China, Overtone-Singing, and Wrap-up

My family doesn’t have TV, but we were fortunate to be able to watch some of the Beijing Olympics while on our summer vacation, including the spectacular Opening Ceremony, which this YouTube video shows a part of. China wanted to present its best face during the Olympics and especially this ceremony, so the whole ceremony is a fascinating fusion of the best of historical China and modern China, via complex symbolisms in the music, costumes, choreography, and visual representation. I also couldn’t help but like that the Chinese character formed by the “movable printing type” means “harmony.” If you have time, the next video of the continuing ceremony is also quite good and focuses a bit more on the music.



I don’t remember exactly how I found this YouTube video, but I wanted to share with you this gentle (at least at first) and beautiful performance of a solo guzheng player. Notice the repeated notes, the use of both regular and free meter, and the bending of the strings to manipulate pitch.



One intriguing thing I have noticed this semester is the diversity of vocal timbres and techniques. I have been especially fascinated by chord-singing, a technique in which one person sings 2-4 notes at once, which is very alien to the Western Art music concept of singing. I got to research chord-singing, also known as overtone singing, as part of my group’s presentation on Tibet, but Tuva and Mongolia also have their own styles of chord-singing. The styles all involve singing a fundamental drone and reinforcing a particular harmonic overtone of that fundamental with the vocal tract. I became very happy last weekend when I discovered that I can actually chord-sing, but I’m nowhere near producing melodies of the harmonic overtones like the Tuvans can.

Listen to this YouTube clip of some Tuvan throat singing, paying careful attention to the high “whistling.” You’ll have to click the link because embedding was disabled for this clip, but it's worth it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY1pcEtHI_w

And here’s a YouTube video of “Amazing Grace” using overtone-singing.



One thing that this course has made me realize about our own music-culture is how prevalent harmony is in our music. I love the harmonic element of music, especially harmonic progression, but many of the music-cultures that we studied have little or no harmony. Instead, they emphasize other elements of music, such as rhythm in Africa or melody in India.

I really enjoyed the music-and-religion blog and would like to learn more and think more about the connection between music and spirituality. Why does music affect our souls? What is the fundamental reason every religion I know of seems to use music in one way or another? Why or how does a purely physical phenomenon, the acoustics of music, take hold of our emotions? In general, why and how does music have the power it does? Why does music work?