Jump to content


Please note: You can easily log in to MPN using your Facebook account!

What is the Most Unusual World Music You've Heard?


Recommended Posts

I'm more thinking along the lines of music that was not trying to be unusual, but strikes our Western ears as unusual. "Music from the Outskirts of Jakarta" (Smithsonian/Folkways) Music of Indonesia 3 The modern repertoire, Lagu Sayur, is unique because of the influence of small-group jazz ensembles of the '20s and '30s on gamelan orchestras. You can also hear a Hawaiian guitar in several of the songs. "Music of the Kalahari" Extremely varied, fun, and very unusual. I do not know how to describe this, but it sure is good! "Frozen Brass Asia: Anthology of Brass Band Music #1" (Pan Records) Nepalese playing traditional Newari songs on brass band instruments, people in the Philippines building "brass band" instruments from bamboo (!)... "Balinese Jew's Harp Orchestra" (World Music Library) Gamelan and the boing-boing-boing of Jew's harps sure makes for an interesting combination. "Rebab and Female Singing of Central Javanese Gamelan (World Music Library) This features a style called Gadon, a style of Gamelan chamber music played only by the most elevated of maestros. The music is unusual by gamelan standards, the voices high-pitched, but oddly soothing, and the rebab (stringed instrument that's bowed) and the high female voice keep intertwining with each other and the steady brass instruments of the Javanese gamelan ensemble. Beautiful and unusual. "Cambodian Rocks" (Parallel World) Late '60s/early '70s Cambodian rock. You can hear garage, fuzz guitar, organs, exotic female singers, and echoes of Santana, The Seeds, SF acid, and more. I listed this because it's relatively easy to get, compared to the actual Cambodian CDs/LPs themselves. "Cambodian Rocks" has no documentation whatsoever. However, I managed to figure out who one of the artists is -- Ros Sereysothea, who sings a stunning song called "Chnam Oun Dahp Prahnmouy" (track #2) that is infectious and catchy, but also a bit funny, as psych/fuzz guitars give way to a surf beat with a really high-pitched, nasal female voice.
Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • Replies 24
  • Created
  • Last Reply
Ken Some five or six years ago a TV item got the golden rose at the Montreux festival in the music category. It's about music from the people of Senegal if memory serves me well. I think it's called 'Djabote' A French engineer gets into the jungle with an enormous mixing desk and a two inch tapemachine and records the music all these beautiful people make. Some 50 to 60 musicians with drums, from very small to very big, all made by themselves, hitting with 'sticks', also self made and 'playing' the most beautiful instrument there is: the human voice. They play rhytms we hardly understand and the women with their beautiful coloured dresses sing so very nice, there are no words to express it. I recorded it from TV to a Hi Fi stereo VHS and looked at it the whole weekend. I still get very impressed by this video, where these black people get so much by so little. I have but one word: awesome!
The alchemy of the masters moving molecules of air, we capture by moving particles of iron, so that the poetry of the ancients will echo into the future.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kabuki (essentially the Japanese version of opera). Minimalist arrangements, strained, quavering voices, one-string mandolin-like instruments, loud woodblock cracks, gutteral grunts, a chorus with voices shrill enough to strip paint from the walls. The female characters are played by male actors who sing in quirky falsetto voices. (Imagine a rambling, drunken, Asian village idiot, and you'll get the idea.) Japan is now a first world country, but Kabuki is about as foreign to a Western listener as anything you could possibly imagine.

The Black Knight always triumphs!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What's especially different sounding about Kabuki is not only its sounds, but its overall starkness. There is some Korean music that reminds me a bit of Kabuki, but I think Kabuki sounds more unique to our Western ears.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

At a house party in Peshawar, Pakistan there was a local band playing in the garden. Tablas, a harmonium and another instrument shaped like a fat violin with about 15 strings and played like a guitar. I'm really stoned on the local dope just enjoying the music when the host comes over and asks me what I think of it. "It's really good." I replied. "Don't just say that, what do you REALLY think of it?" That was when I left happy party mood and entered serious musician mode. I tried to follow the key. I couldn't. I tried to follow the time signature. I couldn't. I tried to follow the overall structure of the music. I couldn't. It had no relation to anything in our western music and while previously when I hadn't been thinking about it, I enjoyed it, after I started thinking about the music I just got really confused by it. It was pretty good later when I had a shot of the guy's harmonium, belting out 12 bar blues in such a surreal situation.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I visited my home country of Ceylon in 1979. My dad took me to visit his school... St. John's College Jaffna. We attended a chapel service in Tamil. The songs were basically biblical psalms sung as simple chants in Tamil, to the accompaniment of a harmonium drone and a hand bell. Two things stood out to me. - The scales were non-western but were familiar to everyone. The whole congregation nailed these (to me)unfamilar pitches. - The enunciations (grace notes, scoops, trills) were unique to each word. (They waried between stanzas, depending on the words). Yet the whole congregation knew when to scoop up, or trill, or whatever. On the trills they would all shake their heads sideways to do it. :) When I thought I knew a melody, they would do it with a new set of words and the different enunciations would throw me off. It had western song form (stanzas), middle-eastern (biblical) lyrics translated to Tamil, and Tamil musical content. Very cool. Kinda blew my mind. Added to all the culture shock I was feeling upon return to an unfamilar 'home'. Jerry
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Might be hard to find, but well worth it: Ivo Poposov and his Bulgarian Wedding Band look for a record called "Orpheus Ascending". [img]http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000061O.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg[/img] Difficult to describe- its in a class of its own. Here is a link to some online sound clips (amazon.com) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000061O/ref=m_art_li_2/104-8556666-9923118 :D
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Madagascar folk music.....listened to it on NPR's Afropop....absolutely killer. Arabic music...all those semitones, killer grooves.....can you say KASHMIR????? I like world music so what can I say?
Down like a dollar comin up against a yen, doin pretty good for the shape I'm in
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Was just listening to some of the tapes that I purchased in Burma. They have this music that accompanies puppet shows that is just amazing. They are playing something that sounds somewhat like Thai/Indonesian/Philipino music in that it has a series of gongs suspended on bamboo frames, two-headed drums, cymbals, etc., but it is a really unique take on this. It's to my ears spastic, but they are clearly playing something quite rhythmic, because everyone will lock in on particular hits, and then seemingly "break apart" again, only to come back together. I was watching a puppet show in Mandalay, and was completely enthralled by this group of musicians. Truly amazing. I purchased their tape, which just doesn't do it justice, but it is still amazing. Also have Burmese heavy metal (very '80s sounding, and very well-played) and a band doing a cover of "Take Me Home, Country Roads", which we heard in a Mandalay Buddhist temple.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I lived in the Middle East a few years back, I remember turning on a radio and hearing the beginning of "Devil Went Down to Georgia'. I was surprised a few seconds later to be treated to a version of that song in Hebrew. Seriously though... in Chicago we have a band called Funkadesi. If you were to breakk down their style, I'd say the best description one could come up with is that they're the child of African, East Indian, Reggae and Funk genres - and they are very good.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You music majors may be able to help me here with composers' names etc. But I remember my junior high band teacher playing music that was formulaic, palindromic, and atonal. I want to say Schoenberg or Berg. I can't say I loved it, but it sure was weird! I think I have only heard it once since then.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Found another one that really sounds a bit unusual. This time it's the Vietnamese that are doing it with "The Traditional Songs of Hue" (Viet Nam), King Record Co. (Japan). Beautiful, but with constantly dipping 2-string "rubbed lute", as the liner notes state, and the singer also dipping and soaring, it sounds a bit unusual as well. Pretty, certainly, but unusual.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chinese Opera tops my list. No familiar markers whatsoever. In college,I studied Kung Fu,read the works of Confucius,Lao Tse,and some Buddhist tracts as well. I was infatuated with traditional Chinese culture. But when I went to a cultural exhibit and a lady sang a short aria,I found myself desperately trying not to laugh. It was so [i]strange[/i] to me and it sounded well...comical. The rest of the audience was not so provincial and appreciated her artistry. I was just thankful I didn't embarrass myself. later, Mike
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jonah, that sounds like Schönberg (he basically "pioneered" what call Twelve Tone Music). Weird indeed. Other weird "classical" stuff would be Webern and Ligeti. Not to mention we still have a composer in that vein over here - Arne Nordheim. Actually one of the first composers to use electronic devices together with orchestras (tape loops, early synths and such). Not exactly world music, but weird nonetheless.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow - great topic! :) I've heard so much world music, I don't know what constitutes "Unusual" anymore! :D I have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to work with groups from all around the world - there is so much to be heard outside of our Western musical culture (which is pretty narrow in a lot of ways...1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4) For a quick trip around the world, I recommend a box set (book & CDs) called Voices of Forgotten Worlds - a sampling of indigenous musics from around the globe. Very cool! Also, check out [url=http://www.baka.co.uk/shop/pages/albums/heart.htm]Heart of the Forest[/url] - music of the Baka pygmies. A great reminder for those of us steeped in technology of how music is an integral part of the human experience.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
Found another one that is incredibly unusual. "Canada: Jeux Vocaux Des Inuit" on Ocora Records. A very unusual collection of Inuit games, in which various Inuits imitate sounds of animals, etc. while playing games. Fun!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anyone heard IZ? He's the Hawaiian singer (full name Israel Kamakawiwo'ole) that did the haunting version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" heard on the next to last episode of ER this season, also in a commercial for the now-defunct e-Toys. The guy was 700 pounds, past away at a young age about 5 years ago.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

coolhouse- I`ve had a chance to hear kabuki live several times, but to my ears Chinese opera music is even more crazed. It goes from spare percussion to shrill cacophany and back again (mostly to accompany physical action). It also is supposed to keep malicious spirits away, which is one reason why a lot of asian culture seems to be in love with (what sounds to westers ears like) pure racket. One of the coolest musical experiences I had while living in Taipei was jamming along on an acoustic with someone in the next room who was playing the gu-jeng (similar to the Japanese koto. I would also recommend the work of Leo Sarkasian, he`s been featured on NPR`s afropop worldwide several times. He`s been all over Africa, trekking into the bush to record sounds from various tribes. Love that show. I think you can get it from the website, [url=http://www.afropop.org]www.afropop.org[/url]
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been listening to this CD on SWP Records. Malawi music. It has this instrument called a board zither, and the first track from this disc features this and a voice that sounds almost like Mickey Mouse. It's odd, but also kinda pretty.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote]Originally posted by franknputer: [b] A great reminder for those of us steeped in technology of how music is an integral part of the human experience.[/b][/quote]Yes, and also a great reminder of how much a part of daily life music plays in most cultures.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This isn't weird at all, but ohmahgosh, this is GOOD! Good and funky! "Nigeria 70: The Definitive Story of 1970's Funky Lagos" on Afrostrut. It just doesn't get much cooler than this. I've heard a lot of Afro Funk, but this comp, a 2-CD set (with an accompanying third CD that is a documentary which I haven't gotten to yet) is sooooooo cool, so funky, so unbelievably catchy, I had to tell you people about it!!!! It has the usual suspects -- Fela and Sunny Ade, but it also has The Funkees, Gasper Lawal, Lijadu Sisters, Shina Williams, Sir Victor Uwaifo, and on and on. It's really, really good!!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That Nigerian thing is the catchiest thing. We've been playing it all week at work. Anyway, I got "Centrafrique", otherwise known as "Central African Republic: Rituals of the Oubangui Gbanzili & Mbugu" on Le Chant Du Monde Records. One of the cool things on this recording is an mbira (thumb piano, kalimba) that is the size of a car door (!). Deep sounding, as you might guess, and insanely cool. The polyphonic chanting and percussion just adds to the fun. This is actually not all that weird, but who knows, some people might think so..."Bollywood: The Rough Guide". I have several compilations to movie soundtrack songs from Bombay (Bollywood) in India, but this one is especially good because of the song selection and the fact that it doesn't just concentrate on the so-called "Golden Age" but goes right up through relatively recent times. Cool. Some songs are kitschy, some catchy, some both at the same time, same overly dramatic, some really saccharine, some all of these, some have that Morricone baritone guitar thing going on, and one song is from my favorite "Curry Western", "Sholay". Yippeee!! Good comp.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...