On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 3:34:53 PM UTC-4, Todd M. McComb wrote:
> In article <29f9fe6c-5077-4095...@googlegroups.com>,
> cheregi <elir...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >It makes me wonder if Vietnamese chamber music ....
>
> With the other examples of contemporary improv, maybe I should
> also add this from Southwest China:
>
> https://theresawong.bandcamp.com/album/crossing-a-river-by-rope
>
> (There are many different peoples in Southern China & Southeast
> Asia....)
>
> The "Western" players there, Theresa Wong (cello) & John McCowen
> (clarinet) continue to do other interesting things in music, not
> related to China, first Wong & more recently McCowen too. The sax
> player there (Lao Dan) has other Western releases, but the other
> two are local musicians, one playing electric guitar....

Thanks - enjoying the manic vibe here too, or even funny or zany...?

On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 2:50:47 PM UTC-4, Todd M. McComb wrote:
> has appeared on international labels. I'm also increasingly convinced
> there are significant correspondences with North American music.

What are you noticing? Or are there recordings you have in mind that make the connection clear? I've only heard snippets, old Folkways releases...

In article <3afd47aa-79fc-47f6-a86d-7197d0c9b3c4n@googlegroups.com>,
cheregi <elirkerry@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 2:50:47 PM UTC-4, Todd M. McComb wrote:
>> I'm also increasingly convinced
>> there are significant correspondences with North American music.
>What are you noticing? Or are there recordings you have in mind
>that make the connection clear?

Not really, unfortunately. It's more a feeling of the way the
material coheres... the modes, as you said, but maybe a little more
basic than that. It's something I'll need to ponder....

On Monday, July 10, 2023 at 8:12:06 PM UTC-7, cheregi wrote:
> Recently I've been digging underneath the sanjo ('scattered melodies') and shamanic-ritual recordings that are usually presented as 'what korean traditional music is'. It turns out sanjo started as a sort of pseudo-folkloric latter-day addition to a more prestigious 'pungnyu' repertoire ('wind and stream') performed by both upper-class amateurs and middle-class professionals.
>
> Im Sok-yun (1908-1975) was an amateur player of komungo (sort of like chinese qin but with tall frets under only the middle three strings) who recorded several hours of music near the end of his life at KBS recording studios.
>
> https://iha.go.kr/service/search_all_list.nihc?media_=audio&contentid_=12123
> Pyongjo hoesang (cd1) and Yominrak (cd2+3) are both long suites which start agonizingly slow and accelerate minutely.
>
> https://iha.go.kr/service/search_all_list.nihc?media_=audio&contentid_=12124
> On cd4, he plays the komungo accompaniment parts to the Kagok art-song-suite, but with extra embellishment so they stand alone. cd5 is mostly about his idiosyncratic sanjo.
>
> He is accompanied by a drummer on all 5 CDs, which is basically a given for 'solo' performance in Korean traditional music.
>
> This music demands extreme patience and close listening. It is not particularly melodic, not at all busy, and much of the pitch-bending action takes place at the edge of the notes' relatively quick decay. But there is a universe of timbral, ornamental, and rhythmic sophistication here. I've rarely been reminded quite so strongly of the contemporary/experimental scenes some of you are into.
>
> I've been excited to discover that the highest-prestige traditional music of Korea shares with Iran, but not with China or Japan, a conception of repertoire as 'handful of lengthy suites subject to semi-improvisational variation', which I attribute to Korea and Iran retaining a more feudal mode of production into the early 20th century than any of their neighbors. Potentially a big win for my whole thing of pseudo-Marxist musicology!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pZCRh0KvPw