Many years ago I worked in a hifi/record shop over the xmas season. The manager had a tape of Zamfir playng christmas music on autorepeat and we were not permitted to stop it. If I never hear another pan flute it will be too soon.
I never really liked so called 'traditional' Scottish folk music until I heard the real thing. Until that epiphany, it was all just Tartanalia.
I cannot really say I have ever heard any Klezmer music. I am quite certain that if I heard the real thing, I would most probably really like it, too.
So long as it is good, I don't really care what it is or where it comes from.
ToS
I had the same experience with North African music. I didn't like it at all, until I heard it live and became a fan.
Pano, I have become a huge fan of music from Africa. The real thing, even though (or because!) it has been passed down from one generation to another over thousands of years, it just sound so fresh, so new, so completely radical.
I miss non-white people, and my interests in music from all over the world reflects this. It really helps me keep in touch with a greater diaspora of sensibility. There really is so much wonderful music out there.
Perhaps this is why I have finally clicked with traditional Scottish folk music. In the hands of the young, it sounds alive and fresh, while incredibly wise and ancient.
Pano, what music have you heard out of North Africa?
ToS
Last edited:
Similar experience for me, I spent about a decade in the retail audio trade in the 70’s, including a stint in a former Muntz stereo shop during the summer that Elvis passed. Not only did it become impossible to keep his LPs in stock, but it didn’t take long to become whatever is the polar opposite of an ardent fan of his work.
My mother-in-law was 1st generation American with Scottish parents. She had some old LPs laying around which I brought home. The next time we had her over for dinner after we ate I made her a drink and took out her LP of Scottish bagpipe music and gave it a spin. She smiled and beamed as it started up but by the third cut I looked over and she had a pained expression on her face. I lifted the arm and she said, "After a while it wears on you, doesn't it?"
Kevin, when not listening to the local AM radio news/talk channel - another character building exercise that is - she streams background muzak from something called Calm. Lots of channels available, actually, but the highest count played are Relaxation / Spa and Positivity. Well enough recorded and certainly not irritating in the same sense as highland bagpipes might be, but only barely technically qualifies as music. When she’s feeling generous with company over, we might be treated with “Smuv Jass” .
Soporific is the first word that comes to mind.
I can enjoy almost any type of music in at least short doses, provided it delivers some degree of emotional arousal - something that several ladies of a certain age in my family simply want to avoid.
Soporific is the first word that comes to mind.
I can enjoy almost any type of music in at least short doses, provided it delivers some degree of emotional arousal - something that several ladies of a certain age in my family simply want to avoid.
Never had that experience, several good LP's on the Ocura label, (the ceremonial purpose of some of the music would offend Western sensibilities). Narada put out a 17 CD set of Islamic music from the Middle East through North Africa to Spain. The recordings are sometimes poor but the music is performed spontaneously. As I said before David Lewiston's Tibetan field recordings are some of my most precious LP's.
Last edited:
I was first introduced to North African music though 'African sanctus' in the 70s . Whilst Fanshaw's orchestration hasn't (IMO) aged well the field recordings are wonderful.
Misa Luba 1958 used in "If..." got Malcolm McDowell the role in "A Clockwork Orange". I still have my copy of the LP.
The content from whom? the questioner or the answers from the folks who answer? Perhaps some questions may seem naive, but you know we all have to start somewhere and plenty of lecturers have noted that there are no stupid questions. And, if we're learning something we have to ask "silly" questions at times.
My big musical discovery of the year is Dub Collosus, a loose collective collaboration between London based dub and reggae artists with Ethiopian jazz musicians, as recorded in Addis - really quite something.
Last edited:
For years I thought 'If..' was a documentary! Schools really used to be like that!
Nothing ethnically interesting in the music from Oh Lucky Man, but what a great soundtrack!
A lot pf old Scottish music was preserved in rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where Gaelic was still spoken in many homes into the late 20th century. Students of Galic music from the UK came to Canada to hear the "original" versions of Scottish stuff handed down through the generations, though played on fiddle and guitar instead of pipes in most cases. Many "songs" are actually a collection, starting with a march, then a Strathspey, a couple of reels and a jig. The best of the fiddlers step-dance while they play.
Growing up around here (Scottish settlers, military town) the pipe bands come out every summer and for all parades. I never found pipe bands very interesting until a couple of years ago, when I had gone to Wick in NE Scotland (to see KT Tunstall play at the Caithness Assembly Rooms), and wandering through the town on a Saturday evening in August found the local pipe band playing in the town square. It seemed like most of the population of Wick was there, families and kids and people of all ages. They all listened intently, and somehow in that place, with the music echoing off the stone buildings and cobblestone square, it seemed rich and interesting and "in the right place". It was very moving.
Growing up around here (Scottish settlers, military town) the pipe bands come out every summer and for all parades. I never found pipe bands very interesting until a couple of years ago, when I had gone to Wick in NE Scotland (to see KT Tunstall play at the Caithness Assembly Rooms), and wandering through the town on a Saturday evening in August found the local pipe band playing in the town square. It seemed like most of the population of Wick was there, families and kids and people of all ages. They all listened intently, and somehow in that place, with the music echoing off the stone buildings and cobblestone square, it seemed rich and interesting and "in the right place". It was very moving.
I discovered an album called 'Kabatronics' earlier this year. It's a fusion between an Albanian brass band Fanfara Tarina (with added clarinets and bagpipes) and Transglobal Underground (with added sitar plus dub). Very good, and hilariously funny. Great dance music enough to raise the dead. It's also a reinterpretation of Klezmer music - I never knew until a few Googled minutes ago.
Not everybody's cup of tea, though.
Not everybody's cup of tea, though.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.