Good Horses

Title:  Eki A’ttar (Good Horses)

Performers: Paul Pena (composer of "Jet Airliner") and Kongar-ool Ondar (see "chanzy" and "xöömei" below)

Culture:  Mix of American and Tuvan

Orchestration: resonator guitar played using bottleneck slide; chanzy; singers using xöömei (Khoomei) or throat-singing techniques

I really like throat singing.  A lot.

I also think that this style of singing is a great example of how “people make music meaningful and useful in their lives.”  The people of Tuva are, or at least were once, very nomadic and dependent on horses and other animals, as well as very connected with nature in general.  The many styles of xöömei reflect this, as they are all meant to “mimic and interact with the sounds of the natural world.”  With enough chances, I might have eventually guessed that the sounds of xöömei imitate those in nature and were not just meant to be ridiculously cool—although of course they are—but it was the people of Tuva that gave the music that meaning for them.  The connection between the music and the lifestyle of the people who made it shows that this music had a lot of meaning for them.

Also, the juxtaposition of the musics of two “cowboy cultures,” on top of being a snapshot of the evolutions of those cultures, is just awesome.

Digital Buddha

Title:  Digital Buddha

Performer/Composer:  Jin Hi Kim

Culture:  Korean/eclectic

Orchestration:  The world's first electric komungo used in combination with electronic effect pedals


I was lucky enough to see and hear Jin Hi Kim perform on her own as part of the International Arts and Ideas festival in New Haven and with the New Haven Symphony, both on previously-performed works and ones being premiered.  She briefly explained her "living tones" compositional method in which each tone played is treated with utmost respect and as if it has its "own life."  She also talked about her passion for composing and intertwining the worlds of Korean komungo music with other musics of the world.

I definitely consider this music--although it involves effect pedals, with which I am somewhat experienced--to be at least mostly outside my own culture.  After all the reading I did about the importance, varying definitions, and debate surrounding authenticity and cultural context, I have to wonder, would this music be counted as "authentic?"  If authenticity is a concept that implies a static, unchanging tradition, then my guess is that this would not be considered very authentic, obviously because of its inclusion of electronics used to alter the sound of the instrument (similarly to how this video uses a lot of trippy visual effects and filters, in live performance it is accompanied by projections on a screen and so is an even more multi-media-oriented experience); that doesn't seem very "folky" or idiomatic.  But if authenticity is a concept that, other than by bringing attention to the need for attention to cultural context in the classroom, only serves to perpetuate an unattainable ideal "one" right way to perform a given style of music and distracts us from the fact that music is always evolving, then how important is it to classify it as being or not being authentic?