not only *better* than. but beget, cause, originate, spring, bring forth, give rise to, generative of.
the relationship between "world music" and "western music" is one of Parent and Child. and they are not 2 different entities: they are inherently, insperably connected.
its artificial division of melody and rhythm, its privilege of one over the other, its relegation of rhythm based music to a false "primitive" sphere.
haha that is adawia, whose picture i posted on the original post - he's my favorite, bar none, he's done masses of albums, but that track is off his best, in my humble opinion,this is not Syrian, it's Egyptian, but a 4/4 banger comparable to Souleyman:
http://almahata.com/media/188/AHMAD_ADAWEYA_-_02_Salametha_Om_Hassan/
just started playing when i went to the page, but if not just click the player...
edit: shit this track just fucking BURNS. turn up volume, close eyes, scrunch up face, and wave at least one arm in badman gun salute.
The other problem with tracking down Arabic music is how many different ways the names are transliterated. You write Adawia, they write Adaweya. Dabke is also written as Dabka and Dabkeh.
Hassan Abd Alrahman - Ya Sahi Sabrou. Impressions Of Syria
Shadi Fauzi Alashoush - Sampler
Farid Al-Atrache - Archives des années 30
Farid Al-Atrache - King of the Oud
Farid Al-Atrache - Sampler
Al-Kindi - Musique Classique Arabe
Al Turath Ensemble - Hermana de la Luna
Al Turath Ensemble - Jardines de Jazmin
Al Turath Ensemble - La Música de Al-Andalus. La Muwashshah
Amer Ammouri - Eastern Strings
Amer Ammouri - Takasim Oud
Asmahan - Archives des années 30. Vol.3
Asmahan - Archives des années 42/44
Asmahan - Les archives de la musique arabe
Abed Azrié - Epopeé de Gilgamesh
Abed Azrié - Lapis Lazuli
Waed Bouhassoun - La voix de l’amour
Muhammad Qadri Dalal - Maqamat insolites
Muhammad Qadri Dalal - Maqamat insolites
Adib Dayikh & Julien Jalaleddin Weiss - Poemes d'amour au Bimaristan d'Alep. L'art sublime du Ghazal Vol.1
Adib Dayikh & Julien Jalaleddin Weiss - Poemes d'amour au Bimaristan d'Alep. L'art sublime du Ghazal Vol.2
Sabah Fakhri - Au Palais des Congres
Muhammad Hakim & Ensemble - Chant Soufi de Syrie. Dhikr Qâdirî Khâlwatî de la Zâwiya Hilaliya, Alep
Miço Kendes - Memê Alan
Omar Naqichbendi - Luth traditionnel 'ud. Syrie. Arabesque 5
Omar Naqichbendi - Omar Naqichbendi
Omar Naqichbendi - Sampler
Rifa'iyya Brotherhood of Aleppo - Islamic Ritual Zikr
Farhan Sabbagh - Le Oud (Concert au Schloss Charlottenbourg - Berlin)
Omar Sarmini & Al-Kindi Ensemble - Les croisades sous le regard de l'Orient
Hamza Shakkur & Ensemble Al-Kindi - Musique des derviches tourneurs de Damas
Hamza Shakkur & Ensemble Al-Kindi - Sufi Songs of Damascus
Hamza Shakkur & Ensemble Al-Kindi - Takasim & Sufi Chants
Afif Tain - Sampler
VA - Église syriaque orthodoxe (d'Antioche). Chants liturgiques du Carême et du Vendredi Saint
VA - Kurdish Music
VA - Muezzins d’Alep. Chants religieux de l’Islam
I pretty much agree with you but I think you make this point a lot better when you deal with the myriad specific unappreciated examples - as you do in a lot of threads and with your DJ sets - than when you come in with sweeping histrionic generalizations.what i am interested in is
1. re-establishing the deep connections between so called "east" and "west", so called "modern" and "ancient".
2. re-asserting the rightful primacy of African and Asian traditions in the development of world culture.
3. dial back the conceit and arrogance born of ignorance of both the modern world and western-centric world views.
I pretty much agree with you but I think you make this point a lot better when you deal with the myriad specific unappreciated examples - as you do in a lot of threads and with your DJ sets - than when you come in with sweeping histrionic generalizations.
I think there's a lot more positive stuff to be had from talking about the influence of turkish psych on US / UK rock or how african influence actually manifests itself in hip hop (as in, what was the music culture that people were growing up with and how did that influence them, not just facile generalizations to the effect that foregrounding of rhythm is inherently african) or about the dozens of exciting scenes that are going on globally that noone's heard of because they aren't from the UK or the US than there is from nebulous arguments over a statement about the 'primacy' of a some set of traditions over some other set of innovations that's so generalized and ill defined as to be basically meaningless.
facile generalizations to the effect that foregrounding of rhythm is inherently african
If the core of European music was to embellish a melody via the counterpoint of a number of melodic instruments, and incidentally set it to a rhythm (which was sometimes specified only in vague terms such as "adagio" or "allegro"), the core of West African music was to color a rhythm via the counterpoint of a number of rhythmic instruments, and incidentally dress it up with a melody. Thus the key elements of West African music were rhythm and timbre, not melody and harmony. Instead of melodic counterpoint, West African music was about rhythmic counterpoint.
Well, that seems like a fairly myopic assessment of European music. I mean, if he's talkign about 'largo and allegro' then he's talking about classical forms which have a lot of their origin in church choral polyphony rather than any of the dozens of local dance traditions so it's no suprise that there's a lack of groove being busted...
The music for the aristocracy became more and more sophisticated, both because it could buy the best instruments on the market and because it could hire the best singers and instrumentalists in the kingdom. It came to be called "classical" music. Through the invention of polyphony, it greatly reduced the emphasis on rhythm, which came to be considered a rather primitive and plebean element.
On the contrary, folk music relied heavily on rhythm, both for dancing and for singing.
Rhythm became, in a sense, the main discriminant between classical and folk music.
certainly the African polyrhythms were wildly different from the linear rhythms of European folk music.
But if the influence is passed down through blues to funk to hip hop and then (say) jungle then you actually seem to have a progressively increasing amount of emphasis on the percussive rhythm as you get chronologically further from direct contact with the African roots. Which doesn't negate the point, but does open up more interesting questions than just agreeing that more percussive = more african and moving on...
home? who said anything about any kind of "home"?
"return to african roots" in the context of this conversation merely means rhythm, and specifically African poly rhythms, re-entering "western" music.
in the bigger context of the last 300 years, in the ascendancy of popular music which gave rise to what your Namibian friend loves;
or in the smaller context of the last 20 years, its increasingly important role in urban and dance music (UK funky anyone?).
i speak of drawing from ancient bodies of knowledge in order to move things FORWARD (much like modern art taking cues from pre-modern sources - Picasso anyone?), into some crazy fucking wicked hybrid future (which is of course already happening).
give a FLYING FUCK about "going home" bro.