Ethan’s Music Appreciation Blog ♫

If you are a musician and rely on love performances in front of a live audience to make a living, being stuck at home and not able to have gigs is a major setback. In order to be successful during these hard times, musicians must resort to streaming performances live over the internet to have a chance at getting  some of that revenue back. I think a very important part in being successful during the pandemic is advertising yourself. Getting as much reach as possible is the best way to get more people to listen to your music and maybe even come watch your livestreams. Because everyone is stuck inside all the time, advertising yourself is easier than ever. All you need is a simple Instagram ad with part of one of your songs in it and you can start bringing in new fans. All you need is a linktree attached to it and you can list Apple Music, Spotify, and all of your social media accounts for people to follow. Once you have new fans hooked on your music and following your socials, you can start promoting livestream gigs. A few weeks in advance you should bring it up; on an Instagram story for example. That way people see it at the top of their feed and it stands out more. As the performance date gets closer and closer, continuing to promote it can bring in some last minute people who weren’t initially sure if they wanted to watch it. You can even sell tickets to the livestream in order to actually make some money. Something you want to avoid though is charging too much. Charging as much for a livestream as an in-person performance will likely push away potential viewers, so you want the pricing to be reasonable. If you’re a bit bigger of an artist and sell merch of some kind, you can even have that going during the livestream. Something interesting I’ve seen if merch exclusive to the livestream concert. This would definitely entice people to buy it due to the limited supply. With enough people on the stream because of advertising beforehand, there is great potential for lots of money to be made.

Dr. Munardiz considers the label of “Latin American Music” to be too broad of a term, and I 100% agree. I too believe that it should be pluralized as “ Latin American Musics” due to the countless varieties of music in each region of Latin America. Many regions have more than one style of music, and there is a ton of aboriginal cultures as well. By calling it just “Latin American Music”, it is implied that there is only one style, which could not be further from the truth. 

Latin American Music and Latin Music have similar roots to each other, but there is a main key distinction between the two.  Latin American Music is music made in countries that speak romance languages originating from Latin roots, with the most common languages being Spanish and Portuguese. These countries are south of the United States. Latin music shares similar characteristics, but the term is applied to that style of music made in the United States of America. It has been rising in popularity and has even surpassed country music and EDM.

An ostinato is a musical element containing rhythm and pitches that repeats over and over throughout a piece of music. In Latin American Musics, it is a very important part of the music. Depending on the rhythm used, it provides a basic framework for the style, as well as a groove to make the music interesting. The ostinato in these styles is a driving force that greatly encourages dancing along.

A couple examples of musical expression the male use of the common “ habanero” pattern are “Toque – Song for Olokun” sung by Fernando Hernández with Inés Sotomayor’s group, and “Ghana’e” by Willie Colon.  These sound quite different, but the habanero pattern is easily recognizable in both.

In the first piece, “Polacca” there is some particpatory discrepancy right from the beginning with the voice being slightly behind the beat of the drum rhythm underneath. Later on, about five minutes and 20 seconds in, much more apparent participatory discrepancy is present.  There is a guitar-like sound, some kind of other synth, and percussion playing all at the same time. Although simultaneous, they act on their own accord, not really following the timing of the others, until they all join in after a few seconds and play an ascending major scale. This occurs a few times.

The second piece, “Spaced Cowboy” by Sly & The Family Stone has participatory discrepancy similar to the second example from the first piece. While the verse is going on, a second voice can be heard coming through in the background slightly off of the timing of the rest of the music. I feel like it adds the effect of a slight audience participation because of the occasional off-time singing along with the melody and the more shout-like short vocalizations from the female voice. At the beginning, the synth solo is played slightly off the beat, setting a laid-back tone for the song.

The last piece of music by Potato and Totico, called “Agua Que Va A Caer” has much more apparent participatory discrepancy compared to the others, in my opinion. It begins with a steady drum groove,  but then a vocal melody enters, seemingly disregarding the background drums for the most part. The guitar solo later on in the music also does something similar. It plays quite out of time for a majority of it. In the call and response section of the music, more participatory discrepancy is heard. If you listen closely to the response, the intonation is not quite perfect in some cases.

I strongly agree with the alternate title for music theory being “the harmonic style of 18th century European musicians”. This is basically the extent of what is covered in all modern music theory classes you take at any university. It’s all Bach, Mozart, Brahms, but never any composers from places other than Europe. Even if you have to remain in the 18th century for theory classes, there are tons of other composers that aren’t white men. Take for example, Hampartsoum Limondjian, an Ottoman Armenian composer who lived from 1768 – 1839. Because of the music education I’ve received, I have unfortunately never heard of him, but he made great contributions to Armenian classical music. He created his own notation system that became the main system for Western Armenian and Ottoman music in the 18th century. He is responsible for writing out six books worth of Turkish music from the 1700s using his notation system. This wouldn’t be possible using Western notation due to the 14 tones per octave in said music. Another non-European composer from the 18th century is Brazilian composer José Maurício Nunes Garcia. While most of his music was inspired by the Western classical style, his music did have an influence from traditional South American style. If we move backwards from the 18th century, specific composers become harder to find, but musical traditions from all over the world can be discovered. Hundreds of years ago, a lot of countries had a unique musical style, even if it might be similar to neighbouring places. I think that by studying only 18th century European music, we are missing out on the full definition of music. There are tons of music traditions that we haven’t even heard of despite them being around for maybe even thousands of years. Not every style has to be enjoyed, but I strongly believe that many more should be included in “music theory” to broaden the term past European music. Before writing this prompt, I had never heard of the 2 composers I mentioned, despite their large contributions to music in other parts of the world. This needs to change.

I did my repeated listening with “My Melancholy Baby” by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Most of the time when I listen to new music, I just lay down, close my eyes, and listen to the entire album from start to finish. Because of this, I pick up quite a few details on the first try as I’m used to this way of hearing music. Despite this, I did hear some very smaller details come through once I got to my last few listens. I noticed especially the subtle interaction between the soloists and the rhythm section. The soloist would play and phrase and leave some space in between the next. In that space, the pianist would either play something as a response as a continuation of the line or repeat the same rhythm the soloist just played. There is also a ton of interplay between the rhythm section and the soloists when playing simultaneously. Another really small detail I never noticed until near the end of my listening was from 2:37-2:40. It is extremely faint in the background, but it sounds like someone is talking right before the head comes back in. I can’t make out what it says at all, but maybe it has something to do with the melody coming back in? It’s very interesting that even though I thought I had heard everything, one small little thing came out of nowhere, and now I can’t unhear it.

I think that playing music of the past can be completely ethical, as long as you don’t try to pass off the music as your own. If you were to perform one of these works that have disappeared, I believe it is only ethical if you give credit to the original artist, almost like they’re your “ghost writer”. You wouldn’t play something by Bach, for instance, and claim that you composed the music yourself. You should credit the original writer, possibly as a lesser known composer so the name doest come out of nowhere, to remain ethical. If you act like you created all of the music yourself and even became famous, people could somehow find out you actually didn’t, you would be seen as a fraud and a liar. This could end up tarnishing the reputation of the music itself and it could even lose all of its artistic value as a whole.

With easy multi-tracking technology of today, you can easily create and release music with multiple parts, and not have to worry about only performing things for only solo instrument or a polyphonic instrument with voice. It’s difficult to list all of the music that I think should be performed, but here are a few:

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor – J.S. Bach

The Girl From Ipanema – Stan Getz

Confirmation – Charlie Parker

Dubula – Traditional Xhosa

Here Comes the Sun – The Beatles

Purple Rain – Prince

La Vie En Rose – Edith Piaf

This is only a small amount of music from the past that I believe would be very important to play in the modern day. I think that these cover a few different cultures, as well as a fairly wide time period.  The list of music would go on and on for much longer if I included pieces from more cultures. None of this music is necessarily more important than others, its just the first few I came up with while thinking of historically important music.