A Record Of Musical Aesthetics

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What follows is a record of the learning I have acquired on the musical aesthetics of cultures other than those of the classical and popular music of Western traditions. You will regain here information about Haitian music, Persian music, Southeast Asian music, African music, the classical music of India, shamanic music, jazz and the aboriginal music of Australia, among others.

Haitian Bata Drumming

In the Bata drumming of Haiti, there are seven standard rhythms: Bayuba, Yakota Ebipkumi, Biobayare, Idilantilanti, Bembe and Yanvalou. Each one is addressed to the gods or a certain god and is in either a 6- or 12-beat rhythmic cycle. Each one is intended to induce trance. Unlike other trance traditions, where the shaman travels to the spirit world, in Haiti the gods are idea to descend and are said to “ride” worshipers. As Andy Narell’s lyrics say, “dress up in the beat and wait for the spirits to move.” When a person is possessed, people ask that person questions about the usual stuff, like money, love and other important information.

Southeast Asian/Gamelan Rhythm

Indian, Persian and Southeast Asian music have a cyclic rhythmic concept. This is also the way they view time with reincarnation and past-lives, etc., so the circular representation is only natural.

If we peep at the rhythmic cycle in gamelan music on a circular grid, it often has two superimposed triangles representing six rhythmic events divided into two kinds played in duple meter. They do not create polyrhythmic tuplets so are not symmetrical triangles. But the way the two overlap produces a symmetrical Star of David, though usually the downbeat is not on the axis of symmetry.

Shamanic Percussion

Unlike the African trance tradition, the shaman goes on a journey to the spirit world with the aid of music, essentially drumming/chanting/singing. He or she goes to the spirit world (usually the “under” world) accompanied by his/her spirit helpers in the belief that he/she can recover lost souls or to see what are called power intrusions in the body of the sick person. These power intrusions are thought to cause the illness and are said to reach from one of several possible sources, such as bad spirits or they are sent by evil sorcerers.

Shaman’s Rattle

An interesting aspect of this is that the shaman’s rattle is held close to his absorb head while he shakes it. I think it was Kay Gardner’s book on healing music where I read about this aspect. The sound of the loud random multiple strikes occurring inside the rattle may be affecting brainwaves and keeping a “sacred rattle” used only for the purpose of achieving altered states helps the shaman strongly associate this state to the sound of the rattle. It’s always wrapped out of view in the ordinary day until it’s time to do shamanic work so as not to dilute its potency with random associations from ordinary waking life. This is the same theory as with sacred masks, pipes, etc. The sound of the rattle may also help the sick person enter into an alpha state which is considered the healing frequency you want to be in so you can recover faster. Shamans are also known to shake the rattle over the sick person.

However, shamans usually assume the voice to be the source of the greatest healing power. It can more fully verbalize the healing intent/compassion/love. Getting clear on the intent of the work is usually considered the thing to do first before beginning any healing, whether it’s vocal, musical or not.

Trance and Style

Some studies have shown that there is no relationship between the types of music used and the types of trance induced. It’s been proven that music can help trigger and beget trance states but all sensory stimuli, along with cultural belief systems and individual expectations, contribute. The musical component of trances invokes an entire mythology to which positive emotions and behaviors are attached. Incense, flowers, costumes and ritual all play their fragment in invoking trances, not just the music. Sometimes the music is not even needed with the right individual.

Buddhist Melody

Music of the Buddhist world, especially Japan and also Native American music, often has a descending melodic line (not an ascending one that ends higher than it began with, a climax only 3/4 of the way through, like western music does). In the Buddhist world, many times, scales are practiced in the descending direction, unlike in the west where we practice everything ascending first. In the west, which was highly influenced by Christianity, we place hell in the center of the earth and heaven in the sky. Consequently, we denigrate the earth and our bodies with their sexuality, and we are trying to dash toward the intellectual spheres of heaven. This also relates to dance. Native American dances often have dancers crouched lower to the ground but in a comfortable way that will allow everyone to participate at a public pow wow. However, in ballet, people contort their bodies in a way that can damage the body permanently, such as walking around on the tips of toes and jumping into the air in ways that only virtuosos can perfect; theoretically, this is in an attempt to escape the bonds of earth. This perpetuates the idea that heaven is a very exclusive country club. Great of this has resulted from the fact that Greek translators of the early biblical texts didn’t know what they were doing. They projected their philosophical idea – that spirit is separate from matter – into their translations. This was not an idea that the early Jewish people had. In fact, quite the opposite.

Healing Music, Gamelan and Microtones

The binaural beats of gamelan, created by the two identical instrument sets which are tuned about a 1/4 step apart, synchronizes with alpha or theta brainwave patterns, depending on the exact distance of the interval. Gamelan musicians even say that their intent is to make the audience half-awake/half-asleep. I thought a 12-string type guitar retuned could also reproduce the shimmering quality of gamelan. The scraper used in Cuban music can also scrape out brainwave tuplets in 7, 9, 11, 13 or whatever.

Southeast Asian Melody

Southeast Asia’s melodic development is very similar to the Indian. The difference is it gives a straight melody with an ornamented version and variations, such as a rhythmically altered version, all presented simultaneously. Order crossing is integral to gamelan music. It’s former to maintain interest. Sometimes the melody is played at different tempos simultaneously. Western melody is very goal oriented. Gamelan melody is not like this and is supposed to earn a timeless feeling, which it does quite effectively. Like the classical music of India and Korea, the introduction usually has a part where there is no rhythmic beat. The Kebyar form has a melody in unison during the intro with no beat, or it occasionally plays interlocking rhythms alternated with melody played by different groupings of the instruments. It plays interlocking variations in subsequent sections. It also has a grand finale, beginning slow and ending fleet, just like Indian and Korean music.

Before moving from the intro to the first section, the rhythm can completely shatter down while the musicians play posthaste but soft, and they make sure their parts do not match rhythmically with anyone else’s as a transition. The first section has interlocking rhythms, which are also found in the music of Africa, Cuba and Haiti, though not as much in a melodic form.

Gamelan music is based on a cantus firmus similar to the occidental sacred music that was based on the ancient melodies of Gregorian chant. Western ethnomusicologists variously think of the essential gamelan scale as having either ten or five equal divisions and the first scale was slendro, which is about equal to C,D,F,G and A. It’s a pentatonic scale. This scale is dilapidated in temple services, which are a combination of Buddhism, Hinduism in Bali, and Buddhism and Islam in Java. It is considered more dignified and less passionate than the pelog scale, which sounds angry or sad to the South East Asians. Pelog was created after the Dutch invasion. The native people fought bravely for a long time but were cornered and about to be captured, at which point the expansive number of people who were still alive committed mass suicide.

The music created using Pelog is supposed to sound like the thunder of war and the clash of armies. It became popular very quickly and the forms that use it, such as Kebyar, were never elitist music played in the courts of the king. It is a very recent development. Pelog has three forms known as patet. The first is roughly equal to C, Db, Eb, G and Ab, a kind of Phrygian pentatonic scale. Anything played in pelog immediately sounds exotic to westerners because of the flat second degree and the uncommon skipping of F and B(b). One instrument in the ensemble plays neighbor notes around the cantus in a tenor voice, where the cantus note is the middle of three notes.

There are several different kinds of interlocking rhythms in gamelan music. The first is just a repeated designate. The second is in the range of a fifth and where the two rhythms coincide, they meet on the fifth. The lower voice of the interlocking rhythm is composed after the cantus. The upper voice is detached after that. The music has breaks and maintain to add variety and to tag sections. Gamelan music has a colotomic structure where the largest gong marks the beginning and ending of large sections. Usually only the most experienced musicians play the gong, since its placement is so important. It plays every 32 or 64 beats, for example, depending on the structure. Gongs for the colotomic structure are often gloriously out of tune with the rest of the ensemble. There are higher gongs which divide the structure further. One set of gongs plays on the last beat of every measure. This is similar to Korean music, which places the accent in the same place, and very different from western musical practice, which usually places the accent on the first beat of every measure.

The rhythms usually coincide on the last beat of a measure and meet on the fifth, as I said before. When the music gets fast, the players divide the music between them in hockett so that each person takes a turn playing each note of the interlocking rhythm. This technique is applied to all instrumental ensembles, even ones made up only of flutes. The higher pitched and fastest instruments are played by the youngest members of the ensemble. Playing in a gamelan orchestra is considered a community service. Songs are often named after the actions of animals. The cantus has definite methods for targeting destination notes, just like classical and jazz. The most senior musician plays the drums and/or rebab, a bowed string instrument. Flutes play in unison with the rebab.

Japanese Gagaku Court Music

If you’re thinking you would really despise Japanese Gagaku music and that you’ve never heard it before, think again. Ever hear that beautiful Shakuhachi flute music played by Samurai warriors and Buddhist monks? It’s part of the same tradition. What could be cooler than that? It also sometimes has the beautiful zither known as koto.

The scales of Japanese Gagaku court music are derived from building blocks known as fourth chords. Similar to tetra chords, they are not really chords at all but an interval relationship between scale steps. The difference between a fourth chord and a tetra chord is that the fourth chord is usually in the interval of a fourth and there are commonly only three notes contained within it, not four. So, the possible fourth chord combinations where the lower tetrachord usually goes would be CDbF, CDF, CEbF, CEF. The upper fourth chord may be conjunct or disjunct. This means that the upper tetrachord may begin adjacent to the last scale step which is F, so the upper fourth chord would begin on F#. The possible combinations in that case would be F#GB, F#G#B, F#AB, F#A#B.

The disjunct tetra chord would start on G not F# in which case we have GAbC, GAC, GBbC, GBC.

There is a decided preference for the interval of a fourth and tritone in Japanese music, the fifth not being nearly as distinguished as it is in western and India’s music.

The other feature is that the other notes not spelled out in the scale may still be used as grace notes, passing tones or embellishments, and there may be changing tones similar to the different forms of the ascending and descending melodic minor scale in western music, or the different forms of the raga in India’s music. This often creates a feeling of bitonality in ancient Japanese music.

Bitonality isn’t completely off the map in accepted music practice. It’s right on the fringe, which is where I am and like to be. Burt Bacharach used bitonality on several Dionne Warwick songs that made the charts, so don’t fair write it off as irrelevant to what you might be doing automatically.

Bitonality is an exciting arena which has not been explored fully in the current music genre.

Also, if the scale does not have the fifth, G, the koto player may still play it anyway as part of a drone or “chord.” My Indian vocalist tells me that even though a raga does not have a perfect fifth, the tamboura drone will still play it because it would be strongly exhibit in the overtone series of the fundamental anyway. Japanese musicians are probably thinking along the same lines.

Another point is that the reed mouth organ, which can only be described as a globular clay/bamboo harmonica, usually plays the notes of the fourth chord/scales. The lowest note is usually the melody. The music does not have a chord progression since it only keeps playing the same chord; the lowest note usually changes to match the melody.

Japanese Gagaku music is the oldest continuously existing ensemble tradition in the world. This music must be doing something right.

Mythology/Music Theory

The different ways of dividing the octave are related to mythological stories. The tonic is viewed as the king or emperor in ancient Greek music, the classical music of India and China. The fourth and the fifth are sometimes related, as the Asvan twins in Indian mythology or to ministers in the government hierarchy. The other notes in the scale are the subjects of the king. Notes outside the scale are enemies, especially the ones that are built of a tritone from the tonic that, in the western tradition, is viewed as the diabolical in music. The chord built on the seventh scale degree is also considered an “untouchable.” All of these ideas are a misapplication of the concept of, “as above, so below.” The ancients wanted to base their societies, or at least seem to be basing their music, on the natural order of the universe/ heaven.

Making God a king and the angels ministers is sheer projection because of the difficulty we have conceiving of a deity. Suggesting that since there is a caste system in heaven, there should be one on earth is self-serving. Repressive cultural control is not related to morality and is not derived from the authority of a venerable tradition. The upper classes represent their program as aesthetic and themselves and their music theory as moral and proper. They must rationalize their program as closer to immutable values and prevent outsiders from understanding it and of acquiring self-mastery. They exercise all of the above to propagate unfair classism.

There’s a hero in mythology who cuts up the abominable dragon that goes around the octave. The dragon has the scales of a snake from the earth and the wings of a bird from the sky. It represents the unity of opposites and is represented as an urobourus. It’s the most important “God/hero” that cuts it up, releasing the waters of heaven that have been sucked up and distributes the snake’s body as food for the devoted. It’s a terrible dragon because of the fifths. This is a rough paraphrase from a book called The Myth of Invariance. If you produce a scale using perfect fifth intervals without tempering them, you come at Pythagoras’s comma. The octaves don’t line up and processes, like the procession of the equinoxes, going further and further out of tune. It’s definitely the spiral of fifths and not the circle of fifths.

Astrology/Astronomy

When western astrology says I’m a Leo born near the last days of the sign, actually in sidereal astrology I was born in the middle of the sign. Western astrology might say tonight the moon is in Aquarius, but if you look up into the sky it isn’t. The procession of the equinoxes was discovered by western and Persian astronomers at about the beginning of Christianity. It is why the Mithraic cult was formed. They created a “God” that represented this discovery. The western solution to this discovery was to ignore it. Indian astrologers didn’t do that and calculated the planets’ positions based on their actual situation. This is known as sidereal.

So, the octave and the days don’t come out even. Sometimes it’s the dragon who divides himself, in which case he is seen as a God. Quetzaqoatl is another snake from the earth with the wings of a bird representing unity and often drawn as an urobourus. His division of himself created the world.

In Thailand, the snake is the symbol of God descending from heaven to be present within matter. That’s what the handrails with the descending snakes everywhere on temples and at the palace mean. The snakes often appear in pairs, which the author of the Chronicle of Invariance would discover as representing the upper and lower tetrachords, and often have several heads, representing a unity of disparate elements: scale degrees, colors of the rainbow, ether, air, fire, water and earth, past present future, creation, preservation, destruction … take your pick. Sometimes it’s a push-me, pull-you snake.

In Thailand, Garuda is the guardian of Thailand. He is shown rending a snake in half. This symbol comes from India. It’s also the symbol on the Mexican Flag. The bird is from the sky and the snake is from the earth. Its Yin and Yang together. It’s about fertility and everything good and bad in the world. Jesus and the “devil” have to come together because they are brothers or brother and sister/husband and wife. Quetzaqoatl is a “rainbow” feathered serpent. This also represents a unity of disparate elements

Music’s Relationship to Dance

African dance has often been viewed as vulgar or licentious because it usually involves hip motions, which are interpreted as being overtly sexual. The music is usually designed for an actual purpose, such as drinking and/or socializing, unlike the modern “fine” arts, which sees itself as beyond everything. Art for art’s sake, et al. In Africa, onlookers usually participate in either the dance and/or the music and are encouraged to do so. The dance is seen as a lifestyle integral to everything African. To call it obscene is ignorant or purposefully rude/racist.

The Greeks also based their music on the steps of dance. You may remember the terms from poetry class, such as “iambic pentameter.” These describe the rhythms of dance steps. Different rhythms were thought to recreate different moods by the rhythms produced. This is similar to the melodic concept in India and Southeast Asia known as “rasa.” Classical motifs were also thought to enjoy this power to induce a feeling residence. Each raga and rhythmic cycle is plan to have its contain emotional flavor.

It’s obvious that aesthetics differ around the world. Liberating the shapely for all is the key to unlocking music’s right potential to unify people.