Transcript Music and Ethnicity

An Introduction to Music as Social Experience
Chapter 4: Music and Ethnicity
Ethnicity
• Central to sense of self, home, and community
• Definition: groups bound by shared identity and common ancestry
• But ethnic boundaries are not easy to delineate
• Distinctions between ethnicity and race not always clear
• Music is one expression of ethnic identity
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The Jalolu: Musician/Historians of West Africa
• Mandinka people
• Ethnic group of 11 million people across West Africa
• Common ancestry, language, and tradition shared through
oral history performed by jalolu.
• Jali (pl.: jalolu, Fr.: griot) = singer, poet, instrumentalist, storyteller
• Jalolu music is characterized by call and response: solo/chorus song
style
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Jalolu instruments:
• Kora, a plucked 21-stringed chordophone.
• Balafon, xylophone
• Ngoni, five-stringed lute
• Bolon, an arched harp
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Two categories of kora playing
• Kumbengo – accompanimental, to support singing
• Birimintingo – improvisatory and virtuosic, no singing
Two styles of singing
• Donkilo – basic tune, repeated to underscore story concept
• Sataro – speech-like verse to advance the story
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The African Diaspora: The Blues
• Roots in African American work songs, field hollers, and spirituals
• African influences:
• Social values: storytelling, group participation,
improvisation
• Musical style: call-and-response, rhythmic patterns, sliding
pitches
• Jalolu/kora tradition: blues singer + guitar accompaniment
• Storytelling genre
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Standard blues form: 12-bar blues
• 3 X 4-bar sections for each stanza of lyrics
• First two lines of lyrics repeated + second line of lyrics: AAB
• Harmonic progression – chords change every measure
A: I-IV-I-I (do fa do do)
A: IV-IV-I-I (fa fa do do)
B: V-IV-I-V (sol fa do sol)
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Ethnicity in American Popular Song
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974)
• Wrote more than 3,000 works
• Compositions reflected African American heritage
• Led prestigious, namesake jazz orchestra for 50 years
• Helped revolutionize American music
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“Caravan” by the Duke Ellington Orchestra
• Orchestration, harmonies, rhythms evoke exotic atmosphere
• Overall form: AABA AABA (A concluding section)
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Ethnicity in Western Art Music
William Grant Still (1895-1978)
• First African American to conduct a white American orchestra
• First African American symphony performed by a major
American orchestra
• Wrote 8 operas, 5 symphonies and numerous other classical
works
• Composed ethnic music “without Caucasian influence”
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“Afro-American Symphony” (1930)
• Most celebrated of Still’s works
• Showed that blues “could be elevated to the highest musical
level.”
• Incorporated Western art music traditions:
• Standard orchestra
• Sonata Form
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West to East: Return to West Africa
• African American blues and jazz roots in African music, and
• Western music influences traditional and modern values in Africa
• Blues in Mali: Salif Keita (b. 1949)
• Popular musician
• Mandinka jalolu traditions
• African American musical traditions
• Promotes message of social truth
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Identity and Ethnicity in 20th-Century Europe
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
• Basque, Swiss, French and Spanish ethnic heritage
• Influenced by the “exotic” at 1889 Exposition Universelle,
Paris
• “Habanera” from Rapsodie espagnol (1907-08)
• Non-European imagery in
• Orchestration/timbre
• Afro-Cuban rhythms
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• Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
• Hungarian pianist, composer, scholar of folk music
• Hungarian ethnic (folk music) in context of Western
European art music
• “Allegro Barbaro” for solo piano (1911)
• Aggressive dissonances
• Harmonies, scales, rhythmic patterns of folk music
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Klezmer
• Brought to U.S. by Eastern European Jewish immigrants, early 20th
century
• Today, popular “World Music” genre
• “Perets-Tants” performed by The Klezmatics
• Trumpet, violin, accordion, saxophone and drums
• Harmonic and melodic elements of Jewish traditions
• Rhythmic elements of Western popular music
• Form: Intro AA BB CC DD CC DD E / AA’ BB’ CC’ DD CC’’ DD
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