Bibliolore

by rilm | August 6, 2025 · 6:00 am

The improbable rise of Run the Jewels

In the history of rap music, the success of Killer Mike (Michael Render), a Black man from Atlanta, Georgia, and El-P (Jaime Meline), a white man from Brooklyn, New York, seems implausible. Yet, they’ve defied all odds, turning what should have been the twilight of their careers into the peak of their success. As the powerhouse duo Run the Jewels, El-P and Killer Mike have headlined global festivals, become action figures and Marvel comic characters, led a worldwide countercultural movement, and played significant roles in the last two U.S. presidential elections.

Their journey evokes a modern-day buddy movie. Filled with twists and triumphs, it mirrors the massive shifts in the music industry over the last 25 years–from the peak of the CD era to its decline and the rise of streaming platforms–and reflects the evolution of pop culture and its sociopolitical climate. From the surge of Afrofuturism and the fall of the Twin Towers to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and Colin Kaepernick’s protest, these pivotal moments shaped how their growing friendship turned Killer Mike and El-P from underground solo acts into globally recognized icons.

Killer Mike (left) and El-P perform on NPR’s *Tiny Desk*.

Listen to the 10th anniversary edition of Run the Jewels’ first album here.

Killer Mike, the 39-year-old rapper and entrepreneur, commands attention with his powerful presence, blending raw talent with a unique perspective that sets him apart. His verses seamlessly navigate detailed street narratives, intense battle raps, sharp punchlines, and passionate political commentary. Killer Mike first gained widespread recognition as a protégé of Outkast, the iconic Atlanta rap duo that paved the way for Southern hip hop to earn international respect. As a member of the Dungeon Family, he got his big break with a standout feature on Snappin’ and trappin’, a track from OutKast’s 2000 album Stankonia. After a series of solo releases and mixtapes, he expanded his creative reach, contributing music and voicing a character on Frisky dingo, an animated series that marked the beginning of his collaboration with Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. In 2012, Killer Mike dropped R.A.P. music, a fiery album that brought together his commanding presence with the menacing beats of El-P, a seasoned veteran of New York City’s independent hip hop scene.

El-P (left) and Killer Mike (right) perform during the 2019 All Points East Festival at Victoria Park in London. Photo by Robin Little.

El-P first made his mark as part of Company Flow, a group of sharp-tongued, anti-establishment lyricists who approached their tracks with the same rebellious energy as graffiti artists tagging subway cars. As the flagship act of Rawkus Records, a powerhouse of independent hip hop in the mid-1990s, Company Flow’s 1996 album Funcrusher plus became a cornerstone of underground hip hop. By the end of the decade, El-P, alongside his manager Amaechi Uzoigwe, launched the Definitive Jux label, with the intent to release Company Flow’s second album. However, before the project could come to fruition, the group split up. Despite this, the unfinished material was eventually reworked and became the foundation for El-P’s solo breakout, marking the start of his career as a solo artist and producer.

The unexpected collaboration between underground hip hop giants El-P and Killer Mike turned out to be a perfect fit. In 2013, the duo reunited to launch Run the Jewels, revamping the gritty, hard-hitting style of late-1980s and early-1990s hip hop legends like Ice Cube and EPMD. Through their groundbreaking releases, Killer Mike and El-P firmly established themselves as dominant forces in modern music, becoming influential voices in the soundscape of contemporary rap.

This according to Kill your masters: Run the Jewels and the world that made them by Jaap Van der Doelen (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2024; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2024-15629).

Watch Run the Jewels perform on NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts here.

A new model for Italian music production

RCA Italiana, established in Rome in 1951 as a subsidiary of the Radio Corporation of America, became one of the most influential Italian record labels of the 20th century. Its foundation was supported not only by the Vatican but also by funding from the 1948 European Recovery Program–better known as the Marshall Plan. Under the leadership of Ennio Melis, RCA earned a prominent role in Italian popular music, and from 1962 onward, some of the most iconic figures in Italian music recorded at its expansive studios on Via Tiburtina, as well as the more intimate Cenacolo studios. Artists such as Ennio Morricone, Gianni Morandi, Patty Pravo, Francesco De Gregori, and Antonello Venditti all passed through its doors. However, after its peak in the early 1960s and into the mid-1970s, RCA faced a significant decline, partly due to the bankruptcy of its parent company and shifts in the global market. The 1980s saw the company’s final fall, culminating in its sale to Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) in 1986. Despite its decline, the RCA brand—once a symbol of the golden age of the Italian recording industry—still exists today under the Sony Music catalog.

RCA Italiana employee testing a record plate.

Listen to Nico Fidenco‘s *La voglia di ballare* here. This and many other Italian pop recordings were produced at RCA Italiana.

The company was originally named Radio e Televisione Italiana SpA (RTI). Its president, Count Enrico Pietro Galeazzi Lisi, who was a special delegate of the Pope, oversaw its establishment, while the driving force behind the project was Giuseppe Antonino Biondo, a Sicilian engineer and naturalized U.S. citizen working for the American RCA. The name RCA Italiana SpA was officially adopted in July 1954, a year after the company made the somewhat controversial decision to shift its focus to record production. Initially, the U.S. multinational appeared more interested in exporting its phonographic and radio-television equipment. However, by the end of 1953, the company outlined a new program for releases on 78 rpm records, coinciding with the final wave of Marshall Plan funding. To kickstart this new direction, Biondo enlisted renowned composer and conductor Armando Trovajoli and several other prominent Italian musicians. The new catalogue marked a departure from the dominant the American RCA and its classical repertoire, helping to usher in a new era of Italian music. These recordings took shape in a variety of studios already equipped with RCA technology.

In June 1962, the complex of recording studios on Via Tiburtina was officially inaugurated. The facility was a flagship of the company, featuring a centralized production system inspired by the U.S. model. This system consolidated all phases of the production process–recording, mastering, pressing, and storage–into one multipurpose campus. The heart of the complex was a striking red studio building (see the first image in this post), which featured the RCA Italiana sign, prominently visible from the Raccordo Anulare, the nearby ring road. Inside, the campus housed four recording studios spread across different floors: Studio A, the largest, was designed for big orchestras; studio B, about half the size of studio A, was used for vocals, instrumental recordings, soundtracks, and film dubbing; and the smaller studios C and D were intended for more smaller productions.

Additionally, there were three natural echo chambers (reverberation rooms) built underground to minimize interference from external sounds. However, vibrations from the increasingly heavy traffic on the nearby ring road rendered these chambers unusable, prompting the development of artificial reverb technology. The other building on the site contained office spaces, warehouses dedicated to pressing records, and other storage areas for the finished products. Although the album covers were printed by third-party companies, the design work was carried out on the campus, ensuring a fully integrated creative process.

This according to a newly published entry on RCA Italiana by Francesco Brusco in DEUMM Online.

Watch an documentary in Italian on the history RCA Italiana here.

RCA Italiana employees testing recordings.

Mongol and Han shamanic ritual music

Lingshen, or “welcoming the deity,” is a shamanic ritual music practiced by the Mongol people of Horqin and the Han people of Jutai in China. It emerges within the context of healing ceremonies led by a shaman and their assistant, typically performed for individuals experiencing hysteria. Central to this practice is the shamanic belief that all aspects of the world are governed by spirits, and that divine protection is granted only to those who express deep devotion and reverence toward the gods. In this spiritual framework, the divine is omnipresent, reflecting a worldview rooted in the principle that “all things have spirits”. This belief system is intimately tied to the rhythm of daily village life, shaped through the intertwined development of culture and ritual. Shamanism stands at the heart of this musical culture.

The lingshen ritual encompasses a rich tapestry of sonic elements: the ritual specialist evokes spirits through the striking of percussion instruments, a designated singer delivers spiritually resonant melodies, and the faithful respond with rhythmic hand clapping, creating a musical dialogue between humans and the divine. These performances are more than ceremonial; they serve as transmission vessels for shamanic musical culture, deeply rooted in local folk customs and shaped by the lived experiences of village life.

Horqin’s vast grasslands in northern China are characteristic of the region’s landscape.

Geographically, Horqin’s proximity to Jilin province and its historical inclusion of the Jiutai district in Changchun has fostered a cross-cultural exchange. During the early Qing dynasty, intermingling between the Mongol and Han populations–through trade, migration, and shared ritual practice–deeply influenced the evolution of local shamanic music traditions. As a result, lingshen embodies not only sacred spiritual intent but also the historical flow of musical motifs and ritual structures across ethnic and regional boundaries.

The songs performed in lingshen rituals serve distinctly functional purposes within the spiritual framework of shamanic healing. For practitioners, their use is twofold: first, the shaman employs music to express the community’s reverence and devotion to the deities, acting as an intermediary voice between the people and the divine; second, through prayerful singing and coordinated ritual sound, both the shaman and the faithful aim to soothe and honor the gods in accordance with the wishes of the villagers. This musical invocation is believed to facilitate a swift descent of the spirits into the ritual space, thereby initiating the healing process and affirming spiritual presence.

The frame drums above are key instruments in the rituals of both the Horqin Mongolian and Jiutai Han shamans.

A comparative study of the shamanic musical traditions among the Mongolian and Han peoples in Horqin and Jiutai reveals a pattern of coordinated cultural development. During the early Qing Dynasty, political alliances and intermarriages between Horqin Mongols and the Manchus served to preserve each group’s regime stability. These relationships, along with sustained political and economic exchange and the movement of Mongolian and Han populations within the region, fostered the emergence of new village social structures. The evolving social frameworks and their intersecting cultural subsystems laid fertile ground for mutual influence, shaping the trajectory of shamanic music culture in both communities.

This according to 萨满音乐的协同与影响—科尔沁蒙古族与九台汉族萨满领神音乐之比较 (The synergy and influence of shamanic music: A comparison of the shamanic lingshen music of the Mongol people in Horqin and the Han people in Jiutai) by Wang Xiaodong (Zhongyang Yinyue Xueyuan xuebao/Journal of the Central Conservatory of Music 4:165 [fall 2021] 31–46; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2021-17727). Find this journal in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text.

Brian Wilson’s good vibrations

With the passing of Brian Wilson on 11 June 2025–just days before his 83rd birthday–the music world lost one of its most innovative pop composers and producers. As a songwriter, musician, and producer, Wilson co-founded the Beach Boys in 1961 and was the creative force behind the band during its formative years. He wrote, arranged, and produced most of their material during their first five years, crafting a string of 1960s pop classics. The Beach Boys became synonymous with the vibrant themes of Southern California surf culture and youthful fun. With upbeat, danceable hits like Surfin’ U.S.A. (1963), I get around (1964), Fun, fun, fun (1964), California girls (1965), Good vibrations (1966) and many others, they emerged as one of the most successful pop bands of the decade–culminating in a memorable appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

Watch the Beach Boys perform on The Ed Sullivan Show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnnFwfewk9c&list=RDQnnFwfewk9c&start_radio=1

The Beach Boys’ carefree, easygoing surf music was characterized by their distinctive vocal harmonies, which quickly became their trademark. Pet sounds–by far the band’s most musically complex and experimental album–was released in 1966 and was deeply inspired by The Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber soul. Widely regarded as one of the most influential records in pop music history, Pet sounds marked a significant artistic leap for the band and for pop as a whole.

Wilson also produced singles for other artists, including The Honeys, a female vocal trio that featured his wife, Marilyn, and Glen Campbell. His production style was heavily influenced by Phil Spector; he frequently worked at Gold Star Studios and employed many of the same session musicians Spector used during the 1960s. Wilson recorded all the backing tracks for the Beach Boys’ hits live, without overdubbing, often adding vocals afterward. Due to deafness in one ear, he worked exclusively in mono.

Wilson in the mid-1970s, performing on piano.

Wilson with a goat on the photoshoot for the *Pet sounds* album cover.

In 1964, Wilson withdrew from live performances to focus on songwriting and studio work. From the late 1960s onward, he also battled depression and substance abuse, eventually stepping away from the music industry entirely for a time. Despite these challenges, he recorded eleven solo albums between 1988 and 2021 and published his autobiography, I am Brian Wilson: A memoir, in 2016. In 2021, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the Beach Boys’ song God only knows at number 11 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

This according to the entry on Brian Wilson by William Ruhlmann in the Encyclopedia of recorded sound (2005, find it in RILM Music Encyclopedias) and a recently published short obituary in MGG Online.

Bechara El-Khoury, composer and poet

The French Lebanese composer Bechara El-Khoury began his musical training at an early age, studying in Beirut with Agop Arslanian. Celebrated as a child prodigy, he composed around 100 works between 1969–when he was just 12 years old–and 1978. According to El-Khoury, “I began to compose melodies and simple songs when I was around 7 years old. I quickly moved to writing for orchestra, when I was about 12. I composed many pieces when I was young, but my first official work (that appears in my catalogue) was not until 1979, when I arrived in Paris.”

In addition to his musical pursuits, El-Khoury published three collections of poetry between 1971 and 1973, and from 1973 served as capo at the Church of St. Elie in Antelias, near Beirut. In 1979, he moved to Paris, where he refined his skills in composition and orchestration under the guidance of Pierre Petit. He became a French citizen in 1987.

In 1983, the Orchestre Colonne, conducted by Pierre Dervaux, recorded two CDs of Bechara El-Khoury’s music with pianist David Lively. That same year, a televised gala concert featuring El-Khoury’s works—performed with pianist Abdel Rahman El Bacha—was held in celebration of the Khalil Gibran Centenary. In 1985, El-Khoury composed the symphony Les Ruines de Beyrouth, followed in 1996 by a violin sextet commissioned by Shlomo Mintz. He has received numerous honors for his work, including the Prix des Arts et de la Culture from the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (1994), the Prix Rossini from the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Institut de France (2000), and the title of Chevalier of the Ordre National du Cèdre du Liban (2001). In 2003, he was a finalist in the London-based Masterprize composition competition with his orchestral work Les Fleuves engloutis (2001).

Cover art for *Variations orientales* (1975).

Cover art for *Souvenirs d’amour* (1978).

In 2006, El-Khoury’s violin concerto Aux frontières de nulle part (2002) received its premiere in Paris, performed by the Orchestre National de France under the baton of Kurt Masur. That same year, the London Symphony Orchestra recorded two of his major orchestral works: Les Fleuves engloutis and New York, Tears and Hope (2005), the latter composed in memory of the victims of the September 11 attacks in New York.

El-Khoury is also an accomplished poet, and he often speaks about the symbiotic relationship between his poetry and music. In an interview, he explains: “With many of my pieces I write a poem linked to it, either before or after. Sometimes the music creates a poem, and sometimes it is created by a poem . . . My poetic inspiration comes largely from the famous Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran and from Nietzsche.” He adds, “Not necessarily all my music is linked to poetry. And even if a piece has some poetic or programmatic inspiration, it’s still music. You can listen to it without having to know the content.” Nature is another key source of inspiration in El-Khoury’s work. For example, his horn concerto The dark mountain was inspired by childhood memories of the Lebanese mountains.

This according to the entry on Bechara El-Khoury in MGG Online.

Below, El-Khoury’s horn concerto in The dark mountain.

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Performers

Tagged as Bechara El-Khoury, child prodigy, Composers, France, Lebanon, Nature, poet, Poetry

by rilm | July 16, 2025 · 6:00 am

The complexities of underwater acoustics

The ecological importance of natural soundscapes is increasingly recognized, as their degradation may lead to biodiversity loss and disruptions in ecosystem functioning. The disappearance of these soundscapes poses a serious concern, underscoring the need for their preservation. Soundscape studies offer valuable insights into ecological change, enabling researchers to identify affected ecosystems and attribute shifts to factors such as anthropogenic noise. A wide array of methodologies supports this research–from auditory observation and spectrographic visualization to the computation of acoustic indices and sophisticated statistical modeling. Passive acoustic monitoring has emerged as a vital ecological tool, facilitating research, environmental surveillance, and conservation management across both terrestrial and aquatic soundscapes.

A geoacoustic imaging project studying underwater acoustic networks for services in support of the discovery of new underwater cultural heritage (UCH) sites.

In the context of aquatic environments, acoustic recording presents distinct challenges due to the complex nature of sound propagation. Unlike in air, sound does not travel in straight-line paths underwater; instead, it undergoes reflection, refraction, and diffraction. Acoustic energy interacts with uneven surfaces such as the sea surface and seafloor, as well as with suspended objects in bodies of water–including gas bubbles, fish swim bladders, and particulate matter–leading to scattering. Furthermore, some sound waves may penetrate the seafloor and eventually dissipate as heat. Misunderstandings about underwater acoustics are common, including the beliefs that (1) low-frequency sound cannot propagate in shallow water, (2) hard seafloors cause complete reflection with cylindrical spreading, and (3) soft seafloors produce spherical spreading. These oversimplifications overlook the nuanced physics of underwater sound transmission.

Water-column analysis in the Bay of Biscay using broadband acoustic technology.

Understanding sound propagation across diverse environments requires a critical evaluation of commonly used acoustic models and their limitations. Dispelling prevalent misconceptions involves recognizing the nuanced behavior of sound and the assumptions underlying sound propagation equations. To address this, sonar equations have been created for various scenarios, ranging from animal acoustic communication and noise-induced communication masking to the acoustic surveying of marine fauna. Central to these analyses is the “layered ocean” concept, which examines how variations in temperature, salinity, and depth influence sound speed, ultimately affecting propagation pathways and signal fidelity.

This according to “Introduction to sound propagation under water” by Christine Erbe, Alec Duncan, and Kathleen Vigness-Raposa, Exploring animal behavior through sound. I: Methods, ed. by Christine Erbe and Jeanette A. Thomas (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2022, 185–216; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-27424).

July 18 is World Listening Day.

Photo credit for the first image: Douglas Klug.

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Filed under Acoustics, Animals, Geography, Sound, Space

Tagged as aquatic, bioacoustics, biodiversity, Environment, Noise, seafloor, Sound, Soundscapes, underwater sound transmission

by rilm | July 11, 2025 · 6:00 am

Black Sabbath and Joy Division channel the sounds of industrialized England

Scholars have long drawn connections between urban life and specific music genres, especially heavy metal. The British bands Black Sabbath and Joy Division serve as compelling case studies, exemplifying how their music emerged as a reflection of the bleak, industrial landscapes of 1960s and 1970s England. Despite belonging to different genres, both bands share a profound commonality: their sound was forged by—and evocative of—the desolation of these environments. This influence is particularly evident through key musical elements, including an unusually bass-heavy sonic palette, repetitive and continuous textures, austere arrangements, rigid song structures, and lyrical themes steeped in urban alienation.

Though separated by roughly a decade, Black Sabbath and Joy Division each aligned loosely with the dominant musical movements of their time. Black Sabbath emerged from the late 1960s blues rock scene, while Joy Division was a product of the post-punk wave of the late 1970s. Despite the differing genres, both bands distinguished themselves through striking originality and enduring influence. Their impact can be traced to two key sources: a strong sense of group synergy and their ability to channel shared urban-industrial experiences into music. In this sense, their music evokes a soundscape of similarly bleak and oppressive environments.

Black Sabbath in 1970. From left to right: Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward.

A defining similarity between Black Sabbath and Joy Division lies in the pervasive darkness and heaviness of both their sound and lyrical content. This shared aesthetic reflects a fascination with bleak and nihilistic themes–ranging from personal alienation and psychological turmoil to pressing social concerns such as war and drug addiction, particularly prominent in Black Sabbath’s music. This sonic and thematic weight can be traced directly to the oppressive industrial environments that shaped each band’s identity. Black Sabbath’s members, for instance, were raised in Aston, a war-scarred inner-city district of Birmingham marked by factories, soot-covered terrace houses, smoking chimneys, and remnants of World War II bomb sites. Such surroundings weren’t just the backdrop of their lives; they seeped into the music, transforming lived experience into powerful soundscapes of urban despair.

Joy Division in Manchester, 1979. Photo credit: Kevin Cummins

Joy Division’s origins closely mirrored those of Black Sabbath, shaped by similarly stark surroundings. Bassist Peter Hook and guitarist Bernard Sumner–the band’s central creative forces–grew up in Salford, a working class area near Manchester, during the 1960s and 1970s. Sumner vividly described his neighborhood as “a potted version of the entire, industrialized northwest,” listing iron works, copper works, cloth-finishing factories, paint and chemical plants, cotton mills, sawmills, and brass foundries—all within walking distance of his home. Despite a strong sense of community fostered by tightly packed terraced houses that fronted directly onto the street, the neighborhood was shadowed by frequent violence and a culture that emphasized emotional stoicism and cold, hardened masculinity.

A Manchester cotton mill, early 20th century.

The primal, bass-heavy, riff-driven sound of both Black Sabbath and Joy Division mirrors the industrial landscapes from which they emerged. Factories, conveyor belts, trains, and constant traffic created a dense low-frequency soundscape–a persistent rumble and thunder that saturated the environment. Although high-pitched noises occur in such settings, they are typically brief and peripheral, sharply contrasting with the ever-present bass tones. The absence of natural high-frequency sounds–such as birdsong or rustling leaves–further contributes to the sonic bleakness, depriving the environment of melodic brightness. This acoustic scarcity is echoed in the music: both bands emphasize low-end frequencies and a limited melodic range, effectively channeling the oppressive atmosphere of industrial life and amplifying the emotional starkness at the core of their sound.

This according to “Channelling the darkness: Group flow and environmental expression in the music of Black Sabbath and Joy Division” by Steve M. Taylor (Metal music studies 7/1[2021] 85–102; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2021-4270).

Black Sabbath played their final concert last week on 5 July 2025 at Villa Park in Aston, Birmingham, England. They are widely considered the pioneers of contemporary heavy metal.

Below, Black Sabbath performs Electric funeral on their farewell tour. The next video features Joy Division performing Transmission in September 1979.

Pre-Columbian musical elements in the Veracruz region

The Veracruz region forms part of Mesoamerica—a broad geocultural area in Central America where diverse cultural traits developed and spread beginning around 1500 B.C.E., culminating in the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in 1521. Many of these cultural characteristics remain evident in the region to this day. Mesoamerica encompasses much of present-day Mexico, along with significant portions of Central America. Over a span of 3,000 years, numerous cultures emerged, flourished, and subsequently declined within this area, exhibiting both distinct differences and a shared set of features now identified as Mesoamerican. Due to this cultural continuity, it is important–especially in the study of specific regions like Veracruz and the Gulf Coast–to differentiate between local traditions and elements common across Mesoamerica. This distinction is particularly relevant when examining musical instruments, as only a limited number of sound-producing objects appear to be unique to specific regions.

No known music from the Veracruz or Gulf Coast region has survived from pre-Columbian times. While the region’s folkloric genres likely retain elements from earlier periods, it is challenging to distinguish these features from those shaped by later cultural influences. Although this is a common feature across Mesoamerica, there are notable exceptions. In Guatemala, for instance, certain bailes (dance performances), such as the Rab’inal Achí and the baile de las canastas, have been shown to preserve rhythmic systems, instrumental roles, intervallic structures, and song forms that are almost certainly of pre-Columbian origin. Such bailes–which may contain traces of ancient musical systems–are not confined to Guatemala but continue to be performed across various regions of Latin America.

A festival featuring Rab’inal Achí in Guatemala.

Ethnomusicological studies to identify surviving pre-Columbian musical elements in the contemporary traditions of the northern Gulf Coast have largely been inconclusive. The only potentially significant example is the ritual dance bisom tiu (the hawk or eagle dance), which continues to be performed at the ancient Huastec site of Tamtoc. However, the accompanying music lacks the non-Western features found in Guatemalan bailes and does not exhibit any unique characteristics that have yet to be documented elsewhere. Nonetheless, certain rhythmic elements appear to retain connections to the pre-Hispanic soundscape of the Veracruz/Gulf Coast region. Excavations in the area have uncovered hundreds, if not thousands, of musical instruments or fragments, many of which were clearly crafted to produce a wide range of timbral variations. The absence of standardized tuning among these instruments suggests that timbre may have been prioritized over pitch, intervals, or melodic structure in the region’s musical practices.

This according to this month’s featured article by Mark Howell on Pre-Columbian music of Veracruz. Find it in DEUMM Online.

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Filed under Central America, Dance, Dramatic arts, Geography, Instruments, World music

Tagged as bailes, Central America, Dance, Gulf Coast, Indigenous Americans, Instruments, Mesoamerica, Mexico, Veracruz

by rilm | July 2, 2025 · 6:00 am

Improvisation schemas and the Turkmen dutar

The Turkmen dutar is a long-necked, two-stringed lute distinguished by its pear-shaped resonating body and thin wooden soundboard. Both the body and soundboard are carved from mulberry wood, while the neck is crafted from the dried trunk of an apricot tree. To construct the instrument, the mulberry wood is carefully rounded, hollowed out, and polished to shape the body. The soundboard wood undergoes a drying process—baked for up to 24 hours to eliminate moisture—before being affixed over the hollowed chamber using traditional bone glue. Traditionally tuned a fourth apart, its two strings serve distinct musical functions: the higher-pitched string carries the primary melody, while the lower-pitched string is often muted by the thumb of the playing hand to produce a shifting parallel melody. Alternatively, the lower string may ring open to function as a drone in certain pieces or passages. Believed to descend from ancient Babylonian and Egyptian lutes, the dutar today is primarily used to accompany Turkmen bards known as bagşy (or bakshy). In the south central Ahal region of Turkmenistan, however, dutar players have cultivated a solo instrumental repertoire. Historically passed down orally, this body of music has, in recent decades, seen partial transcription into a modified form of Western notation for pedagogical purposes. Formally sophisticated and largely through-composed, the repertoire still allows space for variation and interpretive flexibility.

Oghlan Bakhshi (middle), a virtuoso Turkmen dutar player, performs with his group.

In Turkmen music, the term hasap, which literally means account or reckoning, carries a range of other nuanced meanings. In everyday use, one might request a hasap when settling a bill at a restaurant or inquiring about the score of a game. Within musical contexts, hasap denotes various interpretive and structural concepts. Musicians may refer to a particular master’s hasap for a given piece, or more generally to the shared hasap of a composition. Along with related terms such as nusga, forma, and skema, hasap can indicate a skeletal melodic framework that individual performers elaborate through ornamentation and stylistic variation. Comparative transcriptions of extended passages–whether interpreted by multiple dutar players or revisited by the same performer–often reveal consistency in underlying structure, with variation appearing primarily in melodic embellishment, rhythmic phrasing, and the treatment of the lower string.

Excerpt from the song *Balsaýat*, transcribed by Ýazmyrat Rejepow.

Turkmen dutar players navigate the dual imperative to both preserve and creatively reinterpret traditional repertoire. To do so, they draw on a repertoire of internalized formulas, compositional schemas, and aesthetic principles to generate new musical material–whether in improvisation or composition. These strategies parallel those found in other music traditions, such as Hindustani music, Persian classical music, and jazz, where deep immersion in a musical system enables spontaneous creativity within established boundaries. Like Persian musicians who internalize the radif through prolonged apprenticeship, Turkmen performers absorb such frameworks, often without formal codification. Turkmen dutar players, however, tend to reapply these principles not just in improvisatory spaces, but within the reinterpretation of the inherited compositions themselves.

This according to “Principles of transmission and collective composition in Turkmen dutar performance” by David Fossum (Analytical approaches to world musics 5/2 [2017] 37 p.; RILM Abstracts with Full Text, 2017-43691) and the entry on the dutar in Musical instruments: A comprehensive dictionary (1964); find it in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

The Turkmen dutar is on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Below, Oghlan Bakhshi performs the traditional Turkmen song Boy bibi. The video after it, created by UNESCO, is on dutar making and performance.

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Filed under Asia, Ethnomusicology, Instruments, Nature, World music

Tagged as Central Asia, dutar, hasap, Improvisation, Instruments, Lute, repertoire, transmission, Turkmenistan, UNESCO

by rilm | June 28, 2025 · 6:00 am

The Orpheus theme in opera

The Orpheus saga marked the birth of a new operatic genre and became a model for significant compositional reform. Raniero de Calzabigi, librettist for Christoph Willibald Gluck, stripped the myth to its essential narrative, discarding subplots and intrigues. This shift redirected opera from opera seria toward azione teatrale, emphasizing theatrical action and emotional immediacy. Gluck reflected this evolution by largely abandoning the elaborate arias and coloratura typical of opera seria, favoring instead simple melodies, choral passages, and accompanied recitatives. In 1774, Gluck substantially revised the work for its Paris debut–particularly the recitatives–infusing it with heightened drama and aligning it more closely with the tragédie lyrique tradition of French opera. Later, in 1791, Joseph Haydn’s final opera, L’anima del filosofo ossia Orfeo ed Euridice, offered a humanist interpretation of the myth. Here, Orpheus emerged as a philosophical figure, resonating with Enlightenment ideals.

Poster promoting Jacques Offenbach’s *Orphée aux enfers*.

By the 19th century, interest in Orpheus-themed operas had waned, giving way to a broader exploration of the myth across other musical forms such as symphonies, cantatas, and operettas. As early as 1689, an Orpheus parody appeared, and by the late 18th and 19th centuries, additional satirical operettas followed. The most renowned of these is Jacques Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers (1858), which helped inaugurate the French operetta tradition. In the 20th century, opera composers rediscovered the Orpheus myth with renewed interest. Darius Milhaud’s Les Malheurs d’Orphée (1926), a deliberate break from grand Romantic opera, sets the myth in a pastoral landscape, portraying Orpheus as a humble farmer and miraculous healer who is tragically powerless to save his wife Eurydice from a mysterious illness. This evolving view of Orpheus–as an allegory for the artist–had gained prominence since the late 19th century and is echoed in Oskar Kokoschka and Ernst Křenek’s 1926 play Orpheus and Eurydice. Here, the myth becomes a metaphor not only for the struggle between the sexes–Eurydice, now allied with Hades, refuses to return to Orpheus and ultimately kills him to reclaim her autonomy–but also for the artist’s torment in striving to hold on to their creative muse.

This according to the entry on Orpheus by Britta Schilling-Wang in MGG Online.

A scene from *Orpheus in der Unterwelt* (based on the operetta by Jacques Offenbach) directed by Spymonkey, the U.K.’s leading company for physical comedy. In this version, Orpheus is a bored music teacher and his wife Eurydice is constantly annoyed by him.

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Filed under Dramatic arts, Literature, Opera, Reception

Tagged as Christoph Willibald Gluck, Enlightenment, Mythology, Opera, Orpheus, parody, Philosophy, satire, theater