The Recital Studio performances at the Esplanade constitute a less formal music series that will serve as an important eye-opener - or should I call it "ear-opener" - for the music lover. The series provides an opportunity for the appreciation of non-mainstream music since the capital outlay would appear to be less awesome (one can think in terms of an audience size of a hundred and fifty or so; and if there aren't enough seats some could sit on the floor, for instance). There have been exciting and successful performances like that of the Indojazz group from Indonesia who showed how jazz had evolved on the back of Balinese music in their country; however, the two Ouds of DuOuds, who performed on 21 & 22 Jan this year, gave a different insight into how contemporary influences affected traditional music; here it was just louder - because amplified -and crazier - because of all that electronic gadgetry. Altogether, the music blasted the audience with the kind of crude intensity reminiscent of some forms of acid rock in some urban club frequented by under nineteens and it didn't seem like new music - just old pop
stuff which airheads dance to.
One gets the impression that there's a fairly easy way of producing the new world music: get traditional instruments; link them to amplifiers with wahwah & a host of other sound effects; play traditional tunes - because even these sound different on amplified instrumentation...
Somehow, one feels that something is missing; it just sounds like old music distorted to the nth degree. The fact that the musicians employ electronic gadgetry should not be any indication that the music they play is new since otherwise we would need to consider The Shadows, Les Paul et al to be icons of the future... However, there's yet a bright side: it was a rather ear-opening experience providing some insight, by negative definition, into the shape of new world music.
(NB: The oud is a traditional stringed instrument from the Middle East and North Africa; it could very well have been a precursor of the lute).
1 comment:
I guess my blog tended to sound too dismissive and I should have realised the potential of lute playing to stir the imagination in Europe where some exciting things are being done to the development of the lute in terms of pitch extension and player skills.
Dudley de Souza
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