[HN Gopher] Interactive: Ethiopian Music Scales
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Interactive: Ethiopian Music Scales
Author : ggeorgovassilis
Score : 78 points
Date : 2023-04-06 10:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.temesgen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.temesgen.com)
| endorphine wrote:
| Ethiopian scales can also be found in certain "Western" tracks,
| in which they give this distinct/unique Ethio vibe. For example,
| check out The Magic Eye by The Zenmenn and Connassais de Face by
| Khruangbin - both favorite tracks of mine.
|
| For anyone interested in more like this, I would suggest Wede
| Harer Guzo - this album is just amazing. Also, there is this
| great documentary from BBC about traditional Ethiopian music:
| https://youtu.be/6boJCbIr53w (skip to 5:30 for an awesome track).
| epiccoleman wrote:
| Very cool. I've always loved music related software stuff like
| this.
|
| I've been really interested in alternate tunings, or more
| accurately temperaments, since I this video about a just intoned
| cigar box guitar. I'm burning to build one of these for myself
| after hearing how cool that major third sounds:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fkw_xtPU-0
|
| In the meantime, I'll have to give these scales a whirl on my
| boring old equal temperament guitar ;)
| data_ders wrote:
| Tezeta by Mulatu Astatke [1] in solidly in my top 10 songs of all
| time. The whole "ethiopiques" series is great.
|
| praise be the algorithmic DJs that brought us Ethiopian Jazz in
| the 2010s. While there's certainly valid criticism of the payment
| model of music streaming platforms, I love how many "under-loved
| in their time" artists are now in the spotlight and appreciated
| as a result such as Astatke.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy-v-FgiUD8
| epiccoleman wrote:
| I'm reminded a bit of Mdou Moctar, a Tuareg guitarist who plays
| some pretty cool psychedelic rock. His stuff definitely has a
| much different flavor than a lot of western guitarists but
| still crosses over into rock territory in a way that is pretty
| pleasing to the ear.
|
| His KEXP performance is a fun listen:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52CZVfiiMpY
| data_ders wrote:
| hell yeah -- just crate dug a vinyl of Afrique Victime last
| weekend
| user3939382 wrote:
| Yes! I found it in a soundtrack for a movie that's also
| awesome, this indie with Bill Murray: Broken Flowers.
| oriettaxx wrote:
| exactly! wow, I forgot, thanks!
| subpixel wrote:
| Late 2010s? Those CDs came out in the 90s and took the world
| music scene by storm. Get off my lawn!
| oriettaxx wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89thiopiques
|
| 1998 to 2017 :)
|
| (1998) Ethiopiques Volume 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique
| Instrumentale, 1969-1974, Mulatu Astatke
| oriettaxx wrote:
| Btw, I've just read this sad one
| https://fleurmach.com/2013/04/06/getatchew-mekurya-antchi-
| ho...
|
| About Ethiopiques and copyright of Francis Falceto (Buda
| Musique record company), in an interview with Getatchew
| Mekurya published by Ethiopian Reporter in January 2012 he
| says: ''I think that is one of the reasons why Mulatu
| Astatke despises Frances Falceto. He does not want to see
| his face. Even if he was able to contribute to the
| recognition of our music worldwide, on the other hands he
| used us. He is making tons of money. I do not work with
| him; I work with other musicians and promoters and I think
| he is not happy with that fact.''
| oriettaxx wrote:
| Yes, the whole "ethiopiques" series is super great!
|
| and Mulatu Astatke is super alive and fine :) a lovely
| character, not "just" a great musician
| jbattle wrote:
| I'll throw in a couple more good pieces of music by Ethiopians:
|
| This is from an album of older pop music. From the little I've
| read this is something like live bar music.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSUuqP7RFj0
| https://open.spotify.com/track/1yInD7kgqru084JKE3Bqyz?si=b31...
|
| A dutch ~punk band called the Ex recorded some music with a
| famous saxophonist named Getatchew Mekurya. The whole album is
| great, this is my favorite song:
|
| https://theex.bandcamp.com/track/che-belew-shellela
|
| And this piano piece by Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou, a lady who
| led a seriously interesting life
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKU7iz9RYV0
| user3939382 wrote:
| If you're into this maybe check out this guy (from Mali)
| https://youtu.be/glHXDhFnQy8
| cal85 wrote:
| Really enjoying this, thanks.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| While more "pop" oriented, I was introduced the music of Salif
| Kieta in the late 80's and have loved him ever since. Also
| Mali.
| oriettaxx wrote:
| omg, I love him!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wBeUcaAtGI&list=PL7Ninasdu8.
| .. (Salif Keita - debagnouma)
| gnulinux wrote:
| Although this is cool and educational and I hope it helps people
| make music, I have to admit I've seen that this scale obsession
| in students learning Music Theory may not be the most productive.
| I've seen people falling into these traps studying scales.
|
| First, fundamental building blocks of pitched music is always
| intervals, never scales. Scales matter in so far as they relate
| to a tonic through intervals. Scales give us a "summary" or
| "snapshot" of the intervallic content of the music. Learning
| about scales is never a substitute for learning about intervals.
| Only thinking about scales can be a baggage because sometimes you
| can miss operations that make sense in terms of intervals but go
| outside the scope of the scale. (This limitation of scales is
| well known and well studied as starting mid-20th century
| composers (especially atonalists) and musicologists started
| thinking in terms of Set Classes instead of scales).
|
| The other trouble is, I've seen that people study this kind of
| material too much in abstract. E.g. one can go and study
| Messiaen's scales ("modes of limited transposition" as he calls
| them) as if it's mathematical material. Although this is a-ok,
| music theory is best used to _make_ or _analyze_ music. It 's
| best to learn these scales then sit down on your piano/notation
| software and actually make music. Music you like to listen. Not
| only will this help you understand the scale (i.e. the harmonic
| content of the scale) better but also motivate you to learn more.
| goldfeld wrote:
| Ethiopian culture is as ancient as the bible and rich with
| ancient wisdom, western music has a limited number of standard
| modes and oriental music offers a lot of variety there. We go
| just by greek heritage coupled with african aggregations. You
| would say a student of raga should be "obsessed" sbout
| particular ragas to full immerse in them? Also just exploring
| and hearing non-western music is a marvellous experience if you
| find the good parts. I'm doing something not so oriental, as
| I'm learning Chinese rock songs to help language acquisition,
| and been posting about that[0].
|
| 0: https://chinesememe.substack.com/p/who-led-me-here--xie-
| tian...
| gnulinux wrote:
| On a second read of your comment, I must say, I slightly
| misunderstood you and replied with this misunderstanding. I
| think if the music itself is "obsessed" with a certain
| structure there is nothing wrong or bad or misguided about
| being "obsessed" with that structure. In this case, if these
| modes are truly ubiquitous in Ethiopian music, nothing wrong
| with teaching, studying or using them. My original post was
| intended for people who are learning from scratch. I think
| it's better to understand the intervallic structure of a
| given music or musical repertory, instead of just the scales.
| But there is nothing wrong with scales themselves, as they're
| truly very useful models of music.
| gnulinux wrote:
| I'm very familiar with non-Western music and I studied music
| theory in abstract, not tainted with Western bias. There are
| models of music that are universal and found in all cultures,
| these directly come from the acoustic/physical properties of
| music. When I said the most fundamental building block in
| pitch based music is intervals, I didn't mean to say that for
| Western music, I really did mean "music". "Music" is a
| universal concept, found in all cultures, anthropologically
| we don't know of a culture that doesn't have "music".
| Although "music" is wildly different in each culture, it can
| still be studied in a generic way. Not all cultures
| necessarily have pitch based music, but if we do find pitch
| in music, intervals are the most fundamental tool to
| understand it. In Western music intervals are 12TET (an
| octave divided into 12 equal parts) but this doesn't have to
| be the case, this is merely an arbitrary convention. However,
| in other cultures we still do see intervallic treatment.
| These intervals may not be the same (e.g. Balinese Gamelan
| uses various tuning system, some similar to 9TET and 5TET
| (i.e. divide octave into 9 or 5 equal intervals).
|
| In short, my comment above applies to Ethiopian music as
| well, so does it to any music.
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