Occidental and Oriental Music Index

The music

• Albanian Music
• Arabic Music
• Balkan Music
• Bulgarian Music
• Cajun
• Contradance Music
• Greek Music
• Irish Music
• Klezmer Music
• Macedonian Music
• Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Dance Music:
• Old Time Appalachian Fiddle Music:
• Romanian and Transylvanian Music
• Serbian Music
• Turkish Music
• Western Classical Music

The Concepts

• Minimize Cultural Schizophonia
• Additive Meters in East European and Mediterranean Music
• Arabic Music for Western Musicians, web. History, melodic and rhythmic modes
• American Creole Dance Rhythm Notation
• Makams-and-Cents, Eastern Music Tone Production
• Become a Better Fiddle Player: the Cliff Notes for developing the technique that supports the common demands of many different genres..
• Musical Instruments used in Ethnic Music.
• Music Scales, Modes and Intervals
• Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Dance Rhythms
• Starting a Middle Eastern Band
• Teaching Middle Eastern Music and Dance
• The Pernicious Influence of Music on Dance, in which The Proprietor presents the strongly-worded Opinions of Experts
• Zills and Sagat, Use and Maintenance

Minimize Cultural Schizophonia

1. History. The history of a music genre is a backstory that adds depth and meaning to the music played in the present.

2. Melodic modes (the scales and their individual notes): Those of us accustomed to Western classical music are used to scales that are divided evenly into six whole steps (seven notes) and 12 half steps per octave [equal temperament], and to composed musical works that are enhanced by multiple melody lines [polyphonic]. However, much of the classical and folk music of the rest of the world uses octaves divided into 24 or more steps, NOT divided evenly but by the needs of the unique melody line [just intonation]. Improvisation is an essential part of the performance, and harmony lines are often minimal or absent [monophonic] [heterophonic].

3. Rhythmic modes (the rhythmic phrasing and the individual beats): Rhythm, in the context of culture that favors monophonic or heterophonic music over polyphonic music, is rarely a series of beats marching along like soldiers in a straight line. The rhythm of a piece of music embodies a distinct 'swing', and the swing cannot always be represented by a diagram. It would not be amiss to visualize the rhythmic modes as harmony for the melody. Listen to representative music as often as you can so that the flavorful swing will permeate your music as well.

4. Awareness: "Ganga [Bosnian folk songs] start with a solo, then move to a tight, precise, exquisitely controlled collective section, with pitches that can be hair-raisingly close together. Singers have a precise vocabulary for how the music should sound: dobro slozene, 'well put together,' for the fit of the voices, strong dynamics, protracted sounds, and a variety of okretaje, melodic patterns. Overall, the effect should display veliko umijece, or exceptional artistry, a phrase they also use for the construction of everyday objects, such as carpets, stockings or storage bags. This carryover of a descriptive term reveals an underlying folk aesthetic that crosses domains of experience and invention. At the same time, ganga should be zabava, entertainment, marking it off from stockings and carpets. So music needs to be both well crafted and effective... Good performances can move listeners to tears and shudders, but with a sense of happiness." — Mark Slobin

5. An open mind. Don't be a cultural Nazi, but don't get sloppy or lazy, either. Do your research and then do the best you can.

"Louis Dupree, who roamed the Middle East for decades, once told me that he decided to walk from Turkey to Iran at a leisurely pace, just to see how long it would have taken ideas (and songs) to travel in ancient times. he covered a couple of thousand kilometers (around 1,300 miles) in six months while stopping at campfires to chat with shepherds or hang out in the local bazaar. 'See,' he said, 'it doesn't take that long.' Travel and trade have always put music in the backpack and the saddlebag."— Mark Slobin, Folk Music.

"When I first went to Afghanistan in 1967, there was really no way I could tell how continuous any of the music I heard was. Nobody had written down or recorded what I listened to in the teahouses of the North... I would ask them for old songs, but sometimes those turned out to be their own arrangements of things they heard on the national radio station, which they had only recently started to receive on the new transistor sets. I simply could not tell what their grandfathers played and their grandmothers sang, and how much that had changed over the generations, since no one had written it up and there were no recordings."— Mark Slobin, Folk Music.

"Ganga singers are usually boon companions and are well thought of in their society because joy is treated as a very welcome emotion."— Ankica Petrovic