The flamenco music we looked at in class seems strikingly similar to the gypsy music we discussed the class before last. I find the genres most similar in the vocal technique used. But we should all notice a trend - these musicians tell us much about their culture and what is important to them through the music and the especially the lyrics. The emotion displayed through the vocal technique of each genre points to the hardship each culture has faced, and I think that it clues us westerner's into the difficulties of living in a largely nomadic lifestyle. There is something very free and exciting about living a trancently, but also uncertain. I think that the range and arpeggiatic nature of the vocalizations is especially important to consider in conjunction with the uncertainty of this kind of existence. The lyrics, which seemed to me mostly about basic human relationships and specifically male-female relationships are very important to the music and these cultures, because ultimately they only have each other to rely upon for emotional sustinence. I hope to find these kinds of similarities in the other genres that we study and to explore each cultures' interest in these very basic but fundementally important and human relationships in the future.
Posted by hourenk at January 19, 2005 03:30 PM