Music and Us

The first culture that I want to talk about is an Aboriginal Australian singer called Fanny Cochrane Smith. She is from Flinders Island which is off the coast of Tasmania (the Australian state off the coast of the Southeast Australian mainland). There was anywhere from 5 to 12 different languages just in Tasmania, but the recordings of her on wax cylinders are the only recordings of any Aboriginal Tasmanian language. Recordings of her were taken in 1899 and in 1903, so the quality is quite horrible, but it is still super interesting to listen to, even if very difficult to understand. Similarly to the cultures we have studied, singing and dancing was a part of story telling to pass down history in their culture as well. The piece I have below is a song that would have been part of a corroboree, which is an Aboriginal rite that includes performances of dances and songs that celebrate aboriginal mythology. This is a dance song sung in honor of a great chief, but this song is interfering since lines of it are improvised, so each time she sings this song it is a little bit different (Traditional, Australia). 

Here is a translation of the lyrics:

Next, RAW Taiko (Raging Asian Womxn) is a group of Asian and Southeast Asian women and gender non-conforming drummers from Toronto. Taiko drumming is an ancient Japanese tradition of powerful drumming and martial arts. In Japanese, the term Taiko refers to any type of drum, but outside of Japan it can refer to a specific drum. Like we have talked about in class, Taiko drumming was also traditionally done by men. This form of drumming is used in religious ceremonies and on the battlefield. It is thousands of years old and the drums can produce noise equivalent to the sound produced by jet planes (Japan, Modern). 

Going to Iceland, the instrument in its video is a traditional Icelandic instrument called a langspil. This instrument has two drone strings along with a melody string, and it can either be plucked or bowed. It is part of the zither music family and while the instrument dates back to the 18th century, the origin of the instrument is not really known. The instrument is by no means standardized and the music written for it typically reflects traditional folk elements such as culture, history, and nature, and it is often used to accompany voice. This is a video of a langspil being played in a traditional Icelandic folk song, Man ég Þig mey (Iceland, traditional). 

The last type of music that I looked at was music from New Zealand, specifically a metal band, Alien Weaponry, that incorporates Māori culture into their music. They sing in Te Reo Māori and incorporate other elements of Māori music such as chanting into their music as well. They do also write tracks in English which are more personal to the band, while their Māori music focuses more on  Māori history. The song below, Rū and te Whenua, is specifically about wars in New Zealand that took place in the late 19th century. The song is a story the band members heard from their father about their people protecting their land from the British (New Zealand, modern.)