The sitar and tabla drum performance, by Dr. John Protopapas was a very interesting look into the music of India and Africa. Dr. Protopapas also discussed his musical journey of becoming a sitar master. He showcased his mastery in both of the sitar and the tabla, as well as his ability to move people with his music, and deliver well-stated stories of his journey through life. Dr. Protopapas is a gifted sitar player. He had been taught how to play the sitar by a master sitar player in India, and had studied under him for 10 years. While he displayed great skill, he also had the ability to make you connect to his music on an emotional level. The reflective qualities of the traditional Indian music he performed made me want to look inward at myself and change parts of myself. One thing that I do wish had been different in the part of the performance where he played the sitar is that he would have played music with a more diverse range of melodies and sounds. The melodies all seemed very similar in their form, and how the music sounded, although that may have been a good representation of the range of sounds …show more content…
The drums were used to showcase the traditional African drumming that Dr. Protopapas heard in his childhood in South Africa, as well as the drumming that is usually paired with the sitar ragas of India. The drum patterns had a very syncopated beat to them. Dr. Protopapas was less skilled at the tabla drums, than he was at the sitar, but he still produced very interesting music. As he played the drums, the audience sat in silent awe of the playing, it seemed as though everyone strongly enjoyed the drum section of his performance. It was amazing to me how quickly his hands moved as he played his multiple drums. It was also intriguing to see him count out the beats to himself on his fingers before he would begin to play. It seemed that he felt the beats of the music rather than simply playing
In Africa, music helps define its culture by expressing emotions through each song. Drums play a very important significance in African culture; they are always present in ceremonies such as births, deaths, and marriages along with a ritual dance. Ompeh is an organized system with many rules and is performed by recreational amateur ensemble of singers and percussionists. Maru-Bihag is loosely structured, performed only by experts, and is used more for entertainment. In India, the sitar instrument is taken very seriously; a student must apprentice with a master for 15-20 years before being allowed to play this
The live theatrical production I chose to see was 9 to 5 The Musical. The production was performed by Fayetteville Technical Community College’s very own Fine Arts Department. The musical is based on the film released by Fox in 1980. Collin Higgins adapted the film from the book 9 to 5 written by Patricia Resnick. It wasn’t until 2008 that the film was adapted to a theatrical production. The production was originally brought to broadway by Robert Greenbait and Dolly Parton wrote the lyrics and the music for the Musical. The run on broadway was very short but the production later toured in other countries around the around the world.
Not only was he a genius in the musical frame of mind, he also displayed strong talents in other areas. He had a kinesthetic gift, as seen in the movements he created for his dramatic productions. It was often said that if times were different and not so segregated, he could have been a great choreographer. He was also talented in the interpersonal field, as his music touched so many people throughout the years. Through his efforts ragtime is now a respected form of music in our history, although he did not live to see this fulfillment of his dreams.
In “How we listen to music” by Aaron Copland from McGraw-Hill What to Listen for in Music (1988), the author has organised the listening process so that it had been split into three parts: the sensuous place, the expressive plane, and the sheerly musical plane. Aaron Copland thesis is that each plane of listening has its own function and advantages and knowing about them can help us enhance our listening experience. The purpose of Copland’s essay is to educate his readers on the three main ways people listen to music, and to inspire readers to listen in a more compound way. In the authors casual analysis, Copland tries to for sees his readers’ questions and objections at many points in the essay. He includes the thoughts of his readers to
As you can see in the Killers’ version it has straight for music structure from the table above. If we compare this with Paul Anka’s rendition of Mr. Brightside, he does sing all the verses in the same order, and leaves out some words, but on the second time he only sings the second verse. So already, it is clear that Anka is making this his own song. To get a better understanding about where these changes occur, see the list order below:
Into the Woods is a musical based off of classic Grimms Brothers’ characters and their fairytales. The production explores the consequences of their wishes and the quests that they fulfill and take on. In writing this play, it seems as though Sondheim and Lapine were attempting to bring to life the classic fairytales of their youth with a twist of reality. Through this portrayal of classic tales, the audience is also taken back into their childhood for the entire two hours and forty-five minutes.
...on the screen. The organized use of this method was jolting. Instead of hearing familiar symphonic music, leitmotives, or Edward Scissor Hands mimicking, the tracked music added a feeling of being propelled forward in time, as one event happened after another.
Modeste Petrovich Mussorgsky’s (1839-1881) Songs and Dances of Death was his final composition, composed in 1877, in years of artistic confidence that followed the success of his masterpiece, the opera Boris Godunov. Boris Godunov encapsulates many of Mussorgsky’s innovations including those towards his approach to the setting of the Russian language: his biographer, Robert W. Oldani observes, Mussorgsky’s “quest to find a musical equivalent for the patterns, inflections, pace and cadence of spoken Russian, to fix in music the paralexical aspects of speech that give it plasticity and nuance.” Indeed, Mussorgsky was one of a group of Russian composers known as the "Mighty Five,"- so dubbed by the influential contemporaneous critic V. V. Stasov.
A typical corrido is defined as a lyrical narrative that consists of eight quatrains with four to six lines. However, the significance does not lie within its musical structure; rather it is shown through its lyrics. The corrido depicts historical events; not through informing its listeners, but strives to use interpretation as a bridge of communication. The lyrics express topics from love and immigration to drug trafficking and malicious events. The Mexican community is able to emotionally connect with the lyrics materializing a sense of identity and pride - preserving historical and malicious events and cultures that have sentiment value.
Beck, John. Encyclopedia of Percussion. 2nd ed. New York: Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, 2007. Accessed May 15, 2014. http://books.google.com/books?id=8U83AgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.
musical genies of Dizzy also extended to Piano as he stared playing on the ivory
“How Musical is Man?” was published in 1974. This book was written by John Blacking, a musician turned social anthropologist. His goal in writing this ethnography, and several other papers during this same time period, was to compare the experience of music-making that takes place within different cultures and societies throughout the world. In this book, he discusses and describes the musicology of the Venda people in South Africa. Though he does go to Africa to research and learn about the Venda people and their music, he specifically states that his book is “not a scholarly study of human musicality” (ix), but rather it is a summary (written from his point of view), which is both expressive and entertaining, of several different issues and ideas that he has seemingly been contemplating for some time.
These ragas, along with the rhythms played by the percussionist, convey the particular “tranquility, natural beauty, and spirituality” of Indian music and are the very backbone of its expression (Wright 432-433). Raga has a much richer meaning beyond its melody. Bailey (115) notes that the music theory behind raga stipulates specific emotions, “the deities with which they are associated,” and even the appropriate times they should be performed.3 Tala is cyclic in nature and may be linked to the spiritual importance of reincarnation within Hinduism (Wright 433). The sitar is a “North Indian stringed instrument related to the lute, consisting of two gourds connected by a teakwood neck with 20 movable frets, six or seven main playing strings, and 11-13 sympathetic strings on separate bridges” (Rain 116). The tabla are two drums played in accompaniment to the sitar, one of which will produce one sound, while the sound of the other is influenced by the amount of force with which it is struck (Wright
He used the simplest and most realistic example of how it sounds when a child plays piano at the age of seven and then how the impulses reduced and he started playing better each year with continuous practice and then how
I have chosen to write this essay on the drum kit, which is an instrument that I play myself. The drum is one of the oldest instruments known to man and has been used by many cultures around the world. Primitive tribal societies used drums to celebrate victory in battle as well as in ritual dance and worship to the deities. The drum kit (also known as the drum set or trap set), however, is an American invention whose rise was seen in the late 19th century. This is an instrument that has taken the work of several percussionists and turned it into something that can be mastered by one; a phenomenal contraption that has only gotten better with time and continues to develop over the years.