Introduction to World Music: Lecture 9 - Music of Africa II

foreign foreign foreign how many people know who big Smith is okay local band right two groups of two two pairs of cousins who are related to each other the Baloo family makeup this group and Mark Ballou one of the lead singers in Big Smith was one of the people that put the Max Hunter Folk Song collection together and actually transferred it did the digital transfer from a reel to real or in in some cases cassette tape into digital format to put on the web so it made him aware of a lot of the songs on

there and what you find is that the Harrison Burnett version of pretty poly that you listen to as part of the assignment you did is used by Mark Ballou to create the big Smith version of pretty poly but there are some slight differences that they make to the song and I want you to hear their version at this time before we get married some pleasure to see so deep holy mistress days days cause I dug on Your Grave the best part of last night foreign your past reputation's been troubling me thank you he went down

to the jailhouse and what did he say laughs he went down to the jailhouse and what did he say he said I killed pretty proudly now my body's gonna sway so what kinds of changes did Big Smith make in the song as you have heard it now from the Max Hunter site in the big Smith version they add a motive for why he might want to kill her and they also add the punishment that he receives at the end so they sort of fill out the story a little bit more and add a few details

in and good storytellers tend to do that good storytellers hardly ever leave something exactly the way they got it they embellish it they they make it their own by putting their own individual stamp on it and I think we can hear that in the big Smith version of this song Yes uh in one of the verses he said that this never could be because her past reputation's been troubling me well that's not made clear not it's simply that is his interpretation of why he's doing it that that's that's what we're given in the big Smith

version other other thoughts about this okay well just to just to tie things up then with the Ozarks music I thought you might enjoy hearing that big Smith version now it's time to continue with African music and specifically Agave core My Hope Is that you've had a chance to read over this material and listen to the specific examples that are in the text of Aquabat Corps but as we discussed the other day one of the major elements of the rhythm of this particular style is the pull of the three against two and the way that

works is by looking at the Rhythm that the Bell is playing the double bell which is known as the kangogui in this style dang this is actually in a go-go Bell but if you listen to okay listen to that Rhythm that's going on it sounds as if it's in uh it's in six right one two three four five six right which would be reducing it by dividing it by two that would be the division of the measure by three however the other instrument that is crucial in creating this particular Rhythm the ahat say okay and

it's basically a gourd rattle okay is playing along in a completely different Rhythm that actually divides the measure by two and we see a picture of that on the PowerPoint presentations if you look at the first two instruments that are there you see the division of the Bell and the division of the ahatsay okay or Rattle and hand claps okay now I want to try to get a couple of volunteers to come up and reproduce this somebody uh would like to volunteer and and play okay Ryan come on up anybody else well I can play

the other part today unless somebody else wants to come up and play okay Ariel's gonna come and give it a try which part do you want to play who wants to play what do you want to play the Bell okay can you practice that Rhythm for a second see see how it goes and you're going to do the rattle so you're gonna go one two three four five six all right when an agabek core Ensemble is playing they're basically creating that three against two pole that is constantly there underneath everything that's going on now you're

recording on the uh on track 15 of your CD has three different styles of agavecore did you notice that when you listen to it you have to listen to the whole thing and I wish they had banded those individually but they did not so you have to listen to the whole track to hear all three styles of agave core one of them is slow Agave core the other one is a more uh a less rhythmically defined kind of agave core and then finally we get fast agavecore and if you listen to that and listen to

how fast the Bell is going it's about twice as fast as we just did it okay if you listen to How fast that Bell is going and that's the one that they're used when uh when they're doing their fast I'll go back or dance quite an amazing thing okay good job let's let's give them a hand they did a nice performance okay um yes on your CD if you uh if you've had a chance to listen to track 15 on the CD you have discovered first of all the Anya Agave Corps Society playing slow Agave

core at the beginning let me play just a little of that foreign how fast it's going one two three four five six which is about as fast as we played it when we just did that demonstration with Ryan and Ariel now when you get to the end of this particular track and you hear the fast agavet core dancing then imagine what it would be like to playing in The Ensemble you have to move ahead in this track in order to hear all three of them because they eventually fade this out and then they fade in

the second part of the track 15 okay we'll talk about that one in a minute but that is a more unmeasured style within the agabek core system then the third track within track 15. hear how fast the Bell is going okay try to imagine playing that entire pattern that you see outlined in the full background pattern of the PowerPoint try to imagine playing it that fast and accompanying dance it's an amazing experience a mind-blowing kind of experience if you're a drummer and if you're the dancer and if you would like to see some wonderful examples

of this you can go to do a Google search on agabek core and you can find some examples on YouTube and on MySpace that several people have posted a fast Agave core dancing that is just incredible when you watch it done and some of the videos show the dancers only some of them pan over to show the drummers as well and uh it's it's quite an amazing site so I encourage you to take a look at that on your own and uh and and see what it looks like in actual performance it's an amazing site

yes uh the question is on the uh on the on one of the PowerPoint slides regarding Agave core it shows the two patterns together that we just listened to as a demonstration and the question is what division of the meter are we stressing okay does anybody know the answer to that the answer is two different divisions of the meter we're we're looking at a triple Division and a duple division in other words dividing the measure by two and dividing the measure by three or by six and by four if you want to look at it

that way in terms of how many divisions there are in these in these measures yes right on the top one that the Bell is playing the stresses are the quarter note on the top one in other words uh one two three four five six the fact is that they are offset syncopation Wise by the eighth notes that are in there in the Bell pattern does that make sense okay okay yeah I want to make sure you understand this because because the the pull of the three against two comparing the Bell to the rattle or the

congogly to the ahatsay instruments in the Agave core Ensemble is crucial to making the whole thing work other questions about this yes The Bell the Bell plays exactly what you see here all the time yeah they they always play and it is uh essentially ubiquitous throughout Africa you hear that Bell pattern going on but Agave core is not something that you find throughout Africa the Bell pattern is very common but that this particular interlocking pattern is found uh primarily with the away people of Ghana and Togo as we are studying in this unit good other

questions okay as you go through and look at the full background pattern then you find more instruments joining the kaganu the kidi the totodzi and the Kobo toe are all instruments that you will see in your books uh and they have little drawings of those instruments in the unit on agabek core in chapter three okay you'll find little drawings of the names of each of those instruments uh I I will not expect you to know the names of those instruments for the test okay you don't have to know what the ahat say is for example

but you do need to know about the three to two relationship between the Bell and the rattle that's the kind of thing I'll expect you to know for the test I don't want you to go memorizing all the names of those instruments unless you would like to uh because it is a fascinating topic good okay so so that this interlocking pattern of drums is what makes the whole thing work and then the vocals happen over the top of that and in some cases vocals happen by themselves as we heard in the second example on track

15 we have some vocal music unaccompanied and if you turn ahead in your books to the places where the transcription of the vocal happens in the slow paced songs you'll see a transcription of it which is largely pentatonic as we've discussed earlier in this class let's go back and listen to just a bit of that this is the middle Agave core example on track 15. foreign as you listen to this music some of it sounds pentatonic but as your text points out the second scale degree which if you start on E would be either F

or F sharp that note is different every time they come to it and if you look at the transcription you see that sometimes they transcribe it as an F sharp sometimes as an f and what they really mean is something actually a little in between there a note that does not exist in the western 12 note division of the octave system we ran into this once before anybody remember what that was the yes the Native American flute versus the synthesizer and we heard that certain notes that the flute was playing were not in the system

that the synthesizer was playing and so that it sounded like it was simply Out Of Tune the fact is that some of those instruments are tuned to scales that are not in the western system of tuning and we're going to talk more about that as we get into other cultures that use that exclusively in this culture we see what this one particular note that is in a different place each time and as we move forward in the course to the next unit on African-American music we're going to look at some notes that are the same

way and there's an interesting kind of parallel to be drawn here because the airway people of Ghana were some of the people who were originally taken as slaves for the slave trade because they lived right on the coast and so they come over to America they they ultimately influence the birth of jazz and the birth of the Blues and the use of what is known as Blue Notes which we will study in our next unit and so the fact that the a way people have certain notes that are in different places every time and that

are sort of in the cracks if you will uh between our Western system of notation uh is I think very important as we compare African music to African-American music and look at where those connections take place so keep that in mind as we begin our study in the next unit a couple other things about Agave Corps as we as we finish up this particular part of the chapter uh first of all uh everyone participates in agavec Corps in this Society everyone participates either as a drummer or as a dancer and non-participation in the away Society

is tantamount to excommunication from the tribe if you don't participate in dancing you are essentially not part of the community and you can be essentially ostracized and one of the penalties for that could be uh uh not being given a proper burial place with the rest of the community uh when you die so there there are some some interesting uh participation kinds of ramifications here yes question oh good question uh I'll have to research that and find that out I haven't thought of that before it's possible that they might be participated as a drummer or

as a vocalist if they're unable to dance you know but but it's a participatory society which is touches on an issue that I've mentioned before if you compare it to our culture I we are becoming more and more a culture of consumers rather than participants uh people who say they like music own iPods right they don't necessarily perform uh so you compare cultures you see some interesting changes there yes are individuals that aren't actually members of the community visitors from other tribes and say foreigners yes they are certainly allowed to participate and and you see

a picture in the book of the author participating as a drummer with the Anya agavecore Society back in the 70s and so I I think that you if you were visiting you probably would not be expected to perform but you would be invited to if you had the ability and had worked with them other questions okay now I really want you to study these rhythms for agbeck Corps because uh in one of our sessions that is coming up we are going to put together an agabet core ensemble and we're going to need as you can

see from the PowerPoint we're going to need six players to make it work so I'm going to be looking for six people to volunteer to be part of an agavecore ensemble we just did two of the six a few minutes ago we'll be coming back to this and trying to put it all together and do some other African rhythms uh in in the same session so be ready for that be ready to jump up and volunteer I'll be looking for people to do that as we continue on with our study of Africa we move on

to the MonDay people of Mali and composition called lombongo that you find on your CD track 17. and there are three performers in this track mariatu kuyate is the singer in this example kakuta suso is the Kora player and finally Sani jovate is speech and percussion on this recording let's listen to just a bit of it foreign yes uh-huh it's a harp right and um and there's a particular type of harp that is being represented here a spiked Bridge harp which means that there is a that the design of the instrument actually looks like a

bridge I mean it looks like a suspension bridge and that there's a big spike in the middle that essentially holds up the bridge holds up the instrument and if you look at pictures in your text you find that many cases the base of the instrument is created with a gourd just like the gourd that we saw the other day for the water drum except instead of cutting it in half they use the whole thing about this size with the other hemisphere and creating the base for the Korra and then the strings the big spike coming

up to create the bridge and then all of the strings coming down up over the hand posts that that goes up to the top okay that's the design of the instrument unfortunately I don't have one to show you but we can hear the recording of the performance on the CD and imagine what that instrument would look like in in person now who are these performers and what do they do okay Grio what's a Grio or aishololu the the function of agrio in this Society is to actually be the historical Record Keeper okay during the uh

during the early days of these of these instruments these were the people who transmitted the oral history of their people and kept the history alive through song and in some cases they would be praising the king for being such a great king okay and the the king would wake up in the morning to the Grio or the shulolu playing uh the the Korah and singing The King's Praises that was the king's alarm clock somebody waking you up telling you how great you are and playing an instrument you imagine having one of those yeah that's the

culture like a Jester uh yeah a Jester or a Minstrel uh in thinking of it in terms of Western history there were minstrels or Troubadours who went around singing for the court yeah if you've ever anybody seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail here yeah remember sir Robin had a troubadour going around behind him singing about how great he was and then when he ran away from that one fight the Troubadour singing about how he ran away and he's trying to get him to stop remember that okay they they had a lot of fun with

that in that movie uh anybody see the movie Roots it's been a while it was it was it was on back in the 70s okay where an African-American person decided to go back and find his African roots and ultimately found the tribe and had to listen to this big long uh discourse of the tribe's Storyteller and historian telling the history of their tribe from the very beginning because you couldn't just fast forward to the middle somewhere he had to start at the beginning and so he had to listen for several days until he got to

the part that concerned his actual ancestor and The Disappearance of his ancestor when the slave Traders came so uh the Grio and jololu in this culture serve that function they keep the oral history of the tribe okay that's their that's their current function questions about this aspect of the culture okay that's Molly now the dog bomba people of Ghana are the next track on the CD and these are luncy drummers and this is a hereditary Clan this is where you have to be born into the clan of drummers in order to become a drummer yourself

so Andy that may be the point that you were thinking about earlier in terms of the hereditor hereditary aspect of it and these also serve as verbal artists counselors cultural experts they play two Different Drums The gung and the lunga and these are the specific names for the double-headed drums that you see in your text and there's quite a long um uh there is quite a long biography in your text of Abu bakari Luna who is uh the drummer who is featured here and it goes into their uh their their work in some detail there

is a term that comes up in regard to both the koraharp and also the uh the The Loon the the lunga and The gung gong instruments that we're studying here and that is indigenous anybody run across that term indigenous what does that mean of that area okay what else native to that place yeah uh it probably means more than that that it actually originated in that place this is the place where this instrument was invented okay uh and so where the Korah is concerned the spiked Bridge harp is described as an indigenous instrument and that's

very important because as we continue to look at World cultures we're going to begin to see cultures which have been influenced by other cultures and so there are instruments that people think are indigenous but in fact they were brought by another culture but it's been so long ago that they just don't remember the fact that it was not actually invented there an example of that is um is the HARP in Latin America which is considered by many to be an indigenous instrument but in fact it was brought by the Spaniards in the 15th century so

it's just been around for so long that people consider it that way in this case the Korra and these drums in the dog bomba people are indigenous instruments and it's important important to make that distinction now the music that we're going to look at from this culture is called nagbiegu which translates anybody get the translation of that anybody run across that ferocious Wild Bull yes ferocious Wild Bull and what is this song about who is the Ferocious Wild Bull an enemy leader right and what happened to the enemy leader against me but yes he got

killed the the the king of the dog bomba people was able to defeat and probably kill the Ferocious Wild Bull leader of the other tribe and this song is a celebration of that event so similar to Agave Corps which was drumming that was basically designed to uh first get everybody ready for war and then later to celebrate the fact that the tribe had won the war not be able nagbiegu is the same sort of celebration of a military Victory let's listen to just a bit of that foreign remember when we had our drums out on

our table let's do that again everybody from about this point on being group one and everybody over here being group two and and just take take get your get your tables out your desks get your drums out okay and we're going to play the drums again and remember we're going to do three against two so this time this side of the room you're going to divide by two divide the measure by two you're gonna divide the beat by three let me say that again this side of the room is dividing the beat by two this

group dividing by three so if we go along you're going one and two and one and two okay go ahead and play a little louder we need some we need some volume here good you're going to divide by three ready and one and a two and a three keep that going right good good good you hear the pull of the three against two and you can actually do it everybody try this okay try on your desks or on your on on your knees or however you would like to play see if you can get two

going on in one hand and three in the other like this okay yeah not easy is it you have to think in uh in in two different ways it's like walking and chewing gum at the same time you have to think of two different things at once so uh getting that two against three happening is not that easy now go back and listen to the drums at the very beginning of this nog viegoo piece and see if you don't hear that same two against three pull that we just created here foreign hear that listen again

because that's a very important element of this piece there's the three against two in that drumming pattern there with those those drummers of dog bomba and the the three division that's happening there if you look in your text you find that there are actually words that go with this this is a transcription that you'll find in your text having to do with the Lindsay drummers there's actually words that are being communicated here by the drums you'll remember that we talked about the talking drum in our last session and how uh the the drums would represent

African speech in some ways and so that when you heard the drums playing the actual syllables would come to mind and you would be actually speaking by playing the drums here the the drums are actually playing the chorus of the song so this music is actually set up as a Verse Chorus kind of structure the verse is sung by the vocalist and then the drums are playing the chorus which means what if you turn to your next page you see the translation it is that's him it is nagbiegu it is the Ferocious Wild Bull we

defeated him in battle okay that's that's basically what this what this chorus is saying as it continues to repeat so whatever the singer sings is answered by the drums in this case and the words are simply understood because everybody knows what those mean in your text you'll find uh a a section where they discuss how you learn to play these drums okay I'm going to read just briefly this uh this paragraph from your text in this is part of the biography of Abu bakari that the author includes in the book who is the Lindsey drummer

I was with my father for a long time more than five years my father was hard I faced difficulty with my father because of his way of teaching my father would not beat the drum for you he would sing and you had to do the same thing on the Luna if you couldn't do it he would continue until you got it before adding another so the father would sing the syllables and then the son had to reproduce that with the drum and that's how he learned to play so when he when when a Lindsay drummer

or many African people in this culture hear the drum play they're going to actually hear the syllables that are being sung and they're going to understand its meaning because this is the way they've grown up learning to play and learning to hear this music okay so if a piece like this were to appear on the test or perhaps the last piece that we heard the lambongo piece right or the agabek core piece if some of these pieces were to appear on your test which African characteristics would you apply to them go back to your page

on African characteristics that's on the PowerPoint and let's see which of those we might be able to apply to the three songs that we have heard earlier today starting with the agabek core okay so tell me some of the African characteristics repetition do we have any of that Naga Beck core absolutely this pattern gets repeated over and over again sure okay repetition what else Pentatonix we certainly had Pentatonix in the transcriptions that we saw of the vocal music from agavet core right yes non-western sense of pitch it's an excellent example in agabek core in that

transcription of the uh of the vocal music good yes call and response absolutely okay what else polyrhythm through a specifically three against two so you've got several right there what else any others syncopation I'm sorry say that again uh in the Bell certainly yeah the Bell is a syncopated figure what else Company by body movement right Agave core is music for dance absolutely what else well we just came up with about seven or eight right there okay that's that's the way to study for the test by the way and we'll talk more about the test

in our next session but one of the ways to study for the test here would be to create the same kind of chart that you created for Native American music for African music and see how many of them you can apply to each of these compositions moving on to lambongo for Korra and singer what do we have there will follow me ah yes absolutely songs associated with storytelling what else polyrhythm uh oh wait I'm sorry I was talking about yeah yeah this one's not quite as uh not quite as clear-cut so if you were if

you were studying for the test and you had to get your examples on this one uh you might have to uh to to dig a Little Deeper probably you're not going to find the three against two polyrhythm kind of thing happening in lombongo yes repetition I think is is a real possibility let's go back and listen to it again and and you also mentioned call and response for lombongo okay let's go back and and listen to that again and uh and see if we can come up with those two foreign I think is uh is

evident in what the Korah is playing that same pattern over and over again call in response what do you think right right you might be able to make a case for the fact that the spoken text is a response to the sun text and and there you might make a case for that it's not quite as clear-cut of a call-in response as we see in the next example for example where the drums are the response to the vocal text yes Andy uh-huh I think non-western sense of pitch is good uh-huh especially in the Korra where

uh where the tuning of it is not particularly Western in its uh in its in its design and Andy says uh some solo singing certainly okay other thoughts on this one okay let's go back to nagbiegu ferocious Wild Bull thank you okay what characteristics do we have here certainly polyrhythm three against two absolutely what else call and response clear clear-cut case there yes syncopation certainly in the drummers there are some syncopated features uh-huh what else storytelling yep we're telling the story of this battle aren't we okay so that's uh that's a very clear-cut case what

else one more yes even though it's called response there's only one person right well you could certainly give it uh the solo singing category I think even though it's column response because in this case the response is by the drummers and not by the the vocalist okay good okay so you see what to do here is the same kind of thing we did with the Native American chapter and that is to take the characteristics and apply each of them to each of the songs and that way you will be well prepared I think for the

tests when you are studying for that test that's coming right up okay that is all for today's session in tomorrow's session we will finish our discussion of Africa and then we will talk somewhat about the next test and what is going to be on it we'll see you next time