Friday, June 27, 2014
Bulgarian folklor- Kafal sviri
The title of this piece is: Kafal sviri
This group is called: Cosmic Voices.
They were founded in the spring of 1994 and continue to create beautiful music.
The origin of this piece is: Bulgaria
The orchestration of this piece is: Women's A Capella voices.
I love this piece because it definitely showcases the beauty of another
culture's music. The dissonances heard within this piece are unique to
Bulgarian A Capella singing. The throaty singing and stylization with
nasal tone is also very interesting to behold as a listener. The music
starts out with a slow meter, that changes time frequently and sounds
almost chant-like. The message of this piece is a narrative cultural
love story. It is about a piper who is playing in the village. The girl
singing tells her mother that if he is from their village she will only
love him for a day. But if he is from a neighboring village, she will
love that piper for the rest of her life. The lyrical content is very
interesting. You can tell the music in Bulgaria is substantial. In our
text, Wade writes when she arrived in a small village in Bulgaria she
was able to communicate to the village people her desire to find
musicians and was further led to find singers. Singing in Bulgaria is
obviously a very common and expected thing to be knowledgeable about.
Cultures share stories and folklore through music and this piece is no
exception. This would be an example of a narrative genre that links
music to text. This is also an example of musical drama. I especially
love the rhythm and meter change at 0:40. I can tell this is where the
daughter begins professing her ideas of love to her mother. The build
and change around 1:20 is also very beautiful and unexpected. This is
one of my favorite world culture pieces I have ever had the opportunity
to hear.
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Hi Jordan -
ReplyDeleteOMG this piece is gorgeous!! Thank you for sharing it.
-Martha
Wow! I love the vocal harmonies in this! I got chills at some of the dissonance that was sung...how great!
ReplyDeleteYou mention musical drama...well this is it for sure!
Thanks for sharing
Jordan,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great example of a piece of music that we all relate to, a cappella choral literature, but with a distinctly unique set of variants. I was immediately taken back to the 2001 ACDA National Convention that was held in San Antonio, where a high school group made this exact sound. I never quite placed the sound as Bulgarian, but through your post, a mystery sound from years ago has an answer. I thought that the traditional dress was an important part of the performance. The juxtaposition of old world dress on a television set is odd, but through this media we are exposed to a very unique and lovely choral sound. Thanks for sharing!
Andre Clark
Wow - this is an incredible piece of music. I really like the different style of vocal technique which is used and the tight and dissonant harmonies are very passionate and intense to my ear. It sounds almost prayer-like in the beginning, but then takes a different direction. I am definitely going to listen to more music by these lovely ladies! Thanks so much for sharing this!
ReplyDeleteGood details and application of the reading. Make sure you also include your paragraph reacting to each week’s specific prompt. This can be found under Assignments each week. I mistakenly recommended YouTube as a source. For future weeks, please use Smithsonian Folkways, Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, or BBC World Music.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your "youtube" email, I noticed you mentioned we could still use youtube as a source as long as we did our "due diligence" in verifying the music group/performers as being authentic for that culture. Hope that's ok as I did another youtube post this week. I looked in the other available resources you gave us, but found this Irish one and really enjoyed it.
Delete