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Guitar Bazaar:
Multi-Cultural Ideas for Guitar
These compositions are the fruit of
cross-pollinating musical vocabularies.
Eclectic harmonic and melodic ideas have
been wedded to asymmetrical dance steps
from the Balkans and Middle-East to create
a hybrid that is traditional sounding yet
different from what has gone before. I
hope these "studies" will give you some
new ideas. The process whereby these
elements have been appropriated and
combined is covered in detail in the
Guitar Bazaar Workshop video.
The touchstone for
this CD is an early work of the Hungarian
composer Bela Bartok, Rumanian Folk
Dances. Dating from 1915, the Rumanian
Dances are folk songs that Bartok
collected in Transylvania at the turn of
the century. Bartok built on the modal
architecture of each dance, adding
impressionist harmony with altered chords
and chord substitutions. Originally
written for piano and later orchestrated,
these arrangements anticipate many
elements of modern Jazz harmony.
The other songs
heard here are informed by ideas learned
in adapting Bartok for the guitar. Most of
these compositions are in unusual meters.
The method of indicating the subdivision
of beats in these irregular meters is one
used by Bartok in his notebooks of folk
melodies collected in the Balkans and
Turkey. The arrangements are extended by
improvisations that blend riffs from
Celtic and Oriental ethnic traditions with
Blues-based Jazz vocabulary.
- Bach-n-Aliya is a melody suggested
by a Bach bouree set to a Turkish dance
rhythm of 3+2/ 8. The improvised
segment mixes up country blues, Irish
bagpipe, be-bop and middle eastern
scales on top of an ostinato bass line
in the 5/8 Turkish meter.
- The Rain Beggar -In Bartok's day,
rain begging songs were still employed
by itinerant shamans in a manner akin
to the Native American rain dance.
Recorded on Edison wax cylinders and
later painstakingly notated, many are
preserved in his folk music
collections. This song is in memory of
Fred Cuny, a modern day wizard who
smuggled a municipal water filtration
plant through the Serb blockade into
Sarajevo. It is written in a 3+2+2/ 8
meter that is popular in Bosnia and the
rest of the Balkans as well as Turkey,
Kurdistan and Iran.
- Guitar Bazaar- With a blend of
oriental modes and asymmetrical meters,
the intent is to convey the full-tilt,
going off the tracks flavor of a
Bulgarian wedding band. The recurring
chord refrain comes from a flamenco
form called Bulerias. Two Bulgarian
rhythms, 3+2+2/ 8 and 3+2+2+2/ 8 are
combined to create a master pattern of
3+2+2+3+2+2+2/ 8. It's not as
complicated to play as it looks.
- Sleeping Giant begins with a theme
using an altered mixolydian scale with
a raised fourth that comes from
northeastern Brazil. The styles evoked
are Flamenco guitar, Balkan accordion
and Afghani rebab, with a little
Mississippi John Hurt. When the song
goes into rhythm, the meter is 2+2+3/
8.
- Chasing the Dragon is built on a
motif heard in a lot of Armenian and
Turkish music. The symbol for the
dragon used in tribal arts in Turkey
and Central Asia seems to be identical
to the Mesoamerican symbol for
Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent!
The idea here is to draw a similar
thread through near eastern and new
world sounds. As in Sleeping Giant,
Latin American and Blues flavors are
mixed in a Near Eastern dance, a fast
5/4.
- Bela Bartok's Rumanian Folk Dances,
a fingerstyle jazz interpretation.
Joc Cu Bata (a stick game dance from
Mezoszabad)
Braul (a waistband dance from
Egres)
Pe Loc (A stamping dance on one spot,
also from Egres. In the manner of a
bagpipe)
Buciumeana (a dance from Butschum, a
hornpipe dance)
Poarca Romaneasca (Rumanian Polka,
Poarca is a game played by children.
From Belenyes.)
Manuntelul (a quick stepping dance from
Belenyes)
- It's Greek To Me- This tune is a
Zeybekiko, a 9/4 dance that is a big
component of Greek Rembetika, the
oriental flavored soul music brought by
expatriates from Turkey in the 1920's.
Within a circle of dancers, a soloist
will balance on one foot and hop in a
wobbly fashion with arms outstretched,
like a great, hobbling bird. The
Zeybekiko is usually sad and brooding,
with lyrics about lost love, firing
squads, etc.. This particular version
is a little happier and brighter. The
soloists employ a style that is known
as a doina, playing over the rhythm in
free-time. Bartok called this parlando
rubato. Yanaris' bouzouki solo is in a
traditional vein. By way of contrast,
Jim's violin sounds like a hindustani
Ornette Coleman.
- Sailing to Byzantium is inspired by
a voyage across the Adriatic. The meter
of 3+2+2+3/ 16 is an hypnotic
Middle-Eastern dance called Jurjinah.
Sea birds, darting about the rigging of
a sailing vessel, accompany the
violin.
- Dr. Smedvig's Berzerka- Named for a
notorious accordionist, this "Berzerka"
is a 2+2+3+2+2/ 16 pattern from
Macedonia and Bulgaria called a
Kopanitsa. The accordion and guitar
riff while while the violin weaves in
and out like a Middle Eastern Mariachi.
Imagine a colony of Bulgarians living
in Guadalajara.
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