Week 7 Blog

Week 7: 05-17-2007
In these two Eastern European scenes, talk about the similar and different instruments (like your previous assignment), and then discuss other interesting things you noticed in the film.
The Ottoman Empire plays a major role in the music of the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The various styles of music found in these have been influenced by the culture of the Ottoman Empire. The overarching principles that have made the music of the people from the Middle East and Eastern Europe include local variation, expanding ethnic groups and the similar instruments. In both areas, their musical elements focus on melody (makam), and they place great importance on improvisation.
In the remainder of the film, we explore the music of Eastern Europe, which compares largely to the instruments we saw being used in the Middle East. We see similar chordophones. Middle East has the rebabah and Eastern Europe has a more modern version, what we now know of as the violin. Men played the violin as women danced and sang (more like screamed, but that’s their definition of music…remember, not everyone defines the term music the same way). I thought their music was catchy and unique, especially since I saw mostly older women doing the singing. Another chordophone we saw was the cello and an accordion, all following the same melody. In Romania, an old man sings about the dictatorship and plays a violin, and does something I had never seen before in other countries. He pulls a string through the violins string to create a scratchy note. The women on the train sing about how the whole world hates them referring to the persecution in Nazi Germany. These gypsies use their music as a means of communicating and expressing their sorrows and feelings towards the dictatorship the way that other cultures use music to tell history or a lost love like the narrative songs of Eastern Europe. In Germany, we see the chordophones again: the violin, cello, and accordion. But we also see, like in the Middle East, membranophones, or better yet, an idiophone in replacement of the drum in other cultures. It looked like a canteen to put cows’ milk and the man was banging the inside of it. Another funny instrument I saw them use was two spoons put together and clapped together to the same melody. This was very similar to the Middle Eastern instrument composed of two pieces of what looked like wood and was also played in the same way. Further, we have the lute which is relatable to the UD in the Middle East. Finally, also another chordophone we see for one of the last scenes at a church, was a guitar, again very similar to the plucked chordophones we see in the Middle East.