Kenyan children singing

Title:  Unknown
Performer:  Unknown
Culture: Kenya, Africa
Orchestration:  singing children

Other than this being the cutest video ever, the African tradition of moving while singing is seen here as well as the call and response structure that is common in Africa.  Although these are children, they are embedded with these distinct characteristics within their music.  I was thinking along the lines of what a concert may look like if students were to add their own expression to the music of other cultures like chapter 6 was saying in Campbell and "Prayer of the Children" came into my head for some reason.  This is a beautiful song by itself, but I began thinking about medleys and how I could incorporate a song like "Prayer of the Children"and incorporate other songs around it to make it a whirlwind of a concert that brought people from feeling bad for countries that aren't as developed to seeing what these people from other cultures make out of the music that they have and the environment they live in.  This is such a happy song and usually there are such heart breaking stories about sickness and poverty in Africa that it would be cool to take the audience from feeling their heart break to feeling their joy, or sandwiching joy around heart break.  It is just interesting to think about how I would use world music and what I could do with it.

Hindustani classical music

Title of Piece: Unknown
Performer:  Tihai (group name); Girish Makwana on tablas, Saby Bhattacharya on sarod, Nicholas Buff on saxophone
Culture/Origin:  North India
Orchestration: tablas, sarod, saxophone

This is an example of Hindustani classical music.  I saw the connection between our listening examples of Raga Jog and this group.  The saxophone is obviously not a traditional instrument to have in this ensemble and I'm going to guess that it is replacing the shehnai that is found in a group like this.  To my surprise, the saxophone added a very nice touch to this ensemble and I thought it was very interesting because in America we don't think of saxophones outside of band, jazz and classical.  This performance looses it's authenticity with the addition of a saxophone and an obviously non-Indian member of the ensemble.  However, if one was to close their eyes and listen to this piece, they may not be able to hear much of a difference in comparison to an authentic version.  The technique of the tablas was also an interesting observation that one can make.  The tablas are not played as an african drum, with more finger movements and it looks like more intricate hand movements to create the sound that it makes.  The sarod is also just a very interesting instrument with the many strings, tuning pegs, and round body. I find this video very interesting!

Jazz Composition/Improvisation Balance

Title:  Manteca

Performer:  Dizzy Gillespie's Dream Band

Culture/Origin:  American

Orchestration:  Jazz band

Along with the topic of improvisation and composition, the jazz band does both, where the structure of the pieces are set, but the improvisations are spontaneous.  The band rehearses the ensemble parts as a set composition and that comes across when they play.  The improvisational parts can be "composed" as the song goes along, though, as long as the chordal base is still there.  While different cultures depend on different things to signal changes, jazz compositions have set chords, but not set notes to be played.  The Western European way has set everything in compositions and Arabian and Balinese cultures vary length of the piece on the audience's response to the music.  The variety of how each culture structures and improvises is vastly different, but jazz is America's most improvisational music.