Music, the Performing Art: Its Excellence, Appreciation and Cultural Progression (original) (raw)
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Music as a Vital Factor for the Continuity of the Cultural Identity
Review of European Studies, 2015
Among the rural settlements of the Turkish population in Macedonia exist more specific communities that are characterized by geographical, ethnological, linguistic, and cultural autochthony. These features, which greatly contributed to the longer preservation of cultural heritage, are also reflected in the musical tradition. One of these communities is Kodzadzik village, municipality Zupa, Western Macedonia, the birthplace of the family of Ataturk. Today, Music in the village of Kodzadzik is still one of the vital factors that continually sublimate events of the rich history of many centuries. This is confirmed by our field research conducted during 2013 by collecting, recording, and monitoring of certain worldly events, in which music plays an important role. Hence, we focused on the wedding customs, sunnets (circumcisions), holidays, as well as everyday occasions. The structure of the performing ensemble depends on the occasion in which they perform a repertoire, and it can be both instrumental and vocal, or either one alone in a group or solo performance. Interestingly, the performing ensemble in collective events is still constituted of traditional instruments, davul and zurna and also are used the saz, wooden spoons, and tarabuka (hourglass drum). The repertoire consists of local traditional folk and Rumelian songs from the wider region and songs are epic or lyric in their theme. The music in Kodzadzik represents a spiritual monument of events and emotional conditions that leave a strong impression on people and owing to which it retains its authenticity to this day.
The cultural study of music: a critical introduction
The Cultural Study of Music is an anthology of new writings that will serve as a basic textbook on music and culture. Increasingly, music is being studied as it relates to specific cultures-not only by ethnomusicologists, but by traditional musicologists as well. Drawing on writers ...
Global cultural process in the continuity and prospective of musical tradition
Global cultural process in the continuity and prospective of musical tradition, 2014
When we mention the word “tradition,” we immediately think of the past. Certainly, the past, in a semantic sense, associates something passed that cannot be returned. However, we are witnessing that in the construction of new and contemporary tradition, we often return to the past and in that way we continuously relive it again. The new achievements are not only the product of adaptation and cultural processes, but they are also new qualitative systems of creative motivations that differ from traditional values. We are considering this study through the prism of the Turkish population in rural settlements, which in certain periods has changed and transformed in its way to modernity as evidenced by today's material and spiritual cultural heritage. They are a reflection of this path, which often passes through contrasts and inevitable contradictions that model the emergence of some new values. In this paper, we traced this complex process from the perspective of the most striking indicators of the spiritual and material musical tradition: musical instruments, performing ensembles, repertoire, and dance. We observed these aspects through the most massive and most abundant ritual ceremonies––weddings that were observed and recorded by field research in the rural settlements of several geographical locations in eastern and western Macedonia. Regardless of the location of settlement, new–modern forms of expression of musical culture are prevailing through the dominance of western provenance instruments, imported repertoire that inevitably entail changes in other ethnological features, as in the costume and during the ritual.
GREEK TRADITIONAL DANCE
It is not easy to describe the significance of this book while doing justice to its unique qualities. It is not just "a study of Greek dance". Although Dr Raftis' training as a sociologist is apparent in his scholarly approach, this book is also a personal statement, as well as an inquiry into some of the processes of social and cultural reproduction. The author has also lived and danced his subject matter. His work, therefore, is a particularly valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about the place of the author/observer in the analysis of cultural forms. At the same time, the author's practical interest in dance has enabled him to produce an informative and useful text. The theory is immanent rather than explicit and the book is accessible to a wide range of readers. From another, related perspective, this book is a timely examination of the politics of cultural representation. Or Raftis offers a lively critique of dance studies and the transformation of dance into performances for tourists or "patriotic rhythmic gymnastics". These processes are especially apparent in Greece, where dance remains integral to the lives of many people but also provides entertainment to a vast tourist population. Within this debate, the present study reveals the significance of dance in the re-constitution of "imagined communities". For example, dance is closely linked to the identification of people with particular regions of origin and with the Greek nation. For this reason, dance can be incorporated in ideological practices, as it was for example during the period of the junta and as it often is in Greek populations of the diaspora. Dr Raftis also criticises the sense of urban superiority that led to the official view of demotic music and dance as "the naive expression of simple peasants" and as being tainted by non-european elements. This reflexive approach to the study of Greek dance and music pervades the work. Discussing studies of dance in ancient Greece, Dr Raftis notes a tendency to project interpretations from our own historical era, as well as a common idealisation of the ancients, archaeolatry. He argues that historical studies must be specific to time and place and provides examples of how specific analyses might be made, both in this section and in the next, on the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods. His analyses offer the reader a fresh view of travellers' accounts of these periods, which often "classicised" Greek dances and represented them as performances with some conscious attempt at forming patterns (for example). These historical chapters provide an extremely valuable background to the study of Greek dance, which too often leaps from the ancient to the present without due attention to the intervening centuries. Later chapters offer specific analyses of dance in more contemporary settings, again with the emphasis on the relation of dance to other social phenomena. These include material about paniyiria (village feast days) and public festivals, weddings, family celebrations, Carnival and Easter celebrations and the place of coffeehouses. Public dances are shown as generally reinforcing the social order of values, providing participants with a sense of permanency and a social location. Marriage is the most important event of the life cycle, marking movement into maturity, the transfer of property, the establishment of kinship alliances and the culmination of years of preparation. The ritual of marriage is, therefore, highly elaborated, with its own choruses and accompaniments. These are examined here through analysis of the dances found throughout the marriage ritual. Carnival, on the other hand, is a ritual denial of social mores, with formally acknowledged leaders and dance order, accompanied by loud and frightening noises and, in the literal sense of the word, ecstatic performances, such as leaping over fires. The institution of the coffeehouse is of considerable sociological importance in Greece. It is a place for older men who may not be welcome at home for too long. During the long hours together, they share their constructions of personal histories and recognise common destinies and common problems. They dance solo or holding each other's shoulders, practices which were transformed to a new context with the music of rembetika. The next chapters elaborate on dance costumes and music, including instruments and musicians. The themes of earlier chapters re-emerge here as Dr Raftis describes the influence of European music and the domination of country by city. He demonstrates how village music has been considered as inferior, reminding listeners of "the miserable past" of Greek rural life. Nevertheless, it has been used for patriotic purposes, as it was in 1967 when the colonels' coup was announced to the strains of traditional music. One of the characteristics of Greek music is that its rhythm can vary to suit the dance and the singer. Musicians are evaluated according to the results they bring to the listeners, such as making the celebrations known to other villages or "giving wings to the feet of the dancers".
On the Meanings and Media of the Art of Music Performance
Lietuvos muzikologija, 2007
Commonly, music performance is thought of as a one-way system of communication, running from the composer to the listener through the medium of the performer. Each performance is also said to attempt mediating between tradition and innovation, or between ‘objective’ fidelity to the score and ‘subjective’ performative expressiveness. In all cases, the composer’s idea seems to be taken as a kind of absolute, and the performer is supposed to remain as ‘transparent’ as possible – all what matters are composer’s intentions and their effect on the listener. But, if to examine more closely, what and how actually does the performer mediate? The aim of the present article is to pay attention to a specific phenomenon of the music world, namely, the performers of music – the personas and their art. A few interrelated topics are discussed, such as the notion of mediation, as applied to the art of music performance, and different media through which the art of music performance is disseminated; related to that is the consumption and marketing of nowadays’ practices; the author briefly takes a look to the traditions, or schools, which also can tell us certain things about the music performance art; and, finally, the performer’s corporeality – i.e., the signs that are conveyed through the performer’s bodily qualities and actions – is examined. Key-words: performance, mediation, semiotic self, subjectivity, communication, consumer media, corporeality.
The Phenomenon of Musical Art in the Education of Individuals
Journal of Intellectual Disability - Diagnosis and Treatment, 2018
Phenomenon of musical art considered as one of the conditions needed to create artistic and aesthetic communication that nurtures the growth of a spiritual, moral and harmonious personality. This article focusses on finding new bases for music education. It outlines current music education and points out difficulties that are caused by rapid changes in music culture. Due to these changes, music curriculum must find new starting points. We explored and compared the main ideas about music education in its historical development. We conclude that music education today should be built on music making and listening. It can no longer be based on traditional frameworks because they are not familiar to individuals today. Music education should be based on research, and new ways of teaching and learning musical skills and knowledge should guide its practice.
Graeff, Nina - Experiencing Music and Intangible Cultural Heritage
This article presents some thoughts toward a conceptualization of musical traditions as Intangible Cultural Heritage. The Afro-Brazilian samba de roda and candomblé serve as paradigms to discuss the dichotomy of intangibility/tangibility of cultural expressions, i.e. between the ephemerality of their experience and the endurance of their material objects and documentation. The special importance of the human body in both traditions points to the centrality of human experience in practicing, transmitting and safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. Such a perspective puts into question safeguarding measures such as inventory-making and documentation of musical practices and may open the way for more appropriate methods for fostering them.
Musical and psychological anthropology: scientific and educational project
Perspektivy nauki i obrazovania – Perspectives of Science and Education, 2020
The relevance of the article lies in the need to comprehend at a new level the methods of organizing education at a university in order to actualize the professional and personal reflection of students in the context of the analysis of existing artistic anthropopractics, including in the aspect of personal preferences of cultural and stylistic phenomena. The purpose of the author’s scientific and educational project – musical and psychological anthropology – was to create a course and organize the learning process at the humanities faculties of a pedagogical university through self-knowledge of young people in the process of getting education. To organize the process of self-knowledge of students and actualize reflection, a complex of methods of musical-psychological anthropology was developed and tested: analysis of ideal and real artifacts of musical consciousness; analysis of types of musical behavior; analysis of intonation archetypes; case analysis «psychological complex of a modal personality – a carrier of a certain musical style»; analysis of precedent texts of musical culture (generational, ethno-cultural and confessional preferences) and other author’s methods. The developed methods constitute a methodological toolkit that is studied and used in the course of musical and psychological anthropology at a university for research and self-understanding of university students (learning through research of self). The generalization of the results allows us to speak about the effectiveness of the approach to the study of the mentality of the implicit social groups of the modern metropolis (Moscow) by studying the musical preferences and value orientations of young people. The general significance of the project of musical-psychological anthropology as a scientific field of knowledge and anthropopractic within the educational process is seen in the creation of conditions for students to acquire «living» new knowledge and to satisfy the need for self-understanding and «care for oneself» (M. Foucault) as a subject of an emerging culture.