|
dlish--i have only 2 cds--one is performed called "the yemen tihama" and is mostly dance and/or trance music, which i have linked in my pellet brain to moroccan gnawa in the sense that it comes out of a locally specific mixing of traditions. the other is a collection of singers from sanaa. both are great---but they came out as ethnomusicology objects, which tend to make museum pieces of what is recorded, hedging the sound round with interpretations about timelessness or "authenticity" that make it difficult to connect what you're hearing to much of anything in contemporary realities--and the images that one gets of yemen from the liner notes emphasize this museum piece quality.
which isn't in itself either good or bad.
i find it annoying personally because i don't think that the euro-conception of tradition makes much sense when it comes to music--i see music as far more open-ended and adaptive rather than being a word used to describe a set of practices or pieces that are repeated in the same way every time, such that tradition in the end refers to itself and to it's self-enclosedness.
but hell yeah, i'd be interested in yemeni music.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|