The unifying factor is emotion...
The part of the music we studied in these past twelve weeks that will most stick with me and most inspire me to further study is the aspect of the passion within music found throughout the world. Whether it is a flamenco woman wailing over her lost home, Janis Joplin at Woodstock, Bessie Smith singin the blues, a Klezmer violinist, an Asian pop star, African cymbal drums, Middle Eastern flutists or Irish harpist, there is music worldwide and it contains passion and emotion. I sincerely did not like all of the music we studied (I found a LARGE breaking point for myself when we were working on the Blues) but regardless of my personal taste in the songs, I cannot deny that there is something about the musical genre that demands emotion worldwide.
Even now, as I review some of the music, we listened to in class of the various regions of the world; I find that I most enjoyed the video clips because it allows one to see the passion a person pours into their instrument. That Flamenco woman singing on the hill was not a pleasant sound, but her soul was in need of music - there, on the hill above the city, with no instruments accompanying her, she just needed to sing in order to cope with what had happened - that is intense. The Chinese percussionist we just recently saw… she was expressing herself through those instruments and the energy required on her part was insane. Moreover, this list of the videos we have seen would just continue without end if I tried to list all the video clips which demonstrated the energy and emotion these cultures pour into their music. It is the passion behind the different musics that most inspire me to further study from this course… what is it about music? What release do humans find by exerting passion into music, which is so needed that absolutely every area of the world created their own type of music to participate in their daily lives, rituals and heartaches?
Due to this area fascinating me most in this course, I have a really hard time getting at all excited about the technological mash-ups/audacity functions/electronic overtones that we touched on in the term. Do I find them interesting? Absolutely. Such an interesting and unchartered direction the music field has taken but I have not had enough exposure to this area to feel the passion of the artist in the music.
I feel that this course exposed me to an overview of some of the current and historical worldwide music and now I really want to explore those same musics from a musicological perspective. Some of my favorite lectures were the ones that touched on the unique rhythms of Turkish and Gypsy dances and the interesting modal scales of Asian music. It is these more theory-based issues I would like to know more about so I can study the parallels of western and other types of music from a more technical and academic view. I feel that this class merely showed me that different music exists and now I want to know, musically speaking, what makes it different.
Posted by sandenb at March 29, 2005 11:40 AM