In recognition of Earth Day this year, I would like to briefly discuss music that I created several years ago from 2017 to 2018 for the International Student Climate Art Project (ISCAP). The work entitled Lusus Naturae (“Freak of Nature” in Latin) resulted as incidental music for an audiovisual project and play called Our World... We Can Make a Difference! It served as a collaboration with STEAM[1] students at the elementary school level in Savannah, GA. The seven movements that comprise Lusus Naturae musically depict life on earth, the actions and consequences caused by pollution, and the necessity for humanity (specifically, the present and future generations) to take care of the planet as best as possible. I divided the score for Lusus Naturae into acoustic and electronic sections. The acoustic movements (Mvts. I, III, IV, VI, and VII) feature an ensemble with a “found instruments” percussion section of buckets and children’s choir singing lyrics written by students as part of the project. This acoustic ensemble depicts earth and humanity by applying short and repeated musical patterns like minimalist musical techniques. The electronic sections (Mvts. II and V) serve as stereophonic fixed media with synthesized tones and distorted sounds: most notably, a repeated phone “dial tone” edited with “Echo” and “Reverb” effects. I intentionally designed these movements to sound unsettling because they musically represent the earth ravaged by pollution. While ISCAP has unfortunately dissolved, access to the full performance of the project has not. Viewers can find the link to the work through YouTube.
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for cuatro (or bandoneon), guitar, piano, qüiro, and congas Music by Anthony L. Sanchez (b. 1988) (Features musical quotation from musica jíbara from Puerto Rico) Photo by Preillumination SeTh on Unsplash: unsplash.com/photos/a-couple-of-people-that-are-dancing-together-fzpStAs_6Cc?utm_content=creditShareLink&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash Photo and music synchronized with YouCut: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.camerasideas.trimmer&pli=1 Score and parts available now on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/isabela-te-2018-97572300 Program Notes: I began writing this short tango around the latter half of 2018 and revised the work this year. The "Isabela" denoted in the title does not specifically refer to a person, but to a place: Isabela, Puerto Rico. It was there that I lectured in 2018 at the annual Isabela Tango Fest, which explores the connections between the music cultures from Argentina and Puerto Rico. "Isabela, te recuerdo" functions as a reflective chamber piece that combines the Argentinian tango and with Puerto Rican folk music elements. The leading melody can either be performed with a Puerto Rican cuatro plucked string instrument or a bandoneon (The playback recording through MuseScore 4 features a "Bandoneon," withinstead of a Puerto Rican cuatro because the latter instrument is not listed in the music notation software). I also apply and quote the "Seis Tango" melody from Puerto Rican música jíbara in the "B" section of the piece as a juxtaposition between the cuatro (or bandoneon) and left-hand bass in the piano. Disclaimer: Some of the sound fonts in the playback recording are limited and may come off as slightly awkward due to the "MS Basic" audio quality for certain instruments. To those wondering about my recent activity in the past few months:
Yes, I am still here, I have also been very preoccupied with conducting musicological research for several projects in 2024. Over the winter break towards the end of 2023, I devoted my time traveling abroad to southern Spain: more specifically, in the city of Jerez de la Frontera, Andalusia. The thirty days that I spent there involved much more than vacationing, however. Jerez de la Frontera is best known for its Moorish architecture and African musical connections. That was when I encountered the impact of the Fiestas de la Zambomba. This folkloric music involves group participation by sitting or gathering in a circle, which would motivate the people to join in the musical celebration. This spontaneous collaboration often features accompaniment by singing Spanish villancicos, clapping, strumming a guitar, tapping a cajón (box drum), striking glass bottles, and—most importantly—performing on a zambomba drum. I will keep talking about this type of music in greater depth soon. Growing up in the 1990s, I had a lot of exposure to arcade games, video games and computer games. I specifically remember one computer game that has stuck with me over the years: a multi-genre title called Inca. Players assume the role of “El Dorado,” a golden man who wakes up after centuries of slumber and is tasked with restoring peace to the Incan Empire by fighting the Spanish colonial presence. The game is rather unusual given that it combines Spanish colonialism and indigenous culture with futuristic visual aesthetics. It also includes sections with dialogue in the Quechua language. Looking back at Inca decades later, however, I realize the game nonetheless has problems concerning indigenous representation. Part of these problems have to do with the music.
Inca features two PC ports: the original and a CD-ROM version with enhanced music and sound. I recall playing the latter as a child. Inca also received a port to the ill-fated Philips CD-i, otherwise known as the console that closely resembled a VCR and included abysmal games that used Nintendo intellectual property that have since gained second chances as social media memes (Hotel Mario, anyone?) But, I digress. Listening closely to the soundtrack to the CD-ROM and CD-i versions of Inca reveals an excessive use of Andean pan pipes and Spanish guitars. It also becomes evident that the pan pipes have been synthesized and most likely interpreted on a keyboard instrument, as the instrumentation gets featured on some unusually fast tracks. Given the technical limitations for Inca, released in 1992, that decision could probably pass. However, I am referring to the CD-ROM enhancements, which also include the song “Inca People.” While I understand that the song tries to both raise awareness about the Inca community so that cultural outsiders can understand and hint at the futuristic gameplay, it nevertheless presents an etic perspective.[1] Describing the Inca people as “lost” does not alleviate matters. Inca does not present the first time that indigenous cultures have undergone representation from outsiders. That game eventually received a sequel called Inca II: Wiracocha. I have seen and played examples everywhere in gaming from the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter series, to the Oddworld games that feature the made up Mudokin tribe or moments that suggest “Savior” narratives from cultural outsiders (as in the climax to Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath). In recent years, however, some games have sought to break away from stereotyping and exhibit more cultural respect. The later installments to the Sid Meir’s Civilization turn-based strategy game series adhere to that path. All world leaders, based on real historical figures, represented in the game speak their own language instead of applying cultural homogeneity by having everyone speak English. The later games also feature different indigenous tribes (Mayan, Aztec, and Inca) who speak directly to the player in their own tongue. The music also features a vast improvement when compared to Inca. Civilization VI strives for better indigenous representation in video game music through more culturally accurate instrumentation (eg. using real instruments instead of synthesized approximations) and ranges in most sections of the games. [1] This is further complicated by the fact that the studio that worked on Inca, the now-defunct edutainment company known as Coktel Vision, originated in France. I am back with another set of vinyl records for discussion. The selection this time around includes both classical and popular music from Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Some of these records have been with me for a long time and were passed down to me from my parents through their collection. I found others via careful inspections at thrift stores because, despite the resurgence of vinyl records in the twenty-first century, many records (both of older and newer music) tend to increase in price due to the production and distribution costs. Regarding the classical music on display, several of the albums stand out to me. The Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 37 and Quintet for Piano and Strings by Argentine composer and pianist Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) demonstrate intense virtuosity and illustrate his experimentations with serialism and atonality in the 1960s and 70s. His Piano Concerto No. 2 from 1972 also refers to older music within a more contemporary setting by deconstructing chords and motives from music by Beethoven and Chopin for atonal thematic material.
Other classical recordings in my library feature performances and discussions from famed musicians and composers like Ernesto Lecuona (1895-1963) from Cuba and the Catalan cellist and composer Pablo Casals (1876-1973). The Lecuona recording that I have derives from piano performances of his own classical works and popular songs, which he recorded in New York City in 1955. The Casals recording titled Casals: A Living Portrait In his own words functions as hybrid ethnographic interview and compilation concerning his life and achievements as a cellist and composer. Casals gave the interview featured on the recording (narrated by Isaac Stern) in 1966 at age 90 while living in Puerto Rico (Casals first visited the island in 1955 to inaugurate the Casals Festival there.). I find this recording interesting not just because Casals talks about his approach to performance practice in music. He also explains how he grew up in the late-nineteenth century and furthered his career, including making acquaintances with other Spanish composers like Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909). Casals: A Living Portrait also includes snippets from his compositions. Many of his works and their recordings have been published by or are available at the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (Institute for Puerto Rican Culture) in San Juan, PR. Listeners can access a digitized version of a commemorative recording of his compositions released after his death in 1973. Readers will also notice that I also include folk and popular music (sometimes as stylized arrangements of other songs) from Puerto Rico, Panama, and Brazil, as well as Mexican American rock fusion. The Amigos album from 1976 by Santana represents a bit of a departure from their self-titled rock record from 1969, which I also have (not shown). Amigos combines Latin American music, rock, and funk courtesy of the group Tower of Power. While the song “See the Light” proved to be Santana’s top hit on the album, I recommend listening to other tracks on the record as well for how the band incorporates these elements on the vocals and instrumentation: Of course, some albums that I have found come off as downright strange because of the overall approach. The version of West Side Story featured in my library puzzles me. The album stems from a 1985 revision of the musical composed and conducted by Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), where he cast opera singers like José Carreras in the leading roles. I mention this to highlight the etic (outsider) cultural perspectives of the composition and to further demonstrate the problematic aspects of West Side Story. I have a “love/hate” relationship with this work. I have studied it academically and have seen both the 1960 and 2021 film adaptations: both of which left me disappointed. As someone of Puerto Rican heritage, I applaud the fact that West Side Story tries to depict Puerto Rican culture. At the same time, I dislike it because it does not try hard enough. Puerto Ricans (and Afro-Puerto Ricans) deserve better representation than cultural stereotyping or invisibility. The 1985 recording reinforces this need when one considers that none of the lead singers and actors featured on the album were from Puerto Rico. Those who have followed and supported my website over the years know that I enjoy exploring and discussing the musical connections to the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking regions in Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. I have also talked extensively in the past about audio recording technology and its lasting impact on these areas. I have been collecting records since 2011 and have amassed several boxes of albums from across different genres. The albums shown below derive from a partial collection of vinyl records from my studio that represent classical music from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from Spain, Portugal, and Latin America: primarily, from Mexico and Brazil. Many people may recognize certain names like Carlos Chávez (1899-1978), Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), but I wanted to include other composers who were just as prolific, like Joly Braga Santos (1924-1988) and Ruperto Chapí (1851-1909). The Sinfonietta, Op. 35 (1963) and Concerto em Ré, Op. 17 (1951) from Santos represent contemporary string orchestral pieces that still adhere to traditional forms and tonality.
El Rey Que Rabió[1], by contrast, is a comical zarzuela in three acts that presents another side to Spanish classical music from the late-nineteenth century beyond composers like Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909) and Enrique Granados (1867-1916). A zarzuela functions as an operetta in the Spanish language instead of in English. The recording featured in my library consists of selections from El Rey Que Rabió. Composed and premiered in 1891, with the libretto by Miguel Ramos Carrión and Vital Aza, the plot largely centers around a king who grows bored of his duties as a monarch one day that he decides to travel alone in disguise to find out what the citizens really think about him as a leader… much to the alarm of his assistants. Given the era in which it was created, I perceive this work as parodying the Spanish monarchy and its gradually crumbling colonial presence in the Americas and Asia. This becomes especially apparent when watching the full production and seeing the cast dressed in intentionally funny, borderline-ridiculous regal attire. The complete performance of El Rey Que Rabió (with visuals and a duration of over two-and-a-half hours) is currently available online from the Teatro de la Zarzuela from Madrid, Spain and presented with Castilian Spanish subtitles.[2] [1] The title roughly translates to The King Who Went Mad. [2] That specific performance occurred in 2021 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Viewers will notice that, to ensure the safety of the performers, most of the singers wore face masks in addition to the elaborate costumes. I would like to add one quick update regarding what I previously posted on the blog. Out of the over two-hundred tracks in the compiled playlist, some of the video games listed focused specifically on music and rhythm by using Latin American and Caribbean instruments as controller peripherals. Instead of playing a given game with a joystick or controller with buttons and directional pads or thumb sticks, the player takes control of instruments like maracas, conga drums, or bongos. Games like Donkey Konga, Mambo a Go Go, and Samba de Amigo stand out for that very reason. These titles do tend to exhibit some moments of visual and aural confusion by combining Spanish and Portuguese music cultures. Still, such deviations from the norm, whether in arcade formats or for game consoles, can help to create and enhance a more immersive interactive experience.
Digging deeper into that specific approach to Iberian, Latin American, and Caribbean influences in video game music reveals that some companies had previously applied a similar approach, allbeit with a different consumer electronics medium. Nintendo is known to people from my generation who grew up in the 1980s and 90s (as well as future generations) for its video games. However, the company originated in the late- nineteenth century by making playing cards and gradually shifted to creating toys. One of those toys consisted of an electromechanical conga drum called the “Ele-Conga.” Released in the 1970s exclusively for Japan, the “Ele-Conga” featured miniature disks with different “Latin” rhythmic patterns, which could be inserted on the drumhead and operated by a hand crank. This does not suggest that Nintendo has completely forgotten about the “Ele-Conga” in the 2020s, nor their history with creating toys. The device has recently resurfaced in a digital format as part of a series of minigames in WarioWare: Get It Together! (2021) for the Nintendo Switch. This previous April, I posted some content on this blog regarding video game music and the growing push for understanding its academic potential in relation to musicology. I also referred to a collaborative playlist that I had been compiling concerning the cultural connections with video game music to Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese), Latin American, and Caribbean regions. Six months have passed since I began compiling the playlist in March, and myriad tracks have been added since. In accordance with Hispanic and Latin American Heritage Month, this current post will explain what I have encountered so far when compiling music for the playlist.
I approach this project overall and the materials that I have collected so far from an ethnographic perspective. This means that I often consider multiple facets concerning geography, cultural representation in video games, and (to some extent) cultural preservation. Concerning the first facet of my work, video game music that uses “Hispanic” or “Latin” elements attempt to depict multiple countries, territories, and regions: from Spanish Flamenco influences in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, to salsa music in more obscure games like the Clockwork Knight platforming games, to the plethora of samba and bossa nova music from Brazil in respective games from both Nintendo and Sega. I have also noticed indigenous Latin American musical depictions through games like Inca and the Sid Meir’s Civilization series. How these cultures and their music get musically represented for public consumption varies. Games from Japan, other areas of Western Europe, and North America tend to apply an exoticist approach to Iberia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. They use etic perspectives from composers outside of the cultures by applying specific “foreign” instruments, syncopated rhythms, or music that represents a certain geographical landscape: most notably, islands and deserts. Some composers, like Konji Kondo, have incorporated Latin American, Spanish, and Portuguese music in video game soundtracks because they enjoy listening to these types of music. Other instances can come off as problematic by either accentuating cultural stereotyping or romanticizing European colonial history, as are the cases with the Street Fighter and Uncharted Waters series. Things have begun to change in recent years. I have noticed a growing necessity within the Iberian, Latin American, and Caribbean gaming communities for greater and better representation beyond character stereotyping. This change is also occurring with video game music. Some composers have tried creating music with more respect to the distinct regions and customs instead of assuming cultural homogeneity (thinking that every culture is the same across the regions). In other instances, I found video game music written by composers from the emic perspectives as cultural insiders. These observations demonstrate a work in progress. I hope to expand on this research in greater detail soon. Some readers may recall in an earlier post that I recently had the opportunity to visit the French-Canadian province of Québec. In my travels there in June, I spent much of my time in the historic downtown area of Québec City and explored a bit of Montreal. Besides visiting areas like the Citadelle de Québec, I toured the local shops and communicated with the citizens of Québec City (in both English and French). One of the stores downtown featured musical spoons for sale, which I purchased as both a souvenir and as an instrument to study and collect for ethnomusicological purposes.
The musical spoons that I acquired on my trip are composed of wood that consists of a smooth texture to the touch. The two conjoined spoons have their respective ends facing each other, with the scoops of the spoons positioned on opposite sides and the top spoon emblazoned with the manufacturer logo. The musical spoons in my instrument collection derive from Heritage Musical Spoons, a family-owned business from Quebec City founded by Richard Mathieu that has been actively crafting musical spoons since the late 1990s. Mathieu and his son construct their musical spoons in their workshop by hand using Canadian Maplewood. The pair of musical spoons from Heritage comes equipped with detailed textual and visual instructions for how to play the instrument. They are a deceptively simple percussive instrument that takes some practice to get used to the overall feel. Readers can find myriad video tutorials concerning how to play the musical spoons, including from Heritage themselves. Holding the musical spoons requires inserting the index finger of whichever dominant hand that the player wishes to use in the space between the two spoons and placing the thumb of the dominant hand on the top spoon. To produce effective tones with the musical spoons, the player must sit down with both feet positioned flat on the floor and knees bent. Using the other free hand, depending on which hand the player uses to hold the musical spoons, the player must position the free hand flat and steadily at a certain distance away from the spoons. Heritage recommends that people playing the musical spoons place their free hand six to eight inches away from the instrument. Moving the spoons back and forth from the lap of the leg to the free hand produces rhythms and tones. The player can alter the pitches of the spoons by positioning their free hand flat or cupped and can also apply different rhythmic patterns or speeds. One other trick with the musical spoons involves stretching the fingers of the free hand and scraping against them via the spoons for more complex rhythmic passages. Improvised music by Anthony L. Sanchez (b. 1988) played on my piano Detuning via "Vaporwave Effect" from CD-ROMantic (app) Stereophonic editing via Lexis Audio Editor (app) GIF applied via CD-ROMantic Those curious as to how I have been able to produce the audio effects created on this track and the Vaporwave Sound Strudies albums should stay tuned for updates, I plan on reviewing and discussing the CD-ROMantic smartphone application in more detail sometime this week. |
AuthorDMA. Composer of acoustic and electronic music. Pianist. Experimental film. Archives
April 2024
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