“The English excel in dancing and music for they are active and lively. They are vastly fond of great noises that fill the air, such as the firing of cannon, drums and the ringing of bells. So that it is common for a number of them when drunk to go up into some belfry and ring the bells for hours together.”
- Paul Hentzner, Travels In England During The Reign Of Queen Elizabeth, 1598
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ReplyDeleteSimon, have you heard of Kocani Orkestar?
ReplyDeleteThe most noisiest and frantic acoustic dance music comes out of the balkan brass band, çiftetelli, fasil, and gypsy traditions as well as Kurdish Halay.
Another recommendation, Binali Selman. Never forget that name. levels of shrieking catharsis/punishment in a traditional form (recorded in the 70s) that electronic music was only able to reach with jeff mills and Rotterdam hardcore in 92-93.
It's no free jazz, sure, but you can't exactly dance to free jazz in a regular rhythm.
No I've not heard of it. I was struck by this quote just because it goes against the traditional idea of the English being this reserved, repressed people!
DeleteMore generally - and this would be where your Balkan / Kurdish etc folk dances come into it as well - I liked the quote because it shows that this idea (put about by that bloke on Dissensus) that there was no dance music or dancing in Britain / Europe until jazz and African-American / Afro-Caribbean music arrived in the 20th Century, is just bollocks. Every culture in the world has dancing - courtly (and courtship) dances, social dances that are relatively formalized, but also usually forms of wild dancing too - dance crazes that bubble up from the lower ranks of society. Dionysian / Bacchanalian frenzy goes to times immemorial, revels fueled by intoxicants. Medieval tanzmuth or dance fever. The Tarantella. Etc etc. "Dance yourself out of your constrictions" is a motto that applies if not universally, then in many cultures and eras. A mechanism that is discovered and ritualized in many different cultures and parts of the world .
Ironically I was once reading an interview with a Turkish jazz/folk fretless guitarist, Erkan oğur, who made the point that when he was in Iowa that he prefered to play the blues because jazz had become quite avant-garde and blues are closer to African folk sources. which does complicate the narritive! Debussy was Miles Davis' favourite artiste, etc.
Deletebut then again, it's mostly white people (with some brown and black outliers) with a university education who are concerned with the semiotics of music to the detriment of all else. Most people across races and ethnicities are more interested in craft and method, because how political can music be, really.
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