The Enigmaphone/Devil's Stick

 Title:  John Ryan's Polka

Performers: Beverly Conrad and Luke (last name unknown)

Culture: The tune is an Irish polka. Read on for the mysterious percussion instrument. 

Instrumentation: Fiddle and enigmaphone (yes, I made that up)

Disclaimer: this example has nothing to do with this week's reading. However, I feel compelled to share this story. 

This morning I was at a part at the home of a friend of my parents. Their home had an incredible variety of instruments in it, from talking drums, to anglo-german concertinas, button accordions, a harpsichord, bamboo xylophones, several asian chordophones of varying sizes and numbers of strings, a variety of shakers, and many I have never seen before. The king of these was an instrument nearly as tall as I was with a single string(I'm pretty certain it was a G-string from a cello), a pogo stick as an endpin, a tambourine mounted under the bridge, and a pair of small cymbals on the top surrounded by bells the size of large strawberries. It is played by bouncing the neck forcefully against the ground and bowing with a serrated stick. This has the effect of driving a hammer connected to the bridge to strike the head of the tambourine for a fast buzzing sound. 

At the very top of the instrument is the carved head of a red devil, which is how the instrument came to be called the Devil's Stick. This one looks somewhat similar. 

The host of the party had grown up in East Berlin before and after the wall was built. The instrument belonged to her father, a high-ranking medical officer who was quite popular at parties. She said that he was known to be a very taciturn man, but would play the Devil's Stick with "great gusto" at parties while singing a tune that she translated for me to be "My Heart, I left it in Berlin."

When I returned to my room at Hartford, I looked up this instrument and found that it had several other names and exists in different incarnations from Bavaria to France to England and the United States. Many incarnations exist with different bells and whistles, including the Stumpf fiddle and polo cello. 

This instrument was a blast to play.

Title: Unknown

Performers: Unknown

Culture: The women of Vanuatu combine singing, dancing, and drumming into this tradition of water drumming. 

Instrumentation: Voices, water

I came across this clip by accident last week when I was searching for a sound example of a Haudenosaunee water drum, and I am very glad of the accident. I instantly wanted to try this, as I have been experimenting with different sounds I can make with splashes and collapsing air columns under water, but I never made the jump that it could be music as well. The very next time I find myself in some waist-deep water, I know I will be trying to make some organized sound. 

How would this 'instrument' be classified? Is it a corpophone because it involves the body? It does not seem like an ideophone because the water is an additional medium through which the sound travels, but does not vibrate itself. I know from experience that bass tones can be achieved by slapping in the water and as the water closes over the cavity, it creates a vibrating air column, which suggests an aerophone, yet it sounds like a membranopone. 

I actually connected this more to the reading for my unit project in the sense that this, like Inuit throat singing is a musical game generally for women. This seems to share those traits, as well as being avery social music with a unique sound. 

Because of the composition of the ensemble, this seems to be a social music that doesn't have specific ties to age. There seems to be people of different ages in the video, which suggests that it is not a similar situation  to South Australia as described in the Nettl where musical knowledge is tied to age. 

Title: Ocean Prayer 

Performers: Pamyua (Stephen Blanchett, Stephen Blanchett, Karina Møller, Ossie Kairaiuak)

Culture: Inuit; Møller is of Greenlandic Inuit heritage and Blanchett, Blanchett and Kairaiuak are of Yupik heritage

Instrumentation: Membranophone and voices

Pamyua is a group that describes themselves as "tribal funk" and "world music." They take their name from an Inuit word meaning "to request an encore of a drumsong or dance" according to their website. Their music is inspired by their heritage and often incorporate additional elements into their music. For instance, this piece is part of an album called SideA/SideB.In this album, Version A of each song is performed with just voice and drum as is traditional, and Version B is performed in another, different and unrelated style. I highly recommend listening to at least a few selections from the two sides and comparing them. 

This could be an interesting application of the Cultural Prism Model. The music was created as a song in the tradition, but the very same performers also adapted it to a very different tradition. Would this mean it should be treated as musical beginnings and continuities, or both as musical beginnings, or as completely separate pieces? It is an interesting question.
Additionally, the music is in a pentatonic scale (so, la, do, re, mi) and uses what sound like a few microtonic bends down from the lowest pitch. The drum performs an ostenato throughout the piece. The Wade reading says that a is a fixed pitch under a melody, but at the very end of chapter it explains that a rhythmic ostinato can be considered an "extended form of drone." I agree that the percussive ostinato in this track should be considered a drone because of its constant independent underpinning of the melody and harmonies. 

What do you think?

Bias and Usefulness

Title: Old Moke Pickin' on a Banjo

Performers: David Littlefield (Shantyman), Mystic Seaport Special Demonstration Squad and visitor volunteers

Instrumentation: Solo and ensemble voices

Culture: Transatlantic sailors in the mid to late 19th century. This song has possible connections to Irish immigrant and African American influences.

After last week's readings, I thought of this piece as a possible illustration of bias in other musics. The term "moke," while having several possible meanings could still be offensive. Even though this term has fallen out of use, the possibility of it being disrespectful would have to be evaluated.
While at one time, it was possibly used as racially-charged slang, that is no longer the meaning attached to it. In other english-speaking parts of the world it means a horse or mule. The term also appears in the name of a vehicle, and was used by the NOAA to name a September 1984 Tropical Storm. The only disparaging senses of the word now involve personality traits, and are not related to race. I believe that this puts this song in the realm of low bias.

This type of music is also what I thought of at the beginning of the class when I read the sentence "People make music meaningful and useful in their lives." The use for this music is clear; it is a song to coordinate labor. The labor that typically would have been performed with this song is raising an anchor. There are numerous mentions of this in the lyrics, including the entire verse "Rock-a-block, chock-a-block, heave the caps'n round, Fish the flamin' anchor up, for we are outward bound." With up to a quarter mile of anchor chain laid out in appropriate scope, this could easily take four to five hours. 

In the video, the work being performed is to raise a one-ton lifeboat (pictured offscreen). This video includes a little more explanation of this scenario. 

This videos were filmed at the Mystic Seaport aboard the ship Joseph Conrad.