Blog post 6 Japanese Noh

Japanese Noh is a classical theater production that has a long cultural history in japanese culture. The prouction is a highly refined and stylized performance that can seem to be quite reserved and distant from the lay audience. The props within the performance the ma principle. The movements of the actors are slow and weightless. The nohkan is a flute that helps to create a dreamlike-meditative mood. The noh's roots derive themselves from acrobatics, pantomime, and comic interludes. Noh's history reflected the culture of the upper ruling-class and they uphold buddhist and traditional values. Almost everything is stylized in noh, and the actors wear very elegant masks.
The stories of which noh plays are based on mythological stories, and they are based on a zen mood. The noh play has two to three principle actors, they are accompanied by a small male chorus, and a small instrumental ensemble. Most noh plays are not rehearsed because they are so uniform, there causing a great give-and-take between the actors and musicians.
Most of the noh music is nonpusatile, contributing to the meditative mood. The ensemble in noh generally is made of four instruments. They include the nohkan = bamboo flute,
and three small drums. The ko-tsuzumi is the smallest and most imortant drum in the ensemble. The drummers also make shouts and exclamations during the play which are called kakgoe. The noh singing style is most closely related to shomyo, or Buddhist chant, which is composed of kotoba, free recitative heightened speech song, or fushi, which are song melodies.

Blog Post 5: Indian Classical music

This musical piece of Indian Classical music is performed by Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. The comments from the youtube account describe him as the reigning king in hindustani classical music, especially vocals. Joshi demonstrates delicate vocal control even at age 82 with his strong vocal ornamentations. Some the elements recognized in this piece is the use of solo improvisionation. Joshi seems to improv most of the piece. The drummer accompaniament (tabla) is in the piece and it does create a very cyclical conception of meter within the piece (tala). The comments also speak of how Joshi was trained by prominent gurus from his youth to develop his soloistic vocal skills. There also seems to be an ensemble of sitars, tablas, The raga of the piece would be difficult for my naive eyes todetect but it is most likely their and probably contributes to a very devotional type mood to help emphasize the religious aspect of the musical piece.

blog post 4: googoosh

googoosh hejrat



Googoosh seems to fit into the style of popular music. She has the siren qualiteis that lure in her fans. The music is a heterophonic composition that features an entire symphony and googoosh's lead vocals. The chordophones and aerophones that accompany her help to create a sophisticated mood so the popular music could also be argued as more classical as well. Her vocals have a very distinct melodic contour that emphasizes her range and control. The tone of her voice is very warm and helps add to the entire mood of the composition. The harmonic melodic? minor scale that the piece is based in also contributes to the rather dark and warm tone. The harmonic minor scale can seem to be dangerously categorized as "world music" in the sense that it sounds "exotic" to the unfamiliar ear. I believe that this is the danger in judging the music because more than likely within googoosh's culture those scales sound like a I-IV-V progression to the American ear.

Solo acoustic guitar

Never has a style so captivated me than solo guitar in the style of say andy mckee or tommy emmanuel

andy mckee - rylynn



andy mckee - into the ocean HARP GUITAR!



tommy emmanuel - somewhere over the rainbow(beautiful)



tommy emmanuel- classical gas



al di meola

Cool Neo-Classical

here is a sweet video of a youtube sensation guitar player who composed one of the most popular neo-classical guitar pieces on the internet...

Canon in D has become Canon Rock



here is another song buy this jerry c character that I like