Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What's so bad about Islamey?

Does your status of 18,000-plus posts give you the right to be as rude as you wish, I wonder? Does your one-upmanship and snottiness make you feel good?

AGAIN - and this excludes people who apparently can not read and are here only to insult - is the subtitle 'Oriental Fantasy' by Balakirev or his publisher?

...and I don't blame you for not knowing it. You would have to leave your job and your home and live in isolation as a hermit for about 25 years.

I'm not sure, but the title fits in any case.

I don't consider the themes to originate in the Orient, so I think that's a matter of opinion. I don't hear anything 'oriental' in Islamey.

And it is...

It is also a matter of geography. From where I am, Japan and China are mostly Occidental. The Orient starts more toward the region where the themes came from, and includes all of Europe.

For those of you who are traveling, do not take the Orient Express expecting to get to China. It never went beyond Istanbul.

Can you expand on this? I'm generally interested as to why you can't stand "ethnic music," considering some of the best music in the world is folk music and ethnic music. Do you just not like it when it influences a classical composition?

Not trying to be argumentative, but I'm just fascinated by that response since I am the complete opposite. Much of my life has been spent studying, enjoying and playing different musics from around the world, including Spain, Portugal, India, Japan to name a few. This is some of the richest music there is and many times is as deep and profoundly moving as anything.

Again, you are entitled to your tastes and opinion, but I'd like you to expand on that if you don't mind.

Apparently he also hates Chopin's mazurkas, since he hates all "ethnic" music, right?

I think that the "oriental" of the subtitle was likely not meant literally, but more as part of that European vogue/idiom that is now often called "orientalism", meaning that it had a certain exotic and "Eastern" flavor for "Westerners", regardless of actual geographic or cultural origin.

I haven't come across any references that say the subtitle was not Balakirev's own.

I think Nikolas's definition of "ethnic music" differs from yours. Let's not try to pigeonhole him quite so strongly.

It's interesting to note, by the way, that Bartok, that supreme musical ethnologist, disparaged Chopin's mazurkas for not having authentic enough ethnic elements. Musical gems of course, but (I think he thought) with crudely deployed folk elements.

-J

Thanks for your thoughtful and sensible answer.

According to some calculations, I apparently live in the Orient (of the U.S.). I did not know that!

Interesting, but I can see where Bartok is coming from. Isn't that like the Hungarian Rhapsodies? (I might be mixing the piece up). Weren't they not based on folk themes but actual popular music of the day?

On another note, I love what Albeniz does with the influence of flamenco and other folk dances of Spain. He really works it in so naturally that you can almost pick out when he wants a certain melody to sound like a voice in a saeta, and which rhythms are supposed to be strummed guitars.

Before I answer this I will completely disregard polyphonists trolling.

I'm coming off from a completely different side of music than most of you. Not only because I'm a composer, but because I've been working in the computer games industry from a bit less than a decade.

'Ethnic' music comes in many flavours, but in computer games it usually means using samples with some ethnic instruments (Chinese, Greek, Asian in a more general sense) and having some kind of percussion loop on the bottom. A very superficial kind of way that gets me unfortunately.

Try to get here: http://www.soundsonline.com/Ra and listen to the right music player a few examples to see what I mean.

Now, on classical music we get an attempt to somehow fake things (into the piano in this case). Some things are very real, successful and fine, others not.

But I'm still not sure why I got such a reaction for my post. I already said that I'm Greek, so half the stuff I listen to every day (Greek music lets say) by definition is ethnic to you guys. And I did mention that I'm wondering if my music is influenced by ethnic flavours (which I bet it is, but as I said, I hope not too much)...

Exactly right, but I don't really care about polyphponis one bit. He's proven himself to be the kind that I want to avoid in forums, so no problem. The rest of you probably know me too well to judge me that harsh.

But it's exactly what I said above. And if Bartok said that Chopins music wasn't "ethnic enough" I can also say that, can't I? Remember, again, that I'm Greek and thus it was brought to the table that Chopin is the definition of classical music, pretty much.

Goomer: Don't stick too strongly on the definition of the word! It was used to provide some idea of setting the piece apart from other music of the time, that's all. (at least I think so). It wasn't an attempt to give very specific origins to the music or anything like that. (I think)

The thing with the HRs is a bit more complicated than that - per Walker, the tunes originally came from both pop and folk sources, but as reinterpreted by Romani musicians.

It was less of "pigeonholing" than a joke, Nikolas. I don't understand why people have such strong reactions to posts from random strangers on the Internet.

And although there are many trolls on this forum, I am not one of them.

Per Poly - "I don't understand why people have such strong reactions to posts from random strangers on the Internet."

Gee - I'm a little surprised to see this statement coming from you.

...and why is that?

Poly - you might want to refer back to my rather lengthy post on the prior Islamey thread....... But let's just let it go.

Oh...

Ok...

I actually didn't get that! Sorry... :-/