Turkish Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_3g9kmn5nc

Title: Neva profit

Composer:  Buhurîzade Mustafa Efendi 

Country of Origin: Turkey

Instrumentation: plucked strings, bowed viol, flute

 Buhurîzade Mustafa Efendi is a huge proponent and contributor to Turkish Classical Music.   In this piece, the viol and flute play in unison or octave, and the pitches are bent and moved as a form of expression while the plucked strings provide rhythmic presence playing both in consonance with the bowed viol and in response to its melody.  The fact that there is no real harmony happening, and that there is frequent pitch bending makes you experience the timbral orchestration of the music to a higher degree.  Every time the performers change their timbre for expression, it feels like a form change in the music.  The rhythmic energy in particular stuck out to me as the driving force behind the expression.  Really cool stuff check it out!

Australian Aboriginal Music

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

Australian Aboriginal Music: Song with Didgeridoo

Richard Walley

Australia "Aboriginals" 

Didgeridoo

A little change up this week from the traditional prayer music.  This sample is certainly in a minimalist vain, and therefor a perfect candidate for meditation, however, it is used for a secular and performance context as its performance practice.  The piece was composed and performed by Richard Walley, and uses the Didgeridoo as a pedal tone and puffs of air as a rhythmic device. The whole piece seems to build much like a piece of classical music, to its climax around the golden mean point of 3:00 or so.  I was totally blown away but all the different subtleties that could be achieved by one performer, including driving rhythm, overtone production, polyphony, and vocal noises.  

South Indian Classical Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH0z0CxP23g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CsU7X5g35U

Title
Chakkani Raja

Artist
Sri Madurai Mani Iyer

Cultural:
This is performed as a concert piece in South India, but holds clear correlations with religious ritual music.

Orchestration
Voice, strings

I am starting to get much more in to "Eastern" music.  In a lot of ways it uses many of the same conventions that western art music uses: form, minimalism, tone painting ect.  This particular piece is interesting because it seems to use a different scalar model than western music.  Its use of quarter tones is a true ear bender and worth a listen.  It took me a few minutes to get used to Mani Iyer's voice, but after a while i realized how expressive it is.