There are/were a number of World Music related threads but none for the "& Conversation" series. Not as popular in Western culture as some of its contemporary extensions, so if we include these we might bring along into the fray those elements that truly define cultural music traditions. So what is World Music and why isn't every kind of music technically "World Music" .. we're all in the same world, aren't we? Well, yes and no. World/Global/International music is a Western musical category. It encompasses different styles of music from other parts of the globe, those from outside of mainstream Western pop-culture. Forms of music that Westerners consider "ethnic" or those indigenous to non-Western cultural traditions and various folk styles from traditions passed down though ancestral legacy. It may also include neo-traditional music where more than one set of cultural traditions intermingle as an organic hybrid. So I'll kick things off with one such hybrid that is known as Anatolian Rock. Here a Western style, Rock (itself a hybrid of roots American forms), is fused with Turkish Folk music. Believed to have had its origins in the 1950s it coincided with American and British Rock's development along with the increasing popularity of Western music acts in Turkey. Turkish society began to undergo significant cultural changes during this period, and from about 1968 to 1975, psychedelic Rock became popular most notably through the work of guitarist and singer Erkin Koray. from 1974, Cemalim
Koray has enjoyed a decades-long career that has seen his style evolve through many phases. His songs are consistently excellent, imho. Erkin Koray - Sevince (1975)
A highly-acclaimed group of Anatolian Rock artists, including Edip Akbayram of the band Dostlar , are contemporaries of Erkin Koray. Here performing Dağlar Dağladı Beni (1974)
Is the Anatolian sound itself a basis for early American psychedelia? I think of songs like East-West by Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Sally Go Round the Roses by Great Society, The Fool by Quicksilver...do you think people in these bands listened to Turkish or other Middle Eastern records in the early/mid 60s? It would be interesting to know.
Anyways, it's good stuff... here is my contribution (My internet is now running really slow - heavy traffic?)
The original psychedelic age ('66-'75) was an interesting time in music across the globe. Jazz in the U.S. had already set precedent with ethnic explorations in the '5Os, and these had permeated Rock even before psychedelia took hold. As an example, American Surf guitar instrumental music was incorporating Arabesque figures, Spanish Flamenco, and elements of Hasidic nigunim into basic melodic themes as early as 1961. By the mid-6Os the flood gates were wide open as far as experimentation and so a lot of American artists exploring psychedelic Rock were taking cues from '5Os jazz artists and exploring various international folk elements and cross-cultural bounds. After the first wave of psychedelia in popular music subsided, in 1970 or so in the U.S. and a bit later in places like the middle-east and far-east, probably lasting there until about 1977, Anatolian Rock music experienced its own shift toward a more adult-contemporary style, but still fused AOR Soft Rock and Western-style Pop with Turkish Folk traditions.
This is Erkin Koray from 1982, Silinmeyen Hatıralar - a song he recorded more than once in his careeer.
They certainly did. There was a big world music scene in the Bay Area and around UCLA starting in the 1950’s at least. Ever hear Kaleidoscope?
As the OP pointed out, the term “world music” is an invention of western (US) musicologists. Very ethnocentric. I don’t like it.
I have a Masters degree in world music (ethnomusicology). I remember finding it odd that there were so many Eastern students in the program. There was nothing ethno about it to them.
Fair enough, I guess I question (and perhaps have my own reservations about) the idea of categorising the music of all cultures and traditions apart from Modern Western popular culture under one umbrella term and at the same time singling-out all things Western as being separate from those. If we are talking about the various music traditions of diverse cultural origin, it is fair to name them each according to culture, ethnicity, time period, etc. and we can safely compare them with one another in this way. I guess the problem I have with the term as it is used is that it is not all-inclusive. If we were discussing demographics in the context of sociology, an opposite and negative insinuation might be inferred if one group were to be singled-out against all others, whatever that group might happen to be. The great thing about language is that it can evolve through common usage, which has to start someplace. I have no problem with the idea of including all music for the premise of this thread. My hope was only to not exclude ethnomusicological traditions relating to population subgroups within any larger and dominant global, multi-cultural group or any with a common national or cultural tradition. For that matter, we can begin here by henceforth redefining World Music as an all-inclusive term, and for the purposes of ethnomusicological discussion, simply identify each tradition as is appropriate to its origins.
3 Hür-El - Aşk Davası (1973) 3 Hür-El were a Turkish Rock band active from 1970–1977, and which briefly reunited from 1996–1999. Formed by siblings Onur, Haldun and Feridun Hürel, they're regarded among Turkey's most popular Anatolian Rock bands, performing folk-driven Pop and Rock and occasionally reinterpreting classic Turkish Folk songs in ingenious ways. Lyrically, their songs often featured themes of peace and freedom - universal convictions highly relevant to the turbulent and shifting cultural and political tides in their country at the time.
Folk and Jazz singer Tülây German, aka Toulaï in France where she now lives, was born in 1935 in Istanbul and is known for her modern interpretations of Turkish folk music. Her career began when from 196O to 1962 she made a name for herself as a jazz singer performing on weekly programs featuring the Salim Ağırbaş Quintet on Radio Istanbul. Today her known recordings span a period from 1962 to 1987. Her 196Os singles &EP discography includes 14 releases between 1962 and 1969. 'Burçak Tarlası' issued in Turkey in 1964 on the Ezgi Plâkları label, ( 45-101 ) b/w 'Mecnunum Leylâmı Gördüm'
I'm listenin' to Skomraška igra & Devojačko kolo (transl. "Jugglers'Play" & "A Girl's Wheel") by Ensemble Renaissance; it's a traditional music from Medieval Serbia.
This is a great idea for a thread. I have enjoyed all the examples posted so far. I am deeply enmeshed in my jazz studies right now but will try to contribute as I break from jazz and hit some of my favorite non-western music. For now though, I will start with music that spans both: jazz and non-western. Lionel Loueke is a Benin-born jazz musician who fuses his African heritage with the purely American jazz form. The results are wonderful.
Bekleyiş by Step-han 1972 (these are some songs I have in my iTunes. Thought I'd try to find them youtube and share)
Ramo, Ramo I am assuming this is a Serbian song this version from 1974 by Slobodan Ilic I have a 1983 lp by the Balkan Rhythm Band on Flying Fish Records. This song leads off the album. Hardly anything on the web I could find about them but I did find this version which will suffice quite nicely.
Turkey is a nation straddling eastern Europe and western Asia with cultural connections to ancient Greek, Persian, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires. Because it is a transcontinental nation ( mainly on the Anatolian peninsula and a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula , Cosmopolitan Istanbul, on the Bosphorus Strait, straddling Europe and Asia, is the largest city in the country making it the cultural gateway to the Middle-east and a hotbed of fertile music influences. Turkey is bordered on its northwest by Greece and Bulgaria; north by the Black Sea; northeast by Georgia; east by Armenia, the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan and Iran; southeast by Iraq and Syria; south by the Mediterranean Sea; and west by the Aegean Sea. A very exciting if often dangerous place to visit in the period from 1965-1980. For music, there were few places as hypnotic and enchanted in those days.
Annabouboula were a Greek-American band that released a 1983 album on Shanachie Records, "In the Baths of Constantinople". If you ever see a copy, grab it.
