The genesis of a folk revival

David Dunaway said that "The FBI persued Pete Seeger to the point where he couldn't get a job. The only people he could sing for were kids, because they never thought that it would be a problem for Pete Seeger to sing for six year olds. Little did they know. Out of that came not a subversive movement, but instead an American folk music revival that I think we have to give the FBI credit for helping to establish."

Music to work by

Bennett Konesni studied the music and songs of farmers in the Mwanza region of Northern Tanzania in 2005. Here is the video he made after his stay - which also includes zeze fiddle - which I have commented in an earlier blog entry:

Bennett is a farmer and musician himself, and publishes a blog about working songs from many places.

Spike fiddles

The zeze is a spike fiddle from Tanzania - and a member of a fiddle family played all over Africa and Asia. The zeze is composed of a wooden neck that goes like a spike through the gourd body of the instrument, while the bridge rests apon a banjo-like skin mounted over the top of the body.

Maganga Singida Neema demonstrated zeze playing and singing for me earlier today in Trondheim. He is on tour in Norway this month, and will be performing with the Tumaini Group in a couple of days. Maganga Singida's instrument has two strings: one for melody and one used as a drone. Fingers touch the strings to change notes, without pushing down against any fingerboard.

The pols

'Pols' is one of the most prevalent dances in Central Norway. Like the mazurka, a pols is in 3/4 time, with a rhythmic change during the last measure of every 16 measure phrase. I heard several pols tunes during the "Four fiddles - four traditions" concert in Trondheim earlier this week, tied to the 2013 conference of the Norwegian Center for folk music and folk dance.

The last tune of the evening was by one of the musicians present: Sturla Eide from Melhus in South Trøndelag. 'Dimmisjonspols' is the title (meaning 'leaving the military pols'), composed while Sturla finished his conscientious objector service in the mid 90s. Since then, it has become one of the most popular tunes in the area.

Here's Sturla teaching how Dimmisjonspols can be played, both at regular speed and more slowly:

Indescision as creativity

In 2012, the Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw exhibited "Chopin at his most indecisive", showing how Chopin continually revised his works with new versions and annotations.

The exhition webpage states:

Nowadays, in most instances, the successive stages in a creative process are impossible to distinguish. We work on documents that overwrite changes as we go along, and electronic texts deprive us of any tangible evidence of the effort and time put into our work, which in previous times were documented on paper. And yet the creative process always remains the same. Illumination, idea, chance or trial, then the first attempt, and so a sketch (where one rarely starts from the beginning), a working text, and so real work, and (if al. goes well) a final version, which we still most often want to improve. And that was how Chopin worked.

The curator of the Chopin Museum, Maciej Janicki, believes that this indecision can be a sign of creative strength rather than weakness:

Transcribing Ottoman music

Until the19th century, music in the Ottoman Empire was based primarily on oral tradition. Compositions and playing styles were handed from generation to generation through a master-apprentice system called meşk. The meşk system created thriving performance relationships, but also led to a plethora of variations on popular compositions. Often, the original composer might have been forgotten, and attribution given to a more recent performer instead.

But some music actually DID get written down. The earliest extant collections of Ottoman music are two manuscripts attributed to Wojciech Bobowski, better known as Alī Ufkī, Born in Poland in the early 1600’s, Alī Ufkī was kidnapped as a young adult and later sold as a slave to the sultan’s court. He had been musically trained in Poland, and began recording what he heard at court in western notation. In order to fit better with Ottoman written language, Alī Ufkī notates from right to left rather than left to right. Several hundred compositions are recorded, together with lyrics and comments.

Alī Ufkī’s manuscripts had little effect during his lifetime, however. Both were brought to Europe, and lay neglected in archives until only a generation ago – one manuscript at the British Library, and the draft version at Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. These manuscripts have recently been transcribed, published and sections recorded by Bezmârâ Ensemble, Pera Ensemble and others, providing a unique resource for interpreting Ottoman music of the seventeenth century.

For Connoisseurs and Amateurs

"This music isn't meant to be played on a stage! It is intimate and personal. Very personal." said clavichordist Ingrid Eriksen in today's concert at Trondheim Art Museum. And then she encouraged the public to break up the concert atmosphere by moving their chairs around in the room.

Ingrid Eriksen is Norway's expert on CPE Bach (1714-1788), who was the son of JS Bach - and a great influence on Mozart and Haydn. CPE Bach composed in what was considered a "sensitive" or "sentimental" style. Ingrid illustrated this style by playing "Sechs Clavier-Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber" (Six Clavier sonatas for Connoisseurs and Amateurs) interspersed with recitation from the 1768 novel "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" by Laurence Sterne.

The intimacy of the performance was underscored by Ingrid's playing a clavichord - which is very quiet instrument, but also very expressive. In the period before the invention of the piano, the clavichord was the favored instrument of both Connoisseurs and Amateurs alike.

The concert was a collaboration between the Trondheim Centre for Early Music, Trondheim Art Museum and Ringve Music Museum.