Sunday, September 09, 2007

A Musical Babel

I went to a concert in our university today. It was a duet for Tar (a classic persian instrument) and Piano . Somehow the music to me felt like a troubled relationship. The Tar was talking in its own language and the Piano was sincerely trying to sing along, but sounded dull and irrelevant. Listening to the Piano's desperate struggle was kinda heartbreaking.

4 comments:

بانوي جشنواره زمستان said...

چند وقت پيش هم در تالار وحدت تهران کنسرتي از تلفيق موسيقي کردي و فرانسوي اجرا شد که کشمکش و تناقضات اونها با هم در بيان اشعار مولانا و ... نظرم رو خيلي جلب کرد . اين پست شما منو ياد اون کنسرت انداخت.

A Fly on the Wall said...

Another fusion that didn't quite work out IMHO was traditional santour and flamenco music. I went to a concert a couple of weeks ago ad while the santour and the guitar were absolutely beautiful on their own, together they didn't fuse, rather the guitar for example would very much play background to the santour for example. Also when at some point they kind of played tag team, it was like each was playng their own song!!

Nazy said...

Jeer Jan:

My rule of thumb with performances that don't come through with flying colors (!) is to appreciate the "ambience," the "crowd," and the "effort!" I actually have been to concerts by masters (unnamed here to save my life!), where the musican was not in shape that night, for whatever reason, and it was really disappointing to have awaited him/her for a long time with expensive tickets and high hopes.

I have only attended one Tar and Piano concert, and it was out of this world. Both instruments were played with masters from Azerbijan (the country), and the melody was, therefore, Azari, sweet, and very very well-developed together. I believe the key to successful "meshing" of Eastern/Western instruments is in finding music that is suitable for the task, and getting musicians who can pull it off with their mastery and emotion.

I continue to find fusion music refreshing and exciting, in its own place. I would be reluctant to see masters going the fusion way (for example, Alizadeh has daringly tried this in the past when he introduced operatic bits to his music), as we expect those masters to safeguard the authenticity of the music into the future; however, for young musicians, I am all for their trying new things and creating new variations on older themes.

Be good azizam.

Anonymous said...

i liked the way you saw that

man o babak