Music's Relationship to Dance

African dance has often been viewed as obscene or liscentious because it usually involves hip motions which are interpreted as being overtly sexual. The music is usually designed for an actual purpose such as drinking and/or socializing unlike the modern "fine" arts which sees itself as beyond everything. Art for arts sake et al. In Africa onlookers usually participate in either the dance and/or the music and are encouraged to do so. The dance is seen as a lifestyle integral to everything African. To call it obscene is ignorant or purposefuly rude/racist.

The Greeks also based their music on the steps of dance. You may remember the terms from poetry class such as iambic pentameter etc… These describe the rhythms of dance steps. Different rhythms were thought to recreate different moods by the rhythms produced. This is similar to the melodic concept in India and Southeast Asia known as “rasa.” Classical motifs were also thought to possess this power to induce a feeling state. Each raga and rhythmic cycle is thought to have its own emotional flavor.

Indian Ragas

Indian Ragas:

Styles of Traditional Indian Music are based on the raga which is a composed scale that traditional says may have different ascending and descending forms similar to the western melodic minor scale. However, ragam are not scales or modes. Ragam have characteristic phrases called pakad if there is only one or swarup if there are several. Indians choose contrasting ragas for the next piece in a performance unlike Turkish musicians who usually say the next mode should be a direct development or Arabian music where frequent modulations should go unnoticed.

The introduction in Indian music is a long, long improvisation without a set meter. The composed section is in a particular rhythmic cycle. It has improvisational elements similar to jazz. The final movement uses speed picking. The first part of the fixed composition is confined to the lower and middle octaves. The second part extends from the middle to the upper octaves. A good musician should be able to play for more than one hour and not repeat the same phrase twice. Indian music does not allow multi-layered compositions. They say it would be rude to speak while someone else is speaking.

The most popular Indian Thaats/scales are;

Bilawal C D E F G A B1/4sharp. Its basically a major scale with a very sharp leading tone. ,

Bhairav C Db E F G A B1/8sharp. It has only a slightly raised leading tone.

Khamaj C D E F G A1/8sharp Bb1/8sharp. This is India's mixolydian.

Todi C Db Eb F# G Ab B1/8sharp.

Kalyan C D E F# G A1/4# B1/4#. This is India's Lydian mode.

Kafi CDEbF# G A1/4b B1/4#.

The indications for sharpedness and flatedness are only approximate.

Ragas often have two notes that are emphasized, usually a fifth apart, each appearing in a separate tetrachord. Both Persian and Indian music may have changing tones like the two versions of the melodic minor scale but Indian music never modulates. (There may be some recent exceptions).

Ornaments of Classical Indian Music:

The primary ornaments in Indian music which are some of the more beautiful available to the modern composer are portamento, a short grace not of low intensity, encirclement by microtones sometimes played in a series, fast oscillation but slight pitch variation and a lesser frequency oscillation but greater amplitude of vibration, three repeated notes and Andola and Murahan which have no western equivalent.

Indian Improvisation:

Classical Indian improvisation involves using the common motifs for a particular raga and standard ornaments. Motifs are turned into variations by rhythmic augmentation, diminution, retrograde, inversion and an unusual technique of adding notes such as playing the first not of a motif then playing the first and second, then playing the first, second and third etc…until the whole thing is revealed. This is also done in reverse order and backwards. Motifs are also sequenced through rhythmic displacement and note order permutations such as 1234, 1243, 1324 etc…

The moods created by music are carefully controlled. Indian musicians say that some sentiments are appropriate for music and others aren’t. Sadness and joy are proper but humor is not. Humor is o.k. in the theater however.

Thats the end of this discussion on Styles of Traditional Indian Music.

Music That Accelerates From 0-60 p.2

The latest events in contemporary music history the way I see it are atonality (innovation away from traditional harmony), serialism (innovation away from traditional melody and tonality.), minimalism (innovation away from preconceptions about instrumentation and form, ambient (innovations away from the traditional purpose of music) and the postmodernism of John Scoffield, Pat Methany etc (innovations away from traditional voicings, progressions and rhythmic approaches).

The serialists thought they were composing the music of the future. Bach knew he was composing the music of his present which is what I believe we need to be doing.

Postmodern art and literature leans decidedly toward an ugliness which I would not want to replicate in music. Its based on a false assumption that in rightfully reacting to the suffocating constraints of traditional forms etc that we should swing toward complete formlessness.

The cut up technique in literature, more often than not, leads to gobbledygook. Nailing a toilet on the wall and calling it art is also nonsense. The postmodern dilemma is how to publish the denial of publishing and mean the absence of meaning. John Cage summed it up well, "I have nothing to say and I'm saying it." The performance of his piece for piano in which the pianist never plays is the height of this wrongheaded philosophy.

My idea is that we don't want ugly formlessness. We want a flexible form. We want enough flexibility for artistic freedom and enough form to have a place to exist.

There is room in the music for a place where, like in abstract art, the motif only has meaning to the composer and whatever meaning the audience derives from it is O.K. and not wrong also, but it can't be the whole thing because art really isn't self expression in a vacuum. Its a dialogue with an audience and other musicians.

Also, when art doesn't have a frame, this can lead to non-art but it can also lead to an art that is not complete without audience participation which can be a good thing. This is one direction which I think music can profitably go now and in the future.

Another idea is using non-traditional media. The expanded definition of what constitutes a musical instrument or music lets a cool breeze into a stuffy room but we still need the room. We shouldn't say that anything is music.

We can use techniques like cut up to suggest new directions without being a robotic slave to the technique, allowing it to make every artistic decision for us. If so, then we are not musicians, artists or writers but dispensable automatons.

The movement away from traditional tonality can free up the strangle hold tonality has had on melody. Utilizing harmony in service of the melody is the challenge of the day. Indian and middle eastern melody far outpaces western melodic practice by leaps and bounds precisely because its making up for the lack of harmony. Modal jazz and free jazz artists were going there but took a left turn at the last minute and free jazz was having too much of the undesirable open ended formlessness. It would be nice to hear more inclusion of Indian embellishments in western music.