The Whole Music Experience

World/Galician   Radio Cos Radio Cos   Folmusica The American song collector Alan Lomax knew a good thing when he made field recordings of Galician music decades ago.  In some ways Galician folk music with its Celtic influences could be mistaken for Scottish or Irish music and in other ways, it sounds like Basque traditional music, some Portuguese traditions tossed in and the musicians sing in the exotic Spanish dialect, Gallego.  Radio Cos performs Galician dance music on Radio Cos punctuated by “aye, la, la” and on one of the tracks, I could have sworn I was listening to a Mexican ranchera (listeners also dodge animated bullets on that song). Romp-stomping accordion bounces along delicious polyrhythms played on the traditional frame drums and tambourines, maracas, violin, gaitas (bagpipes), saxophone and vocals.  The vocals supply us with harmonies and occasionally passionate outbursts.  On Pandeiretada (traditional drum) the music...

Purposeful Music & Preservation for the Sustainable Age: A Filetta, Wikipedia As I write this essay on bringing back the true intent and purpose of folkloric music, I’m listening to the Corsican polyphony group, A Filetta. In 2006 I co-produced a segment on Corsican polyphony music for “The Old Country,” a radio show produced at the community radio station, KBCS (Bellevue, WA). During my research (which took months), I discovered that this vocal music found its roots in the Corsican shepherds who took their herds up into the Corsican island’s mountains. In fact, I learned that the Corse language was nearly lost because of French bans placed upon it for several decades (I might be wrong about the time frame), and the language was only preserved because of this Corsican vocal tradition and the fact that the shepherds, the ones carrying on this tradition, spent that time in the mountains. The Finnish language also nearly went extinct, but again was preserved through an or...

Song Catchers In Search of the World’s Music By Mickey Hart with K.M. Kostyal National Geographic (2003) I found this gem at Village Books in Bellingham, Washington. I wasn’t planning on buying any books, but then I made the mistake of checking out the arts section in the store. Tucked in with the music theory and Rough Guide to Classical Music , I found Song Catchers (In Search of the World’s Music). I made the mistake of picking up the book and turning each lovingly crafted page portraying both the history of ethnomusicology and recording devices as seen through the passionate eyes of Mickey Hart. Grateful Dead drummer/ethnomusicologist, Hart caught the anthropological bug early in life when he found a recording of African pygmies at his family home. He delved into this secret world without knowing where it would lead him later in life. And similar to the other famous song catchers he mentions through the book, (Frances Densmore, John and Alan Lomax, Moses Asch…), he ...