Mexico: Fiestas of Chiapas and Oaxaca

Recorded for the amazing Nonesuch Explorer series in 1976 by David Lewiston, who traveled the world to capture the music of indigenous peoples and musical traditions, Mexico: Fiestas of Chiapas and Oaxaca is a great document of those mestizos of the southern part of the country who have been clinging to historic musical styles and performance techniques blending native Indian practices with those emanating from the Spanish conquest and afterward.

Flutes, marimbas, harps, guitars, violins, brass instruments and a variety of percussion instruments are featured on the fourteen brief selections, which provide an overview of the types of musics to be heard in local fiestas in villages and hamlets throughout the two states.  The music tends to be somewhat medium waltz-like tempo, often with a martial beat, and the performances on marimba and flute, in particular, are striking and beautiful.

The remarkable "K'in Sventa Ch'ul Me'Tik Kwadulupe," a ritual in Chamula, a village in the mountains of Chiapas, features chanted and sung prayers, a flowing harp and rhythm guitars, with a concluding set of prayers to the instruments and an invitation for the musicians to rest after the ritual.

A highlight of the disc is the lengthier (five and a half minutes) "Christmas in Oaxaca," in which brass instruments, caroling and percussion capture the festiveness of the holiday season, complete with the joyous shouts of spectators.  As recorded in the streets, the piece can almost transport you to a plaza, or zocalo, and place you in the middle of the celebrations.

Chanta Vielma's guitar and beautiful vocals on "Nuoco" constitute another peak of this fine recording from Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca, in which Vielma sings the praises of his hometown.  He is followed by an upbeat rendition of a son alegre in which brass instruments are accompanied by an electric guitar and martial percussion, courtesy of musicians from Pinotepa Nacional.

Another gorgeous guitar-based tune is "Cantares de mi Tierra," from Ismael Salud Gonzalez from Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, as he, too, sings, with great skill, about the beauties of his isthmus land near the Pacific.   On a spit of land along the coast not far from Tehuantepec is the fishing village of San Mateo del Mar and the closing piece is a dance featuring martial drums and violin that represents the indigenous Indians on one hand and the conquistadores on the other, with La Malincha, the native consort of Hernán Cortéz as the titular figure.

Sometimes it's the most simple of musics that are the most affecting, honest and authentic and the closer the pieces are to the activities of daily life, the more that rustic performances can bring out the emotional core of what music is.  Mexico: Fiestas of Chiapas and Oaxaca is a fantastic document of rural music from parts of Mexico that are unknown to most outsiders--this blogger included.

Fiestas: Music of the High Andes

There is still a strong connection of the mixed peoples of the upper Andes Mountains of Peru to their pre-European heritage, though there is obviously a major admixture of the native culture with that of the Spanish who suddenly and violently conquered the Inca Empire in the early 16th-century.

The album Fiestas: Music of the High Andes is another in the admirable series of indigenous world music recordings issued by the Nonesuch Explorer Series in 1972, but recorded in June and July 1968 by David Lewiston, who gathered so much great music from around the world for the series.  It features a variety of festive public music in the major city of Ayacucho and the smaller villages of Vilcas Plazapi and Chuschi.

Several of the pieces have vocals in the native Quechua language and performances include such instrumentation as mandolins, guitars, quenas (notched flutes), harps, charangos (stringed lutes), and ensembles using brass pieces, drums, among others--some of these native and others from the Spanish.  There are Catholic religious events, such as the Feast of Corpus Christi, featured as well as community celebrations like the Paucartambo that provide the settings for much of the music on the album.

The playing is often spirited and joyous, sometimes very reflective and beautiful and always inspiring, especially from a people living in somewhat remote circumstances, removed from the urban areas of Lima and other Peruvian cities.  One wonders how much the music has changed in the nearly half-century since the recording and whether vestiges of the pre-European heritage are as strong now.

In any case, this is a great disc to listen to for the appreciation of a society and a people who live in one of the most amazing places in the world. It gives an opportunity to vicariously remove oneself from the environment in which they've become accustomed and have some sense of how differently others live, through their very particularized music--music which entertains and educates.

Tibetan Buddhism: Tantras of Gyuto

When this was first purchased on cassette in the early 90s, it came fairly close to the reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, so there was attempt, even if not looking to practice Buddhism, then at least to be open to other ideas beyond Western ones and to see this recording as something beyond music, though many might question where this is actually music.

Recorded in 1972 at the Gyütö Tantric College at Dalhousie, India, where thousands of Tibetans moved to at the invitation of India's prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru after the Chinese invasion and conquest of Tibet in 1959, the project was supervised by David Lewiston, who compiled so many fantastic performances of music around the world for the great Nonesuch Explorer series.

Tantras of Gyütö  consists of two long pieces.  The first, "Sangwa Düpa" is a 41-minute excerpt from a tantra, lasting seven and a half hours and performed by forty lamas and monks chanting a text that has to do with the universe and the energy the chanters draw from its immovable sacred characteristic.  From the strength derived from the contemplation of the universe, participants become more attuned to the compassion and wisdom of the Buddha. 

The chanting features a "one-voice chording," in which each person sounds a chord in a low bass running between B and D, as well as another note more than two octaves higher.  A remarkable production is that another note can be heard in conjunction with the expressed one.  The example in the very informative liner notes by Lewiston and Francesca Freemantle is that "When the C two octaves below middle C is sounded, the E above middle C is heard clearly." 

Moreover, there is actually another E note a full octave above that that is not easily heard by the untutored ear!  There are also overtones or augmented notes and the great complexity of this style of chanting required some three or more years for the monks to master.  The text is also memorized, which also takes a great deal of practice and repetition.

Also of note is that, while an individual might chant in a monotone or a short melody and two or three might share the same pitch, a larger group brings together different pitches and mantras are also rhythmically free, each monk reciting at his own pace.  This adds to the rich and powerful effect of the overall recitation.

With Buddhism's main concern of moving past the vain illusion of ego and into an identification with the great void of the universe, free from earthly constrictions and constructions, the chanting and singing of ancient mantras, picturing or visualizing the nature of the universe in a freed mind, and other practices are essential to tantric practice.

Chanting in a metrical form by the group forms the basis for the piece, with solo voices indicating the beginning of a new chapter or a new section within one and an extended vocalizing of a given chord would occur with the end of verses.  "Sangwa Düpa" has origins dating back at least 1500 years ago and perhaps as far as nearly two millenia.

The second, shorter piece, "Mahakala" is eighteen and a half minutes in duration and the subject matter deals with a transcending awareness in the form of a demon-like god with horrifying physical features, but which manifests a protection to the Buddhist against selfishness.  There is a wrath in the battle against the ego, but it leads to a total sense of peace in the conquest of the self. 

This tantra is traced directly to the Buddha and it made its way to Tibet about 1000 years ago and it can be, like the "Sangwa Düpa," be performed with voice only or, as on this recording, with instruments, including drums, cymbals and the powerful radong, a six-foot long bass melody trumpet, although the a capella version does include a rhythmic slapping of the celebrants' hands on  rosary.  Some recitations of the Mahakala can take twelve hours, though the use of excerpts over a three to five hour period is more typical.

It is striking that, at the time of the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, between 10 and 20 percent of the male population of that country, some 300,000 to 600,000 in all, were monks in Buddhist monasteries.  The occupation of Tibet by the Chinese over a half-century has been very controversial and the subject of much discussion throughout the world.  More recently, self-immolation has been a common method for Tibetans to protest the Chinese takeover of their country.

However it is taken, whether by someone practicing the Tibetan form of Buddhism or by a listener who is open minded and curious, the effect of hearing this amazing recording can be striking.  This listener has found that listening with headphones with concentrated attention has a strong effect, even if the goal is not to try and follow Buddhist tenets.  Something powerful and, hopefully, long lasting, is still attained.

Tibetan Buddhism:  Tantras of Gyütö (Nonesuch Explorer, 1988)

1.  Sangwa Düpa  41:18
2.  Mahakala  18:31

Bali: Gamelan and Kecak

Another remarkable entry in the Nonesuch Explorer series of world music recordings is this 1989 release of Balinese gamelan and kecak recordings, supervised by David Lewiston in 1987.  Lewiston, who made many important contributions to the Explorer series, made his first trip to the island of Bali, in the region of Java in the Indonesian archipelago, in 1966 and made recordings that resulted in two albums that were early entries in the series.

Returning to the area two decades later, he remarked in the notes to this album, he found the process of arranging for the recordings to be much more difficult, because the pace of life and the gradual eroding of tradition complicated matters significantly.

Nonetheless, he was able, over a period from May to October, to record performances that showed that the unique music of Bali was still there to be savored and shared.  Some of these were recorded at the Bali Art Festival in the island's capital, Den Pasar.  The first piece is from the opening parade, in which some forty ensembles participated, and the 12-minute excerpt captures the sounds of a marching band called a beleganjer, which features songs, drums, flutes and cymbals; a gamelan with flutes, gongs, drums and a metallophone, a xylophone with tuned bronze bars in different pitches than heard in the Western version; a grumbungan ensemble performing on wood cowbells and slit drums; another gamelan called salunding, which includes tones like a bell; and another sample of beleganjer.

A village gamelan using a style developed in the 1910s comprises a ten-minute track with a notable harmony in the metallophone and a rollicking syncopation.  Following is a duet of a Balinese version of the jew's harp called genggong performed by brothers.  A four-minute frog song mimics these reptiles through the enggung, which is a piece of palm bark which is used as a wind instrument creating a very reedy sound. 

An example of the oldest type of gamelan found in Bali follows with the metallophone having iron bars and the result is a gorgeous one, showing its ancient origins of perhaps two thousand years.  Then comes a six-minute gamelan including the metallophone and the rich, sonorous tones of the gong, tempered by the high pitches of the flute. 

There is also a piece that has music accompanying puppet performances of tales that are taken from the ancient Sanskrit epics of India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and the puppets, made from leather, create shadows on a sacreen, hence the term "shadow play."  Two metallophones set at different octaves are played, but with the twist of the performer having to play with mallets in both hands, each of which plays a separate melody.  In addition, each note is followed by a damper by the heel of the hand and the players have to use syncopation in interlocking fashion.  Imagine the difficulty in learning to play in this way.

The kecak is a form of performing in which a chant of "tjak, tjak, tjak, tjak . . ." is done by a large ensemble of men, in this case 80, that reminds the listener of many of the trance pieces found in other parts of the world, but with this unique Balinese manner.  Coming to creation in the 1930s, the kecak is based on the story of monkeys who aided King Rama in his battle with a foe in the great Ramayana epic.  Finally, a nearly thirteen-minute gamelan based on a dance for warriors concludes this fascinating and varied album.

There is nothing like gamelan and Balinese music and its influence in the West has been shown in such areas as the piano work, Gnossienne, by the iconoclastic French composer Erik Satie, pieces by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, and modern composers like John Cage, Steve Reich, Mike Oldfield and, especially, Lou Harrison, whose work will be touched upon here soon.  Also to be covered here soon is the 1980s work of King Crimson, whose guitarists Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew made frequent use of complex interlocking duets that Fripp dubbed early on in that period as "rock gamelan."

It is striking that music from a relatively small part of the world should have such a major influence on the larger parts of it, but this is testimony to the hypnotic beauty and otherworldliness of Balinese music.