Meet the Band, Meet the Stage

On the last day of January this year I went and visited The Granada Theater in Lower Greenville in Dallas, Texas. The concert hall reminds me of an old movie theater. It has the big vertical sign that lights up every Friday night and has the set list of bands that have letters which have to be set up by hand instead of electronically. The first thing you see when walking inside of the theater is a bar where tons of people huddle around before the show actually starts. Inside the actual concert room there is a general admission area closest to the stage, and about two hundred feet past the stage is an upper deck with seating. Overall the theater is very small in comparison to other centers such as the Yellow Pages Center or the Pepsi Center.

At the show there were two bands playing. The opener was Times New Viking. Times New Viking is an up and coming new band that joined Matador records early 2008. Their main type of genre is low fidelity which is known for a lot of technical flaws such as distortion and background noise. This gives the band a sort of grunge sound.

The second band to play, the main act, was Yo La Tengo. Yo La Tengo is an older band that has been around since 1984. The band consists of husband and wife, Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, as well as James McNew. The band uses many different sounds and often goes from types of songs that are subdued and relaxed to types of songs that seem to scream and make as much noise as possible.

Completing my music ethnography

This past week I have been devoting the majority of my time to completing my music ethnography which is due this upcoming Thursday. I was planning to go to a concert this past Friday for Aaron Weberg but was not able to because other plans interfered. Fortunately, I was able to go to a Yo La Tengo show back on January 30 at The Granada Theater. I am interviewing a fellow attendee of the concert, Aaron Blakenship. The hardest part of this project was conducting the interview. Coming up with different questions that will help fill in the gaps as well as looking at a different perspective of information I already had. The paper itself is rather easy once all the resources are gathered. Writing one thousand two hundred words become very easy when the topic is something you are interested in. I will have plenty of time over the next two days to make sure I can double check my project and be ready to turn it in on Thursday. After the successful turn in of my paper I will be able to relax and enjoy my Spring Break.

Aaron Weberg

My post for this week will be about my musical ethnography project. For this project I am interviewing Aaron Weberg a musician and student of The University of Texas at Dallas. Aaron Weberg plays in the North Dallas areas such as Plano, Dallas, and Richardson. One of the venues he has played is The Door in Plano, Texas. The Door is where many local musicians come to play as well as musicians that are on tour. He has also played at the comet cafe in The University of Texas at Dallas for Acoustic Tuesdays last semester. Aaron usually plays acoustic guitar as well as sings. He also writes all of his own lyrics and guitar pieces. Often times he is accompanied by fellow musician Nick Leal who does the backup singing. His songs can be described as uplifting with a fast beat. In many of his songs there is a climax where he changes up the rhythm and brings in a new verse. Mr. Weberg hails from Duncanville, Texas where he graduated from high school and first began to perform at venues. Seeing him live in concert was a great experience and I hope to see him in concert again soon.

Japanese Noh

For this blog I listened to a Japanaese Noh performance at the Tokyo Sendagaya Hatomori Shrine. The hayashi, or musical ensemble that accompanied the noh drama, consisted of three men playing membranophones and one man playing an idiophone in the background. The idiophone is most likely to be the nohkan. There were a few other people to the right the seemed to be just bowing down to a man dressed up in a white mask and colorful robes. Although at first the music seems to have a beat, the drumming patterns constantly change and do not have any real beat. It makes it very hard to listen for just one of the drums because it's beat is always changing and sometimes another drum will take its place. Each of the musicians movements are very subtle. While watching you notice that the drummers hit their instruments the same exact way every time very distinctly. The singer seems to be shouting and chanting instead of saying any real words also known as kakegoe which is usually done by the drummers. The men that are bowing on the side are actually singing together and it makes a type of harmony for the piece.

Pandit Jasraj

Today for my Understanding World Music blog about Hindustani music I listened to Pandit Jasraj's Bhajan. The most prominent sound is an idiophone and the harmony which is played by an membranophone. The idiophone and the singer share the melody by singing at different times which leads me to believe it would be classified as a polyrhythm. The song instantly starts to speed up at about two minutes and thirty seconds in. This is called tans and causes everything to be happening much faster than it seems. The first time I listened to the song it almost startled me because I was not expecting it. These scalar runs usually happens in the vocal genre, khyal, which is very prominent in Hindustani culture according to the Music of the People of the World textbook. Another very intresting thing is how long some of these songs last. Some of these songs will last up to thirty minutes such as Govind Damodar Madhavati, another song by Pandit Jasraj. Each song seems to focus mainly on the lyrics while there is a simple harmony and the background. The idiophone in this song seems to take over the melody whenever Pandit Jasraj runs out of breath.

Googoosh

Today, I watched the Youtube video of Googoosh's Do Panjereh. The first instruments are all chordophones. Then an idiophone holds the rhythm. All the instruments seem to be native to the Persian culture besides for the second insturment to come in, which seemed to be a violin. The music seems to be heterophony with multiple instruments playing one melody while others play the harmony. Her singing almost becomes a yell at some points in the song. The Irani music that this song most likely sounds like is tasnif. Faegheh Atashin was the soloist. Her words seemed very poetic which made me think of this kind of Irainian music. There was a definite meter mainly made by the idiophone.

The hardships the Faegheh Atashin are amazing. Although I agree with the author, Nilofaar Mina, that it was right for Faegheh to stay in Iran even after the 1979 revolution. Being able to stay in Iran helped her keep in tact with her culture. Her earliest work was most likely in sync with her Irainian culture. She would do arcrobatic tricks along side her father.

After listing to this music I find it very pleasing and have to say I like it more than the African music.

Music Faculty Concert

Last Friday I went to the Fortieth Anniversary Concert in the Conference Center. My favorite piece was La Mento. The music was very upbeat and exciting with a jazzy guitar. A pulsatile beat was made from the drums. The guitar played the melody while the piano played the harmony. The motion of the melody was conjunct motion. Unlike many rock concerts were musicians focus on the crowd, the performers of the night seemed very concentrated on their instruments as if the crowd was not event there. The audience was very engaged in the music and very courteous of the musicians. It was almost as if I was at a movie theater with people making sure not to distract from the film. The atmosphere of the conference center was very relaxing and cool. Even in the back rows I was able to see every movement and hear every note the musicians played. The pieces of the first musicians seemed to switch from making a song feel much longer than it really was, to hectic violin playing that made everything feel as if it were happening at extremely fast speeds. The pieces from the next musicians was very fast pace and made time to go by much faster.