The Whole Music Experience

Wikipedia As I mention in my book Whole Music , when I was a child I fell in love with timbre and the voices of the individual instruments we listened to in music class.  Each instrument conjured a specific emotions or feeling in me.  The French horn caused me to feel majestic and the cello invoked melancholy.  My moods would shift with each instrument that I heard and my moods would shift quickly. Today, I listen to more than timbre, but I have an understanding of how tone, frequencies of the tone and timbre (the color of the tone) affect me on all levels.  And I wonder what listening to an entire symphony does with its many voices, themes, keys, musical passages etc... In the concept of "whole music" I prefer not to separate musical components, but in the case of this post, I will present solo instruments for your listening and feeling pleasure. If you keep a music journal (and I hope that you do by now), write down the emotions that come up with each instr...

World   Newpoli   Tempo Antico   Beartones     My first impressions of the Italian Tarantata folkloric tradition came from grainy video footage of Italian women spinning in a trance caused by the bite of a tarantula spider. I experienced my second impression of Tarantata when Alessandra Belloni’s Dance of the Ancient Spider (Sounds True) showed up in my mailbox in 2006.   At that point, I gleaned the wisdom of the true purpose of this ancient ritualistic dance and the rousing songs that accompanied the frenzied dance (to heal women’s sexual issues and repression).   While the dance and songs explore healing components, you can also find the tradition presented as folkloric music in concerts and on recordings.   The founding members of Newpoli explored their Italian culture after arriving in the US to study jazz at Berklee College of Music.   On their third recording Tempo Antico , the musicians travel as far ba...

Excerpt from Whole Music The Practice: Musical Treasure Hunt Similar to treasure hunts from our childhood, I’m going to send you on a music treasure hunt in which the pleasures are many.  Pretend that you are a song catcher visiting other cultures where you collect new sounds. While I mentioned sound healers earlier, another important player with music preservation are ethnomusicologists who combine cultural anthropology with music preservation.  Two famous song catchers are the late Alan Lomax, and the world beat drummer Mickey Hart.  I recommend learning more about these song catchers through books, and documentaries. 1) Step One-- Head over to YouTube, and look up the following music traditions: ·          Aboriginal Didgeridoo ·          Finnish Runo-Songs (Traditional singer) ·          Gregorian chants · ...

World/Jazz   Mulatu Astatke Sketches of Ethiopia   Jazz Village When I first started listening to world music, I heard a few Ethiopian jazz and sacred music recordings. Right away, I felt enticed by the exotic modes, scales, and polyphonic rhythms.   The music of Ethiopia possesses a distinct sound even when it’s melded to jazz, funk, and Latin music.   And it’s not the easiest music to describe either!   Pianist/Vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke gives listeners a music puzzle to solve and I even looked up traditional Ethiopian instruments featured on the recording (the Ethiopian flute, washint, traditional lyre, krar and the 1-string fiddle, masinco).   While the wildly delicious Sketches of Ethiopia falls into exoticism, any listener of world music will recognize echoes of Nigerian funk, American soul, Cuban beats and Ethiopian jazz because it’s all here and then some. The opener, Azmari warms up the ears with polyphonic beats, exotic ...