Shows
continental drift 8/28/23- turkey
For today’s episode, we’re looking at Turkey! You can find the playlist here and listen back to the episode here.
The Republic of Turkey is a country that lies mostly in West Asia, but which peeks just a tad into Southeast Europe. It borders the Black, Mediterranean, and Aegean Seas, as well as the countries of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Greece, and Bulgaria. With a bit over 85 million people, it is the 17th-largest country by population. The official and predominantly-spoken language of Turkey is Turkish, but a multitude of other languages are spoken throughout the country such as Kurdish, Arabic, and Zazaki.
Anatolia is the name of the geographic region that is now Turkey. For a large swath of time starting in the 13th century, Anatolia would be under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and as such, music of the region would be heavily influenced by the Ottomans. There’s an incredibly rich tradition of Ottoman classical music originally meant to be performed in Ottoman palaces. Turkish music theory itself is a vast and expansive subject, so we won’t get super deep into it in the episode, but one thing worth noting is that it has roots in both Persian and Greek musical styles. This is important because as Persian classical music started to fall by the wayside, the music of the Ottoman Empire would begin to synthesize Persian and Byzantine music styles into a unique Ottoman identity.
Folk & Classical Music Segment
Kemençe improvisation in Makam Segah // Sufi Music Ensemble
Tanbur impovization in Makam Hüzzam // Sufi Music Ensemble
Ud improvisation in Makam Hicaz // Sufi Music Ensemble
Üsküdar’a gider iken // Safiye Ayla
Moving on from folk music, the military music of the Ottoman Empire was particularly of note. Ottoman military bands, sometimes called mehteran, are the oldest recorded military bands, to the extent that later instances of military marching bands, even to this day, are derived from the Ottoman Empire. Beyond simply copying the formation of military bands themselves, though, the Western world also found something very appealing about the mehteran sound and composers like Mozart and Beethoven ended up writing music inspired by it.
Mehteran + Imitation of Mehteran Segment
Yelkenler Biçilecek // Mehter
Türkler Geliyor // Mehter
Rondo Alla Turca // Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Modern-day mehteran
In spite of this sort of passing of Ottoman music traditions into Europe, cultural exchange is often a two-way street, and while Ottoman music styles made their way into the works of Western European composers, the landscape of Ottoman, and eventually Turkish Republican, music would shift to become much closer to Western European music styles. As far back as the early 19th century, Turkish musicians would receive instruction in both Ottoman and Western musical traditions, and when the Ottoman Empire finally fell after the end of World War 1, the new Republic of Turkey underwent a large-scale cultural revolution intended to align it with Western culture.
The first president of Turkey, Ataturk, in order to sort of cultivate a national identity, made efforts to ban Ottoman-style music from being broadcast over radio or published and taught to musicians in a formal context. This would essentially force Western musical tradition to become the predominant musical tradition in Turkey, but in the meantime, for a number of reasons including geographical proximity to Arabic-speaking countries and Arabic-speaking immigrants into Turkey, the Turkish music scene in the 1960s would shift to favor the musical style known as Arabesque.
Arabesque Segment
Geceler // Bülent Ersoy
Acıların Kadını // Bergen
Also in the 1960s, rock music made its way from the US and UK to Turkey, and as is prone to occur, cultural syncretism between Turkish folk music and rock led to the birth of Anatolian rock.
Anatolian Rock Segment
Erkin Koray
mode8 #30: Welcome Back!
Welcome back to another year of mode8! This week’s playlist, as usual, is a bunch of stuff I’ve found over the summer – a mix of my Twitter bookmarks and Youtube saves. Enjoy!
Expedition Results // Hey! Pikmin
Olimar’s Madcap Ride // Hey! Pikmin
breezy woods — rewitkin
3DS Internet Settings Remix — tobybigball
802.1LEMON — AQUASINE
Smog City // Spark The Electric Jester
Those Who Fight — Button Masher, remix from Final Fantasy 7
Mantis Lords // Hollow Knight
The Weather Channel storm alert 2006 theme
Opelucid City (Black) // Pokemon Black and White
relic hill act 1 — skid loquerendo
Smoke and Mirrors // Splatoon 3
Forsaken City (Sever the Skyline Mix) // Celeste B-Sides
Taupe Hollow (Morning) // Pokemon Sleep
Colgera Wind Dungeon Battle // Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
continental drift 8/23/23- jamaica
Welcome back to Continental Drift! For our first episode of the semester, we’re gonna be looking at Jamaica. Listen to the playlist here and listen back to the episode here.
Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea, just south of Cuba and west of Haiti. With a population of just under 3 million people, Jamaica’s population is 137th largest in the world, but the 3rd most populous English-speaking country in the Americas, behind only the US and Canada. Most Jamaicans speak Patois, which is an English-based creole language which also contains elements of Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, and Twi, among others.
Jamaica was colonized by the Spanish in 1509, but after the Anglo-Spanish War ended in 1660, Jamaica was firmly under the control of the English. As early as 1907, Englishmen like Walter Jekyll would begin to take notice of the folk songs sung by the inhabitants of the island. Sometimes they’d be just be music for music’s sake, and other times they’d based on folklore, like stories about Anansi, the mythological trickster spider who regularly outwitted much larger foes; amidst occupation by various empires, the concept that brains could beat brawn was of some comfort to Jamaicans.
Later into the 20th century, Jamaican musicologists like Louise Bennett and Dr. Olive Lewin would record and publish the folk songs for posterity, occasionally building ensembles such as the Jamaican Folk Singers to perform and preserve Jamaican folk songs in Patois rather than “pure” English.
Folk Music Segment:
Linstead Market // Louise Bennett
Towns of Jamaica // Louise Bennett
Hol’ ‘M Joe // Louise Bennett
Louise Bennett, also known as Miss Lou
Louise Bennett, or Miss Lou, was dedicated to preserving Jamaican culture by producing literature spoken in Patois. Miss Lou also had an impact on the development of mento, a uniquely Jamaican music form. Mento fuses African and European musical techniques to make something new. It started to get popular in the 40s, but saw a meteoric rise in the 1950s as it started to become better known outside of Jamaica.
One of the most popular mento artists was a man named Harry Belafonte, a Jamaican-American singer who put Jamaican music on the map with his 1957 hit Banana Boat (Day-O). Miss Lou was directly involved in its creation, having told Belafonte about a Jamaican folk song called Hill and Gully Rider which would be the basis for the song.
Mento often gets confused for the Trinidadian music form calypso, and Belafonte’s success as a mento artist helped popularize calypso to mainstream audiences. One mento musician by the name of Lord Flea is cited as saying that this confusion is not fully accidental, because while it does play into the stereotype that Caribbean islanders are all happy-go-lucky, that’s what the tourists wanna see, so it became a smart business move to market mento as calypso to people outside Jamaica.
Mento Segment
Banana Boat (Day-O) // Harry Belafonte
Jamaica Farewell // Harry Belafonte
Belafonte’s mento album (it’s only titled Calypso!)
In the late ‘50s, more and more Jamaicans bought radios that were able to pick up signals from the Southern part of the United States, and as tends to happen when people hear new music, this led to cultural diffusion. In particular, they were influenced by R&B and this led to the eventual development of ska by groups like the Skatelites and Desmond Dekker. The earliest ska was characterized by prominent horns and its rhythm guitar “skanking” on the off-beats of the song, and this type of pattern would live on in some manner through the art forms descended from ska.
Ska + Rocksteady Segment
Freedom Sounds // The Skatelites
King of Ska // Desmond Dekker and the Cherry Pies
007 (Shanty Town) // Desmond Dekker
Rude boys in 1966
Just as ska arose from the mixing of mento and American R&B, the mixing of American soul music with ska led to the birth of a genre called rocksteady, which, like ska, has a rhythm guitar playing on the offbeat, but it’s a bit slower, which lets the bass line shine through a bit more. Rocksteady found an audience with rude boys, which are a Jamaican subculture of discontented youths who had a reputation for violent, disruptive behavior. However, as a genre, rocksteady didn’t enjoy much time in the sun, and quickly was supplanted by perhaps the best-known Jamaican music form at the end of the 1960s.
Reggae Segment
I Shot the Sheriff // Bob Marley and the Wailers
Reggae, like its predecessor rocksteady, was descended from ska, but allowed itself to embrace a sort of roughness that the soul-inspired rocksteady didn’t lend itself to. And like its predecessors, it and its performers adapted other forms of music to make something new.
Modern Jamaican Music Segment
Still Searchin’ // Damian Marley
Boombala // Infantry Rockers
Boombala is an example of a genre called dub, which combines reggae with elements of electronic music. It also features a mode of performance called toasting, which usually involves speaking or rapping over a reggae beat, often in a monotonous voice.
Still Searchin’ is more clearly an example of a Jamaican adaptation of an American music style, particularly hip-hop; you can hear how even though Damian Marley isn’t really leaning into a reggae influence in the song, he’s performing it in Patois, showing a different way for how the cultures can syncretize.
This has been Continental Drift!
Last Song Because It Wouldn’t Leave Me Alone
Israelites // Desmond Dekker
Crush #216 – THE RETURN!
We’re back back back back back agaaaain! With some upbeat-exciting-hopeful shoegaze to kick off the semester 😀 Next week we’ll start at our new time, Mondays at 6pm! WREK the news will be taking our old spot, so be sure to tune into their show too !
Do You Feel It – Westkust
Sunny Skies – Pink Playground
Landing – Fragile Animals
A Ceiling Dreams of A Floor – No Age
Give Up – American Wrestlers
Distortion Spear – Candy Claws
Aphelion – Panda Riot
Wishawaytoday – presents for sally
Bright Eyes – Spotlight Kid
Even The Score – Mirror Move
Run into the Night – Static Daydream
Autumn Winds – Pia Fraus
Guilt – Ringo Deathstarr
Ramune River – Plastic Girl In Closet
continental drift 8/2/23- egypt
Today’s episode takes us halfway across the globe to Egypt! Listen to the playlist here, and listen back to the episode here.
The Arab Republic of Egypt spans the northeast corner of Africa into the southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai peninsula. Approximately 100 million people live here, making it the 14th most populous country in the world, and the 3rd most populated in Africa. Its official language is Arabic. Egypt has one of the longest histories in the world, as ancient Egypt is considered a cradle of civilization. Egypt had some of the earliest writings, agriculture, urbanization, organized religion, and centralized government, and also some of the first musical instruments and traditions.
The development of ancient Greek music, and thus the development of early European music, was impacted significantly by Egyptian music. Egypt was dominant in its region for thousands of years and thus influenced its neighbors greatly. Many of the instruments claimed in the Bible to have been played by the ancient Hebrews are Egyptian, as established by archaeologists.
There’s a lot of music to get through here, so we’re actually going to skip to the 20th century.
Sha’abi is a popular working-class music genre established around the 1950s. Sha’abi means “locally popular,” and was developed by Sayyid Darwish, a songwriter and composer.
Sha’abi Sample:
Bent El Soltan // Ahmed Adaweya
Classical music took hold in Egypt after European instruments such as the piano and the violin were introduced. Operas and orchestras sprang up, with Egyptian composers soon becoming known worldwide. One of whom is Abu Bakr Kharat, trained as an architect. On the side, he studied music composition, all while continuing his career in architecture. He designed the Academy of Arts complex and the Sayed Darwish Concert Hall.
Classical Sample:
Abu Bakr Kharat- Egyptian folk suite (mid 20th century)
Drummer Salah Ragab is credited with starting up Egyptian jazz, as he is the cofounder of Cairo Jazz Band, which he created while in the army. They established swing jazz in the country.
Jazz sample:
The Crossing // Salah Ragab, The Cairo Jazz Band
Maha was once a vocalist for the Cairo Jazz Band, among others. She released a solo album on tape in the late 70s, but it didn’t receive much buzz until being rereleased on the Habibi Funk label recently.
Habibi Funk/Funk Segment:
We Mesheet // Maha
Ayonha // Hamid Al Shaeri
Longa 79 // Al Massrieen
Habibi // Firzkat al Pharana
Hamid Al Shaeri is the father of Al Jeel, an Egyptian alternative to popular western music in the 70s. The genre is modeled after pop and rock and roll, with a dance focus. It’s called “new wave” by many, not for its resemblance to the traditional New Wave, but for being a new wave of pop music in the country, taking over after Sha’abi.
Modern Funk/whatever:
nefsif akli (my self with my head) // Lekhfa
Slaughterhouse // Invisible Hands
Jessica // Youssra El Hawary
Art by Allison Felice
Electronic segment:
Halim El-Dabh – “Wire Recorder Piece” (1944)
Fr3sh // Kareem Lotfy
Dareen
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Halim El-Dabh was the father of electronic music in Egypt. Born in 1921, he was a composer, musician, and ethnomusicologist who made the first strictly electronic piece of music in the world with “Wire Recorder Piece” in 1944. Drawing from recordings he made of a zar healing ceremony on the outskirts of Cairo, he used studio techniques to create a cavernous vortex of reverberated howls—as he has told journalist Maha ElNabawi in an interview with Egyptian news media Mada—to get at the “inner sound” of this ancient ritual, which uses music and chanting to draw out spirits from a possessed person.
Kareem Lotfy’s “Fr3sh” is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit with Kanye West, who allegedly sampled the song without permission or credit on West’s album, ye.
This has been continental drift!
