Bogotá Indignada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iurN495sW60

Vernacular Sounds

          To Alex Ross all American composers are invisible men. They lacked the tradition, support and audiences that composers in Europe had in the 1920's, but that was no restrain. He describes it as a freedom from tradition that allowed the American music scene to be full of diversity and incongruence, where composers created previously unheard music that thrusted American music to great heights. The lack of tradition allows people to break and set barriers that lead them to new findings.

          Duke Ellington's success caught my attention due to his exemplary deviation from tradition. Will Marion Cook, another African-American musician, told him "You know you should go to the conservatory, but since you won't, I'll tell you. First you find the logical way, and when you find it, avoid it, and let your inner self break through and guide you" (p. 165). Listening to Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" one hears distinctive solos that distinguish from the rest of the composition with fast velocities and distorted sounds. According to Ross these innovations gave a sense of "circling like a cool crowd of onlookers". When I listened to the song I was unable to feel that circling, but I remembered another type of music that to me came out of nowhere and made me feel like I was being circled by a mashup of onlookers. I am talking about Skrillex's "First of the year", which features a blend of dubstup and electro house. I actually know nothing about these genres, but when I heard this song I was expecting something something like a rap, but suddenly the electronic part begins to and then the "bass drops". For the first time in my life I heard the crazy stringy sound effects. I have no other words to describe this because I do not even know what it is, but it feels similar to the breaking of tradition that Ross refered to. Like Ellingon, Skrillex did not go to the conservatory. Instead he created the most illogical sounds I have ever heard. 

vernacular: using a language or dialect native to a region or country rather than a literary, cultured, or foreign language

Atonality or Plain Disorder?

Atonality, the absence of a tonal center and of the harmonies from a diatonic scale that correspond to that center, has become more common since it was first commonly used. As Ross describes it, it was "destined to raise hackles" (p. 61) because it sounds illogical and brusque. In an atonal compositions the music may have no identified order and these can have any intervals without they being "wrong". Still, atonality is almost always identified due to its its liberty and that is why critics of Schoenberg were so skeptical of what he described in a letter to Wassily Kandinsky as "liberation from all forms, from all symbols of cohesion and of logic" (p. 62). 

I first encountered atonality when I began to play guitar. At first, since I knew nothing about playing and about music theory, I would play whatever my fingers could manage. That was the first time I played atonal music. I had no guiding scale that a harmony could match. Of course, this type of atonality is one that we should be real skeptical about. There was no real composition. Schoenberg's atonality represented a degeneration that cannot be truly explained, one may only speculate about its origin. Since I feel unsure about this atonality I prefer arguing about an atonality that I have heard before and that I recognize.

In King Crimson's popular "21st Century Schizoid Man" their is a definite use of atonality once the bridge enters. At first the song follows a C key with flat A's, B's and E's, but after two minutes, when the song drifts into a much more rapid and galloped rhythm,  the harmony deviates from the initial C and does not follow any particular key. This I perceive as a "liberation" similar to the one that Schoenberg embraced because it leaves the classical rock structure that the song begins with to enter a much more jazzed face. To do this, music many times emancipates from the standard it follows and follows no regular key.

 

Atonality:

Thus Spake Classical Music

Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise reminded me of classical music's quintessential role in films and also about its presence in my life. When Ross referred to one of the "most famous opening flourish in music: the "mountain sunrise" from Thus Spake Zarathustra" I realized Richard Strauss's influence in film. Then, I realized that classical music has influenced me via totally unrelated movies. First I heard Zarathustra in Toy Story 2, one of my favorite movies as a child, then in Zoolander, and finally in 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

Music has the ability to set the tone for everything it accompanies, like it does in movies. Thus Spake Zarathustra "draws… cosmic power" (p. 7), says Ross. 2001 begins with a black screen and Zarathustra playing creating a sense of anticipation before an eclipsed sun is revealed and then the Earth is shone by the sun. Later, in the "Dawn of Man" scene this same tone poem evokes anticipation, then confusion and then a sense of achievement when an early hominid succeeds in killing another tribe's leader. To me 2001 is a film of cosmic proportions in every sense that, besides its acclaim in every possible area, exposed me to classical music.

Music also creates bonds between the different media. To me, both Toy Story 2 and Zoolander allude to the superb 2001: A Space Odyssey and when I see and hear this, I sympathize with these movies. They not only create feelings of expectation through sound, but also mock and reference the innovative work of Kubrick's film. Toy Story 2 does not mock Kubrick's film because it uses Zarathustra very briefly, but Zoolander totally mimicked the "Dawn of Man" scene I talked about earlier. To me, this allusion simply reminds everyone who watched Zoolander about 2001: A Space Odyssey and it makes me think (possibly I am wrong) that the makers of this movie praise it even more than I do. Besides Zarathustra, I can immediately say I also remember Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" in a handful of movies. Most notably, in Apocalypse Now, Watchmen and even The Hangover. Definitely classical music makes its way into pop culture. 

swath: a broad strip or area of something

vexatious: causing or tending to cause annoyance