ritmos. Philips 6349 022 LP, Side A band 3. From the headwaters of the Xingu River, in Mato Grosso, Brazil. These are the flutes discussed in the film Mehinacu that was shown in class. The jakui flutes are played only by men. Women may not so much as look at them and must avoid going into the flute house where they are stored. According to Xingu mythology, or history, women originally possessed and played the flutes, but were frightened away from them by the men, who have not let them see them ever since. The flutes are not just musical instruments, they are also spirits, and their playing is the sound of spirits, and makes spirits happy. The jakui are made of hollowed out pieces of wood. They are about 4 feet long and have a mouthpiece fashioned from beeswax. It takes a long time for the performers to learn all the jakui melodies, which are said to be listened to by the spirits. These are described in the the essay by Acácio Tadeu de Camarago Piedade in the reader. When the flutes are played, spirits come into them, and their sounds are those of spirits. They are usually played by three performers, a flute master and two apprentices. See if you can hear three different sections: an opening section, a middle section, and the concluding section where they end on a single note.
2. Kisêdjê (Suyá) Indians of Brazil, “Rainy Season Unison Song.” 7:23 From the CD that accompanies the book Why Suyá Sing by Anthony Seeger, University of Illinois Press 2004. This is a low-pitched unison song performed at the start of the rainy season by the Suyá Indians (who are also known as Kinsedji). Like many songs of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, it combines song syllables (jo-jo-ha-ji-he) with referential text in the song. It has two long parts comprised of a repeated melody and a slightly varying text. The two parts are separated by a low “hooooo,” a moment of silence, and then starting again. The singers end the song by singing at a lower pitch and then giving three long “hoooos.” Note the two-part structure of the song, the rhythm marked by the rattle, and the slow rise in pitch and increase in tempo. The Suyá live by hunting, fishing, collecting, and horticulture (small subsistence gardening) in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. They mark the changing seasons by changing their music—rainy season songs from October – March or so then dry season songs from April to September. This example was discussed in the lecture on January 15th. It was recorded in the late afternoon; the other important time for singing this genre of song is before dawn, between 4:30 and 6:00 AM. Text for the first half: Jo-jo-ha-ji-he. Ki krudeti na, nguwa katuwu daw sogo daw ngreSong syllables. The trairão fish (Hoplias species) sings with its face painted for ceremonial log racing Text for the second half: Jo-jo-h-ji-he. Samdawti na ngwa katuwu wi sogo daw ngreSong syllables. The big mouth bass (Chichela ocellaris) sings with its body painted for ceremonial log racing
3. Qhantati Ururi: Social Dance. Andean panpipe orchestra, Qhantati Ururi. Available through static URL through the university system. From Mountain Music of Peru vol II. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings 40406, 1994. Recorded by Thomas Turino. http://uclosangeles2.classical.com/permalink/recording/2147534414/ Panpipes, consisting of a row of tubes of different lengths that are used to play melodies, are found in many parts of the world. The Andean panpipes are unusual in their antiquity, their performance practice, and their contemporary use in large orchestras for festivals in remote rural areas. This is how Thomas Turino, the ethnomusicologist who recorded them, describes the genre and the track: In the Conimo orchestras, there can be nine different panpipe voices—three parallel octave groups, each one with three different panpipes tuned in thirds (the lowest note of one a third above that of the next one down). This style, with parallel thirds, apparently dates from the 1920s. As in all double-row panpipe performance in this region, the pitches of a single instrument are divided (and systematically alternated) between two rows of tubes and between two players who interlock their pitches to create a melody. Ideally, the two players overlap their pitches slightly so there will be no “holes” in the melody. They say that the panpipe cannot be performed correctly as a solo instrument, and this is in keeping with their basic orientation toward musical performance as a collective activity. As in many places in the Andes, the performers have an aesthetic preference for a dense, rich ensemble sound produced by the multiple overlapping of instrumental parts. This is well illustrated on this track. In this region, the Puno of Peru, the panpipe ensembles are usually accompanied by three to eight large double-headed drums known as bombos. The repertory is divided into fast genre and slow genres. This example is a slow one. The recording was made in a rehearsal in Conima in May 1986 as the group prepared for a performance for a fiesta in a nearby region. Here, 22 players performed all but the largest to panpipes (because of a shortage of cane sufficient length) and four of the players accompanied the group on drums. The slow genre is considered the most emotionally profound and important type of piece played by panpipe groups. In fiesta performances they are typically alternated with fast pieces for social dancing. These two genres differ in tempo and in certain musical features. For example, in the fast pieces there is a melodic motif that rapidly alternates pitches between the two panpipe rows and it is used for the introduction conclusion and at the end of the sections of the piece. This melodic formula is replaced in slow pieces by the long sustained court heard for the introduction, at section cadences, and that the conclusions. There is also no fast section (called fuga) in the slow genre. The overlapping of the various panpipe voices can be heard clearly in this recording as can the wide tuning variants that characterizes the locally preferred quality of panpipes orchestras: corresponding pitches on different instruments are tuned slightly sharp and flat from “perfect” unisons so as to create a relatively wide pitch area and a dense sound. (From notes by Thomas Turino in the booklet accompanying the CD album Mountain Music of Peru volume II. Washington DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings 40406 pp 9-10. See also Professor Turino’s book Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1993.)
4. “Pawnee Song,” Southern Thunder, from Southern Thunder: Live (Indian House IH 2085). This is a traditional Pawnee War Song, and includes text and vocables. Notice how the song speeds up briefly with each entry of “hard beats” and then settles back into a slower pace. This short acceleration in tempo is a hallmark of the Southern War Song style.
Track 5. THIS track has 3 short pieces. CHOOSE ONE of the three short pieces for your report. They all come from the same CD, Heartbeat: Voices of First Nations Women. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings 40415. If you use the static URLs on this assignment you will be able to access the full liner notes, from which I have quoted or adapted sections below. The information below is what is given for the three tracks. 5.a “Lakota Flute Song,” Georgia Wettlin-Larsen, from Heartbeat: Voices of First Nations Women (Smithsonian Folkways SF CD 40415). This is a song for courting flute and voice in the traditional Lakota style, which includes both a melody performed on the flute and a sung text in the Lakota language. The vocal technique mimics the sounds made by the flute. (From album notes)
5.b. “Taos Courting Flute Song” by Lillian Rainer. http://uclosangeles2.classical.com/permalink/recording/2147534444/ Lillian Rainer is the daughter of John Rainer, Jr., a noted Taos flute player. Her mother, Verenda, is San Carlos Apache. As a child, Lillian recalls her father would play the flute in the evening, so she has known the instrument her whole life. She began playing the flute in her teens, taught by her father. In the 1990s, as a student at Brigham Young University she worked toward a master’s degree in social work. Her future plans included “doing all I can do to help the Indian people.” She plays a small, six-hole women’s flute made of cane from San Carlos, where “cane grows like weeds. My father cut down the cane and burned the finger holes and other designs into the flute.” (Adapted from the album liner notes)
5.c. “The Bingo Song” The Six Nations Women Singers. http://uclosangeles2.classical.com/permalink/recording/2147534440/ The Six Nations Women are from the Iroquois communities at the Six Nations Reserve in Oshweken, Ontario, Canada. Mostly Seneca, Ononodaga, and Cayuga, these women have participated together in the traditions of longhouse music and dance for 25 years. A cow horn rattle and a small water drum provide percussion for the songs. The music they sing is mostly eskanye ganiseh, or New Women’s Shuffle Dance songs, Iroquois social dance music that has been sung primarily by men as accompaniment for women’s dance. In the past ten years however, the women have been singing them in public. Like the men, the women sing in full-throated chorus that emphasizes unity of voice rather than harmonies and different parts. (From album liner notes).
6. Antonio Vivaldi, The Four Seasons: Spring. In E minor, RV 269, Opus 8 no 1, first movement. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Jonathan Carner, conductor. From online site Classical Music Library. NEW: From classical music site of music library: Static URL
7.Bulgaria – “Todora Was Taking a Nap.” From CD accompanying the book by Timothy Rice, Music in Bulgaria, Oxford University Press 2004, track 23. Composed by Phillip Koutev. NOTE: Only write on track 23! You are not required to listen to any of the others. This is an example of a “cultivated” folksong—symbolically appropriate for the new Communist Bulgarian state that was established after World War II. This style would be aesthetically pleasing to an audience with a higher degree of education than the prewar rural performers of folk music and was thought to better represent the nation in the modern world than the vernacular original from which it was derived. “Todora Was Taking a Nap” is one of Koutev’s most famous choral compositions. He began with a traditional song tune in a meter of 11 beats (2+2+3+2+2), but everything else about the piece is composed. (adapted from Rice 2003: 64-67). Todora was taking a nap 8. Cat’s Meow / Partners in Crime (Number 1 from existing list)
9. Steam Packet Medley (Number 8 from existing list) Patsy Touhey made his living on the vaudeville stages in the United States as a musician and a comedian in the early 20th century. He is widely regarded as a piping genius. Note the structure of the reels, the medley, and the ornamentation. (Supplied by Professor Timothy D. Taylor).
10. Website of Belfast Marching Bands. For this listening example, please go to the website given below. Click on anything you like, but certainly click on the “music” link. Then EITHER listen to one of the Protestant flute tunes OR one of the Protestant accordion tune. Both of these are discussed in the article by Katy Radford in the reader. |