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

Ethnomusic culture proposal

The music culture that I am going to study is going to be the acoustic-chill scene in deep ellum. I had known deep ellum as the night scene with usually heavy guitar riffs and people moshing. I had a friend play a small set at a cafe in deep ellum and it was really cool. Many aspiring singer/songwriters gather at the small stage and pour out their hearts in front of total strangers sometimes. I would say the scene in dallas might be interesting compared to other acoustic chill scenes because of its small size compared to all of the events that occur at night, I would like to study the surroundings of the area and see how that affects the style of music expressed at the cafe. It seems inspiring to me to study this because many of the performers come from different backgrounds, there are many college students who play for fun, some who aspire for bigger dreams of being john mayer or something, and even older guys so im excited to see and hear many of the unique sounds an lyrics...I would kinda of but not restrict the style to the movie and music from ONCE, where for some of the performers, writing music is a way of life, they express themselves with it, and almost subside with it going meal to meal hoping one day to make it!

scene from once where the music store owner lets them play on a piano because the lady cant afford one and they realize they click after playing for the first time together...

Music-culture that has influenced me

I have been influenced and a part of a plethora of music cultures, but I will simply focus on at least one major one for this post. A music culture that I have been apart of is the guitar culture, I assume more specifically the western electric guitar culture, although with the internet I have become a part of an online guitar community that spans globally, the community I am apart of is based somewhere in Europe, an has members from all over europe, possibly Japan, China, etc.. The way the guitar culture has influenced me has been on my musical selections for casual listening, bands such as Van Halen-Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, John Petrucci, SRV, a I could run the entire gammit. Being apart of the guitar community I haave also developed a love for all types of guitars, valuing the instruments, as collectables and things to revel at. Like a grease monkey for cars, I have been influenced by the guitar culture, spending countless hours at guitarcenter, making jokes on how people should stop playing stairway to heaven and smoke on the water at guitarcenter( especially if they cant play) and attending the dallas guitar show when it comes into town. You get your typically harley guys with cool beards, and old guys who are still in the 80's with there really tight leather pants.