Re: [microsound] complexity

[Brian Redfern <bredfern@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Intersting enough you can also look at Miles Davis, who basically used
next to no vibrato, while before bebop during the swing era guys were
using vibrato to death. Its like the fake emotion sound to make. What's a
trip though is that we can't understand how someone could literally speak
with a drum, because english is not a tonal language, but languages like
Yoruba are tonal, so each inflection of the drum is literally a different
word, so people can actually speak through the drum. This is even
different than indian tin-tal, which is a rythm language, but the sylabals
are similar to the do-re-me-fa-so of westerm music, where the syllables
are just used to teach certain patterns. What's unique about west african
music is the ability to literally speak who scentences of an actual human
language using a drum with a varying pitch. Thus people could acheive long
distance communication to masses of people, where the drum is a huge,
giant megaphone. 

Not everyone can use the drum well enough to effectively communicate with
it, that's why the master drummer traditionally has a vital role in west
african kingdoms, as it takes years and yeasr of practice to get good
enough to communicate effectively, but when you get a chance to hear a
master drummer from west africa its quite an amazing experience and will
definitely change your musical life. In fact I have to get off my lazy
butt and start going back to study at the Yoruba House cause I have a
Yoruba master drummer in my own 'hood I should be studying with :-)>.

On Wed, 24 Jul 2002, Andrei wrote:

> > >Xenakis describes his frustration with trying to get instrumentalists to
> > >play his pieces without emotion...
> >
> > i remember luigi nono once talked about this "performing without
> > emotion" issue too.
> 
> I think what they're probably referring to is the tendency of
> post-Romantic period classical musicians to fill their performances with
> exaggerated emotions by using copious amounts of vibrato and that sort of
> thing.
> 
> Even the "period" instruments & performance practices movement aims at
> ridding interpretations of pre-Romantic period music of Romantic
> performance excesses.
> 
> Andrei
> 
> 
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