Week 7: Middle East/Eastern Europe

Monday:

Today we viewed performances on the musics of the Middle East that we discussed last week, including the Turkish saz and the Persian santour. We began to talk about Eastern Europe and some of the similarities found between these various musics due to the cultural influence of the Ottoman Empire. We heard a very interesting presentation by Vahe on Armenian music, specifically the duduk. See his blog: http://vaheoethno5.blogspot.com/

We watched the rest of the film, Latcho Drom, which portrayed the Roma peoples' movement from the Middle East and into Eastern Europe--Romania (the villagers coming out of their houses) and Slovakia (the train scene).

ASSIGNMENT: In these two Eastern European scenes, talk about the similar and different instruments (like your previous assignment), and then discuss other interesting things you noticed in the film.

In the rest of the film, we followed the "gypsies" into Germany, where an old woman, tattooed with a number, sang about their persecution during the Nazi era. We saw them in a confrontation with two men (with rifles) being sent off of their land. We ended in Spain, a scene in which several men played guitars and one played a bass. (You do not have to write about these two scenes).

This week's featured blogs:
Please read the comments that I posted on your blogs. I am trying to include constructive criticism with regards to your writing style and critical thinking skills so that you can apply them to your final paper. If you have any questions or would like help with your writing, please make an appointment with me.

1. http://jrchung54.blogspot.com/2007/05/ethno5-blog-6.html Very well written and detailed in what she noticed in the film.
   
2. http://kgerstenacker.blogspot.com/2007/05/may-10th.html I liked that Karl appreciated the individual talents of the musicians and dancers, rather than just conceptualizing the "gypsies" as a homogeneous group who are naturally inclined towards music.
3. http://madelineeethno5.blogspot.com/ I appreciate that Maddy understood the point of this class: " I found this movie interesting because it demonstrated a major point we've been covering in class - each music-culture is not a separate unit, but rather a blend of adaptation to other cultures as well as creativity, which keeps each culture's music unique from the next." (read more on her blog)
4. http://granthiekel.blogspot.com/Excellent observation on how the film transmitted its message even though we had very little translation of the dialogue: "I thought it was very interesting that the film had no annotation or explanation of what was happening. I was confused at first, because I figured there was no way of learning what was going to happen in the video without an English explanation of what the people were singing or dancing about. After watching the first half of the film, I caught the idea that listening was the key to understanding the music-culture of this region."