Hi guys! How’s it going? Today, I have a question that any of you can answer and/or comment on or give suggestions to: which country has created the highest amount of music in the key of A-flat (especially Church music, because I’m doing some personal research on Christian music across the world)? (and I already know the A-flat major / F Minor is a very uncommon key signature, but I still want to know which country it is most prevalent in, especially from a perspective of Church music) Any responses would be very appreciated, and I’m open to hearing as many perspectives and responses as possible. Thanks, guys!

Was thinking about the comparative lack of emphasis on rhythm in Western music theory, and got me thinking about the general lack of drums as a featured instrument in Western art music. Clearly drums are present in Europe throughout the time period, but the sense I get is that as instruments they were largely relegated to folk or military music contexts (if I'm wrong here, please let me know!)

But that got me wondering if this is a result of Western European art music largely moving away from a context of dance towards what might be termed 'courtly' or 'aristocratic' contexts, which largely would also be the contexts in which academic music theory developed. I was wondering if this was a phenomenon that might be seen elsewhere--where drums remain in popular contexts, but the art music of the aristocracy loses an emphasis on drums leading to its relative absence in any sort of academic theory.

This all is to ask--to what extent are drums present within the classical traditions and music theories of the Turkish, Arabic and Persian cultures, as well as the Chinese and Japanese traditions? (or elsewhere, these are just the areas I have at least an inkling of information about--I will say my extremely limited knowledge of Indian music theories indicates it's not the case there.)

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Hi, can anyone here recommend me interesting books about the history / practices of white voice singing (also called open voice, full voice or natural voice)? Books about Ukrainian / Bulgarian / Polish / Russian folk music are also welcome. Thanks!

This was a common belief among Southerners in the 1990s and even earlier, all the way to “it was a government conspiracy,” although of what sort, I don’t know. The idea is that bluegrass (and subsequently Americana and American folk and perhaps even country) is a ginned-up genre created by relatively recent songwriters (pros in the ‘30s and ‘40s, including for the Carter Family), and that it was never played prior to that and certainly not in the areas they claimed (or marketed) that it came from, and that no examples were even found by musicologists, who only found a pre-country ‘cowboy chords’ tradition of playing a guitar in downtime around the southern Texas region, possibly borrowed from Mexicans. Does anyone have any thoughts or insight into this?

Because hoo boy since then has this ‘Americana’ catch-all genre bloomed and I know several of the modern songwriters who claim that this is mostly true. In this series of events, country is ‘real’, but it is accepted as as modern as rock ‘n roll — a relatively recent advent created for the modern music industry. But ‘bluegrass’ / ‘Americana’, including the down-home tradition of bands of people playing these myriad instruments including banjo and fiddle, is horseshit according to these people.

I know the fiddle can be traced back to Britain but I am talking about a very particular sort of sound, not the Anglo sung folk tradition with accompaniment occasionally by fiddle.

If so, can I PM you a few questions? Tysm :)

Want to start exploring more traditional/classical/folk music from Africa. What are some good albums to start my journey into some of the music traditions of the continent?

so i've been watching a lot of videos of egyptian wedding drummers (shout out Sharon Drumz) and noticed they use a drumstick that has some natural bendiness/whip to it.

do these sticks have a specific name? would love to source a pair to get a feel for some of the patterns/playing technique but have been unable to get close to anything with open ended word soup searches

Wrapping up my 5th academic year in musicology and I still wrestle with this conflict that a lot talk about: becoming a musicologist can muddy the waters between a passion for listening and listening for work/research.

I do Nordic music, that's my whole speciality, and my secondary specialization is in American roots since that's my background as a musician. This has made it so that it's difficult to listen to any Nordic music or American roots music without it feeling at least a little bit like work. This is the downside for making a career out of what you love.

How do any of you reconcile this conflict if you experience it too? I'd love to hear other perspectives.

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So, I'm interested in theatre, having done theatre since sixth grade. I was curious if any ethnomusicologists study musical theatre from a more anthropological perspective. I'm particularly interested in if there are any for Broadway and West End-style theatre, as I'm sure many experts in Japanese music study Kabuki, and many Chinese music experts study Beijing and Cantonese Opera.

I know theatre studies is a thing, with people studying the writing techniques of playwrights, composers, and lyricists, storytelling techniques, leitmotifs, and more. I'm more interested in people that talk about musical theatre from the angle of it being a cultural phenomenon, writing ethnographies for it, for example.

I know ethnomusicologists study things like jazz, pop, rock and roll, rap, and more, so Broadway wouldn't seem too out of the question for an area of expertise.

Hi guys! I did a little research project on Sacred Harp / shape-note vocal music from the Southern U.S. : I wanted to find out how often Sacred Harp singers in the American South sang songs that had musical accidentals (which are any notes in a piece of music that purposefully differ from the main musical scale (set of notes) / musical key, that the given musical piece uses). So, I carefully examined every song that was in a hymnbook called “Southern Harmony” (which is a very credible and respected source of sheet music for Sacred Harp songs that were sung in the American South), taking a tally of how many songs in the hymnbook have at least 1 musical accidental. “Southern Harmony” has 336 Sacred Harp songs, and only 20 (around 5.9%) of them have musical accidentals, which heavily suggests that the vast majority of the Sacred Harp songs that were sang in the American South have no musical accidentals, and are instead were very diatonic (which means that the Sacred Harp songs in the Southern U.S. do not stray away from their written musical keys and scales).

Hi! Wondering what the thoughts are on Tufts program. My primary goal after grad school is to teach at a university (something in music, not specifically ethno). Will this degree be valuable when applying to teaching jobs in the future? I also have other reasons I'd like to study but that is a major factor for me. Would love any thoughts!!

I am a composer doing my masters at the moment. I am from a tradition of Hindusthani Classical musicians and also study carnatic music with some people in the circle of TM Krishna, online. I want to do a PhD studying a very specific development of a kind of rhythmic counterpoint in Carnatic music, which I’d like to study and implement in my compositional practise. What are the PhD programs that offer the chance to go and study in a specific place (in my case Chennai, India) to document a musicological phenomenon?

Hello. I'm part Greek (my great grandfather came from Lesbos) and looking to connect with the cultures there. I'm very interested in the music of Greece, particularly the music that feels more like a blend of Middle-Eastern/Turkish music and Balkan music. One instrument that once was very common in Greece (and is seeing a bit of a comeback due to young people taking an interest in earlier traditions) was the Oúti, which is visually identical to the Arabic, Egyptian, Iraqi, Syrian, and Turkish Ouds.

I was wondering if Greek Ouds had any distinctions between the other styles of Ouds. I know Turkish Ouds are usually tuned differently from the other styles. I would imagine that, given Greece's history with and proximity to Turkey, the tunings of an Oúti would be close to the Turkish style Oud, but I am unsure. Are there any other differences? Maybe differences in playing style, proportions, etc.?

If you know of any good sources on Greek music (bonus points if it talks about the Oúti), like research papers and ethnographies, let me know.

So, I was watching videos from YouTuber Farya Faraja. He has a few videos about historical evidence for Old Norse music. He makes several mentions to how it is quite unlikely the Norse had throat singing in the times of the Vikings, despite how often it appears in genres like Viking metal.

I've been reading Hungry Listening by Dylan Robinson, and the case Farya Faraji makes about modern Viking music appropriating Central and North Asian throat singing strikes me as a form of hungry listening.

The people of Mongolia and Tuva, for example, have been throat singing for seemingly quite a long time, yet people in Nordic rock bands heard it and thought it fit the aesthetic of violent raiders that the media tries to portray Vikings as. People in Central Asia do not get any benefit out of their culture being lifted and used to promote stereotypes of Vikings. If anything, I feel it's meant to draw comparisons to the stereotypes Europeans have of Mongolia and the people within.

The usage in the genre also seems to have created a myth amongst the neopagan community that throat singing was the Norse's to begin with. People commonly comment on Farya Faraji's videos about Norse music, claiming that "because you can't prove the Norse didn't throat sing, they therefore potentially did," or citing medieval texts, comparing the music of the Norse to the barking of dogs, or saying their singing sounded guttural.

The bands don't usually try to present their music as being "historically accurate," but their fans sometimes do. It almost feels like it diminishes the appreciation they might otherwise have for Eurasian steppe cultures by making the practices seem less unique. Yes, other cultures have their own styles of throat singing, like Tibetan and Inuit (though Inuit traces its roots back to North Asian cultures), but each has a unique style, whereas Nordic rock bands usually just use Kargyraa without any changes.

What do we think? Is this hungry listening? I'm only an undergraduate student, so I don't think I have the qualifications to make a blanket statement like that, but it seems like it to me.

Does what it says in the title. I'm looking for archive recordings of (ideally professionnel) mourners from disparate cultures. Thanks in advance, ethnomusicologists.

Note throughout the following that George Russell, in his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, used by Coltrane & Davis to create Kind of Blue and Giant Steps, among other works, apparently noted that Dorian is the 'relative minor' of Lydian.

The Blues scale, say a IV-V-I or EFB, minus the b5, is equivalent to Dorian II-III-VI.

By considering the equivalence of Blues I to Dorian VI, it becomes clear that the Blues I is really a twice diminished Dorian VI - first diminished by the change to Dorian from Aeolian, which lowers the 6th interval by 1 degree through flattening the 3 (Dorian vi is 6-1-b3 or Ionian 1-3-5), and then diminished again by treating Dorian as having diminished vi as is usual.

The Blues b5 isn't this schema is really a bb11 or bb4 or 10 or 3 in Dorian, and the minBlues 4 is the Dorian b3, while the Dorian b7 aligns with the Blues 1. So essentially Blues is Dorian with a natural 3 rather than b5 as the blue note. Using blues conventional key change rule of V7->I*, resolving two keys up probably works because the Blues v is really Dorian iii and the 7 is really Dorian 5, so really it's a iii5 (b3,5,b7,5). The extra 5 causes a tension that resolves at Dorian vi as i*, which I started by saying is equivalent to a Blues tonic. Thus the minor blues blue note as Dorian b3 rather than Aeolian #5 makes sense, especially given it's a b3 which is used in all minor chords.

But then why do we tend to use Aeolian #5? Well, consider that the folks in America who owned slaves may have had biases towards, say, hearing in the Blues a tonic that sounds Dorian flavoured and diminished. But Dorian was the basis for Midieval Gregorian plagal music, so something seems odd that the Blues is not usually thought of this way. I even read tonight that they used the same note as the blue note as a substitutions, but I cannot find the source anymore.

The 6th interval in Modern Western Dorian is the only factor separating it from Aeolian, the key of Western Major scales. Given its popularity in as church music, allowing for movement between Dorian and Aelion would be akin to allowing Earth into Heaven. It would have necessitated re-analyzing hundreds of years' worth of music. To not do so would help slavemasters have ammunition for arguments that their slaves are unintelligent & instinctually chaotic (who starts at the II and ends at the VI, especially a dim vi? Not anyone in Europe), and may also suggest why much of post-electric-guitar blues sounds a bit too happy given the lyrics - it derives from Blues filtered through the oppressors of the slaves that created the genre, deriving it largely from Islamic music & combining it with the toil & hardship of their lives, which surely would have led to a re-evaluation of religious music, in a sense bringing the Heavens back down to Earth.

If the powers that be were to acquiesce to simplicity & ergonomics in the realm of Theory, they would have also had to acquiesce that Dorian and Aeolian are substitutions for each other in their slaves' music, which would have completely gone against the dynamics of Aeolian as the primarily minor key, second only in usage frequency & dominance in pedagogical & theoretical models to Ionian. This is not to mention the role of the 6th interval in Baroque music, especially augmented 6th, which I'd like to note here apparently are usually close to or even complete enharmonically equivalent to a dominant 7th chord. Or the fact that the wolf howl comes from diminishing the 6th.

It's almost as if the Western powers were trapped in their own system, unable to make it work except by coarsely & damaging lyrics shoving every other kind of music in the world into their schema... and that is your anti-colonialist multiplicity-oriented music history lesson for the day. Peace! ✌️ ☮️ 🕊

So, since we already had one meme, why not another? I can't seem to post it in the other meme's comments, but, here... I made this...

https://preview.redd.it/5mx83d7t59jc1.png?width=569&format=png&auto=webp&s=04fb57ec94979901db0fcdef942bc9638b1f49df

This song is used in a documentary about Iran/Persian history. I am Iranian myself and I have mother tongue Persian, but this song is not in Persian and I don’t know what language it is in.

My end goal is to understand what is this song, but since I was not to be able to find it through Shazam or anything else, I thought I might try to understand where this song is coming from, and maybe I can search it through the lyrics. And I thought of asking you Ethnomusicologists :)

You can listen to the song from the very beginning of this video/documentary, and the song really shines through from: 2:30 - 3:00

https://youtu.be/Hpm4sJ0IdVQ?feature=shared

So, I was watching a video about national anthems around the world, and the person in the video said that a few South Asian countries use more traditional regional musical stylings for their national anthems (like Bhutan and Nepal). I have listened to various national anthems over the years, as someone interested in world music traditions, and I usually am let down by how standard many of these anthems sound. Many even just use the same melody as various other anthems, or are just arrangements of preexisting tunes (even the United States' national anthem gets its melody from a British drinking song [sobriety test]], "To Anacreon in Heaven." If you've ever heard a drunk person sing "The Star Spangled Banner," you know what I mean by sobriety test).

National anthems are meant to be a source of pride for the people, so why do so many of them outside of Europe just conform to Western European traditions?

Of course, I know the answer- Europe pretty much invented the idea of a national anthem. It's the same reason so many countries have flags that follow Western vexillology rules. Every country wants to fit in on the national stage, have a flag at the UN, participate in international sports, etc. It also probably largely ties back to colonialism, with many countries struggling to escape their colonial past.

Still, it would be nice to see some countries have multiple national anthems- one to be played by Western orchestra, band, or sung by Western choir, and one (or more, depending on the ethnic diversity found in the country) to be played by instruments traditional to the nation, or sung by people who are trained in the nation's predominant vocal style(s).

An example would be if Indonesia still used "Indonesia Raya" at sporting events (particularly overseas), but if they had, say, a Gamelan national anthem (maybe one that gets semi-translated to better fit each of the three main styles).

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is somewhat sad to you that, unless you understand the language, or if the anthem mentions the name of the country in a way that foreigners can recognize, most national anthems cannot be recognized by style alone? Many people are at least passively able to recognize the general region a style of music comes from, even if they don't know why they can tell...

Looking for some interesting reading on the relation between music and the political situation of a certain region. Examples genres are "Música de intervenção" in Portugal or "Nueva canción" in Spain, or protest songs in general.

Apart from these kind of obvious examples where the music was made to provoke social and political change, i am also interested in the opposite like if some established genre changed because of political reasons.