Songs I Like

[Johar]

Would you like to share some songs you love with other posters?

Let me start with mine:
1. 歡顏 "Smiling Face" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2c3fqClRYc ) (Composer: 李泰祥 Li Tai Xiang): Excerpt Lyrics: 飄落著淡淡愁, 一絲絲的回憶, 如夢如幻如真 "Drizzling faint sorrow, wisps of memory, like dreams, like fantasies, like realities"
2. 橄欖樹 "Olive Tree" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrjQm...feature=fvwrel)(Composer: 李泰祥 Li Tai Xiang): Excerpt Lyrics: "Don't ask me where I'm from. My hometown is far away. Why do I wander in a distant land? For the olive tree of my dream."
3. 走在雨中 "Walking in the rain" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUjPk...eature=related)(Composer: 李泰祥 Li Tai Xiang).
4. 錯誤 "Mistake" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuEQu9QUe4o, Sorry for the poor sound quality that skips notes in many places, but that's the only link I can find)(Composer: 李泰祥 Li Tai Xiang): Excerpt Lyrics: 我達達的馬蹄是美麗的錯誤, 我不是歸人，是個過客 "The clip-clop of my horse's hooves is a beautiful mistake. I'm not a homecomer, but a transient."

Are the names in Japanese writing or is it a virus on my computer?

[skatinginbc]

Are the names in Japanese writing or is it a virus on my computer?

They are Chinese characters. Do you think I should delete them so as not to confuse people? Ehh, I think I'm gonna go ahead and delete them from my original post. Now, there should be no foreign writings in my Post #1, otherwise it is virus on your computer.

[Johar]

Oh, keep them. Just wanted to be sure. I've been known to get weird viruses. I had a Google virus that led me to auto ads.

[Olympia]

Like Bulgarian songs?
Here is one I like: "The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices: Who am I?" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyL8U...feature=relmfu)

Care for "Chinese" music? Here are some samples of aboriginal music of Northwestern China.
1. Eastern Iranian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...Lj4KF0M8#t=49s
2. Turkic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGAdGlbFMhc

This is getting better by the post! We've just about made it around the world. I can't wait to get home and listen to the polkas, the earlier version of Maid of Constant Sorrow, the Bulgarian music, the aboriginal music of China...

Bulgarian! I was hunting for some to share, because I have Bulgarian friends. One that I can easily locate on YouTube is this song that accompanies video of the death of Leonidas from the movie The 300. I didn't see the movie, so I don't know if the song is actually in the movie, but it's riveting and heartbreaking and gorgeous, I think. My Bulgarian friend says that the particular vibrato deep in the throat is a specialty of Bulgarian women's singing. Notice that the lyrics are below the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PP-c_-lxus

(My first attempt at copying and pasting failed, and I pasted in part of an index I was working on this afternoon. Electronics are capricious.)

[dorispulaski]

I'm busy as busy, but I can't wait to listen to all the treasures listed her.

One musical style that I haven't seen here is the singing of the Zulus:

Some of this group's songs are traditional, some are transcribed hymns. This is the group that sang with Paul Simon on the record that included The Boy in the Bubble & Graceland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYcyUKqLck

I like them very much.

Here is part of Paul Simon's African Skies tour

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC93Q...eature=related

The Boy in the Bubble
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1ki3AbK8tM

[Olympia]

Yes, yes, yes! I love Zulu choral singing. Paul Simon is a wonderful world music collector, isn't he? He started all the way back in the 1960s, with "El Condor Pasa," that stirring Andean melody. By coincidence, I was planning to put an Andean video in for my next contribution. There are bunches of them on YouTube, but since this is a skating site, why not use "Missing"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coM4d1CQZfs

Any of you music scholars know why it is that Andean melodies and harmonies are so immediately accessible and congenial to Western ears? Is there a heavy component of Spanish influence, or is this the authentic original idiom of the region?

[dorispulaski]

http://www.about-peru-history.com/inca-music.html

I found this link on Peruvian musical instruments.

I believe the panpipes & flutes, not to mention the ocarina style instrument are traditional while the stringed instruments were introduced at the time of the Spanish conquest.

[Olympia]

Thanks, Doris. One of my favorite instruments is that huge pipe--don't know what it's called--that sounds as if the mountains themselves are breathing. There's a bit of them in the music used during "Missing."

[dorispulaski]

The Missing I music is Dolencias & Sikuriades by the Inti-Illimani. The Missing II music is Atahualpa & Cacharpaya by the same group.

I don't think you can go wrong skating to that music.

Here's Sikuriades from the Flight of the Condor album
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqECXbel0yc

Here's another number by them



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_9d8...eature=related

[skatinginbc]

My Bulgarian friend says that the particular vibrato deep in the throat is a specialty of Bulgarian women's singing.

The vibrato has a Central Asian flavor, almost like a mixture of Turkic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=905X5Th_ba8) and Iranian (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pw7UdmBtIw). Can it be a heirloom of the ancient Bulgars that migrated from the East?

[iluvtodd]

I love a lot of English Revival folk music, especially by the group Steeleye Span, who I think did a lot of their own arrangements and adaptations, and used electric instruments. Here's "The Weaver and the Factory Maid," which has everything: Maddy Prior's clarion voice, some story, some dancy music, and a glimpse of the Industrial Revolution and the people who lived through it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do7ep...eature=related

Another Steeleye Span fan here! I especially love "One Misty, Moisty Morning," "Spotted Cow," and "All Around My Hat."

[Olympia]

Hooray for Steeleye Span! Maddy Prior is one of the great folk voices. She's still in fine fettle vocally and has been releasing some fascinating concept albums about historical and legendary figures, such as Arthur the King. I hear she's done one from the point of view of Eleanor of Aquitaine, called Lionheart.

I think a lot of people assume that all the best British music is from the Celtic parts of the islands, but plain old English folk music (and I don't know its deep, past roots) is rich, varied, by turns haunting and merry--one of the world's great folk idioms. Composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams used folk elements in their music, very much the way Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky used the wonderful melodies and colorations of Russian folk music in their works.

BC, I don't know where that Bulgarian vibrato comes from, but it certainly sounds Asian, doesn't it? I'd be willing to bet that it was there from before their earliest migration to the Balkan area.

Doris, thanks for the names of the "Missing" songs. I have noticed Inti-Illimani before but hadn't tracked down those songs. Now that I know the titles, I can hunt them up in their original forms. I think Christopher Dean did a great job of blending them, didn't he? (Or whoever helped him with the music.)

[skatinginbc]

Any of you music scholars know why it is that Andean melodies and harmonies are so immediately accessible and congenial to Western ears? Is there a heavy component of Spanish influence, or is this the authentic original idiom of the region?

I'm not familiar with Andean songs but I decided to listen to a couple, and I did not hear "Spanish" in them. What stood out to my ears is the word "harmony". If you pay attention to every downbeat, all of them fall into one of the notes that constitute the minor seventh chord (i.e., relative Do, Mi♭, So, Ti♭). For instance, this is the sequence of downbeats in "El Condor Pasa":
Do- | So- | So- | So- | Do- | Do- || Do- | So- | So- | So- | Do- | Do- || Do- | Do- | Ti♭- | So-|| Do- | Do-| Ti♭-| So-| Do-| Do-||
And this is the sequence of this traditional Andean music titled "Kusi-Kusi" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pv85HRmqh0):
Mi♭- | So- | Mi♭- | Do- | Mi♭- | So- | Mi♭- | Do-||: Mi♭- | So- | Mi♭- | Do- || Mi♭- | Ti♭- | Ti♭- | So- | Mi♭- | Ti♭- | Ti♭- | So- || Do- | Do- | Ti♭- | So-| Do- | Do- | Ti♭- | So- || Mi♭- | Ti♭- | Ti♭- | So- | Mi♭- | Ti♭- | Ti♭- | So- || Do- | Do- | Ti♭- | So-| Do- | Do- | Ti♭- | So- || Mi♭- | So- | Mi♭- | Do- | Mi♭- | So- | Mi♭- | Do-:||
It appears that the entire song is in an integrated harmony, namely, in the minor seventh chord.

Why is it so immediately accessible to everyone's ears? Well, fresh water is more universally welcomed than fine wine; vanilla ice cream sells better than the chocolate-flavored. Beethoven Symphony No.5 in C minor, 'Fate' Op.67 (1) is one of the most popular in all of classical music because its "simplicity"--I mean, the entire movement is based on a four-note motif: "short-short-short-long" (e.g., So So So Mi♭-).

The intrinsic simplicity in harmony is probably what makes Andean melodies easy to the ears.

[Olympia]

Thanks, BC! I will use your notations while listening.

To my far less musically educated mind, the thing that occurred to me was that Andean music seems to use that combination of major and relative minor which is simple and gorgeous (lots of early rock and roll songs had that, such as my beloved "Stand by Me"). By contrast, if you listen to, say, North American Indian music, it's more chant like, with no harmonic progression (please pardon my ignorant use of terminology), and that music doesn't do anything for me except in terms of engendering respect for the culture.

The very fact that there is harmony and that chords are used is different from most indigenous music, isn't it? That's something I wonder about.

[skatinginbc]

Andean music seems to use that combination of major and relative minor which is simple and gorgeous

Exactly. A minor seventh chord (say, C, E♭, G, B♭) can be seen as a combination of a minor triad (C, E♭, G) and a major triad (E♭, G, B♭). So it may appear to be switching back and forth between a major and a minor, but it in fact stays the same in a holistic level.

The very fact that there is harmony and that chords are used is different from most indigenous music, isn't it? That's something I wonder about.

Actually I'm more fascinated by the similarity, not disparity, in primeval music, as if there once existed something called "proto-music" or as if all human races could trace their sense of musicality to the same gene.