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David Parfitt
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Maqam Awshar
Continuing the theme of Iraqi maqamat, I'm totally stumped by Maqam Awshar, and hope someone could shed some light on it. It is clear that it is based
around a Sikah trichord on E half-flat (Sikah), but the fourth and fifth notes seem to be very variable.
The book by Simms "The Repertoire of Iraqi Maqam" shows the basic scale to be Ehalfb-F-G-Ahalfb-Bb-C (i.e. Sikah+Bayati), with reference to G-A-B-C
(Ajam) in a descending phrase. This is based on a transcription of a single recording though, and I'm not even sure how accurate it is.
Jamil Bashir, in his oud method, includes an "intro" in Maqam Awshar that begins with Ehalfb-F-G-Ab-Bhalfb (Sikah+?) and then includes phrases with
G-Ahalfb-Bb-C (Bayati, as above) and G-Ab-Bb (Kurd?)
However, in the notes to Jamil Bashir's "Arabesques" LP, Chabrier shows the basic Awshar scale as Ehalfb-F-G-Ahalfb-Bhalfb-C (Sikah+?) As far as I can
tell, he interprets this upper tetrachord as a kind of stretched Hijaz, which is somewhere between a Bayati and Nahawand.
As if this wasn't enough, there are several references online which give Awshar as Sikah+Nahawand.
Can anyone make any sense out of all this? Is there a basic Awshar scale, or can the region between G and C be interpreted pretty much however you
like? It would be interesting to know what Muallem says in his book on maqamat, which includes Awshar, but I will have to wait a few weeks for mine to
arrive.
David
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Brian Prunka
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I don't know the answer to this, but the G A/b B/b C tetrachord is called Sikah Baladi in Arabic music. I don't know if it might have a different
name in Iraqi maqam.
If you got in touch with Amir ElSaffar, he might be able to give you a better answer. Iraqi maqam is closely tied with specific repertoire, as I
understand it, so knowing the repertoire would get you the answer to how the scale is constructed.
One word on the Bashir books: I've noticed that they contain many errors, so I wouldn't recommend using them as a definitive source.
For instance he may have meant to write A/b but accidentally written Ab.
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suz_i_dil
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Seems we share a common interest in iraki maqam  I was wondering about this makam
also..
I asked a talented teacher who advised me more to focus on listening many interpretation to catch it. He meant the single scale doesn't make the
identity of the makam. Exemple given was Bayat, Ushaq, Hussaini and Muhayyer which have all the same scale.
A friend has read in a Munir Bashir booklet that awshar is directly inspired by a persian makam call " afshari ".
I have a book of the radif and they write for avaz afshari:
F G A(half-b) Bb C D(natural/half b) Eb F G
Which are nearly the notes Naseer Shamma uses in this interpretation but... with sometimes the E natural.
I think the tonic is segah (A half bemol in N. Shamma tuning), but the F seems to be an important note also in the interpretation. How can we call it
? Dominant ?
Well I don't know, to me it remains unclear and I still study it.
here is the link of a Naseer Shamma interpretation of Awshar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHljOprTmvg
May you told me to wich ressource online you refer to ?
Thanks
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Bodhi
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Hi David I think you should find some Persian Dastgah literature. It is very interconnected with the Iraqi maqamat. I have some PDF files I can send
you by e-mail and a couple of books I can lend you, if you send me your e-mail and postal address I can send them to you if you'll post the books back
to me when your finished.
just U2U me if your interested.
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David Parfitt
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Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka  | I don't know the answer to this, but the G A/b B/b C tetrachord is called Sikah Baladi in Arabic music. I don't know if it might have a different
name in Iraqi maqam.
If you got in touch with Amir ElSaffar, he might be able to give you a better answer. Iraqi maqam is closely tied with specific repertoire, as I
understand it, so knowing the repertoire would get you the answer to how the scale is constructed.
One word on the Bashir books: I've noticed that they contain many errors, so I wouldn't recommend using them as a definitive source.
For instance he may have meant to write A/b but accidentally written Ab. |
Thanks Brian. I don't recall seeing the Sikah Baladi-type tetrachord mentioned in the Simms book, but it's quite possible that this is used in Iraq. I
might have to check the books on Persian music to see if anything similar is used in that tradition.
Is Amir ElSaffar the person behind the Iraq maqam blog site? I haven't really looked into that in any great detail, but whoever put it together
certainly seems to know their stuff.
The Jamil Bashir oud books really were a last resort as they are such a jumbled mess that it's hard to find anything in there. Why do so many Arab
music theory books and oud methods look like scrapbooks that have been put together by kids?
David
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David Parfitt
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| Quote: Originally posted by suz_i_dil | Seems we share a common interest in iraki maqam I was wondering about this makam
also..
I asked a talented teacher who advised me more to focus on listening many interpretation to catch it. He meant the single scale doesn't make the
identity of the makam. Exemple given was Bayat, Ushaq, Hussaini and Muhayyer which have all the same scale.
A friend has read in a Munir Bashir booklet that awshar is directly inspired by a persian makam call " afshari ".
I have a book of the radif and they write for avaz afshari:
F G A(half-b) Bb C D(natural/half b) Eb F G
Which are nearly the notes Naseer Shamma uses in this interpretation but... with sometimes the E natural.
I think the tonic is segah (A half bemol in N. Shamma tuning), but the F seems to be an important note also in the interpretation. How can we call it
? Dominant ?
Well I don't know, to me it remains unclear and I still study it.
here is the link of a Naseer Shamma interpretation of Awshar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHljOprTmvg
May you told me to wich ressource online you refer to ?
Thanks |
Hi suz_i_dil
I'm certainly keen to find out as much as possible about the theory behind these Iraqi maqams, but there seems to be very little information out
there. The Simms book is ok, but he doesn't even give the basic scale for each maqam and often presents only one example, so it is difficult to know
how representative this is (and how well he has transcribed it). He doesn't even deal with Lami, except for the odd brief mention.
I don't know how close the Maqam Awshar is to the Persian Awshari, or if there are significant differences. I think we could learn more probably from
Naseer Shamma's performance, or Munir/Jamil Bashir, Rahim AlHaj etc. I wish we had a Baghdad-school educated Iraqi oud player on these forums who we
could question about all these mysteries!
One of the online resources I referred to is the Pizmonim Project (http://www.pizmonim.org/maqam.php?maqam=Moustaar), but I can't seem to find the other one now.
All the best
David
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David Parfitt
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| Quote: Originally posted by Bodhi | Hi David I think you should find some Persian Dastgah literature. It is very interconnected with the Iraqi maqamat. I have some PDF files I can send
you by e-mail and a couple of books I can lend you, if you send me your e-mail and postal address I can send them to you if you'll post the books back
to me when your finished.
just U2U me if your interested. |
Thanks Bodhi, that's very kind of you! I do have several Persian music books though, including the Hormoz Farhat one, but haven't delved into those
yet as I wasn't really sure how close the Iraqi maqam actually is to the Persian dastgah. I would be interested in those PDF files if that's ok? My
email is david@oud.eclipse.co.uk
All the best
David
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Bodhi
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to my ear they are often practically the same as the iraqi namesakes. Its worth comparing Naseer Shamma playing Dashti and a persian solo recording of
the daramad avaz-e dashti. It is uncanny.
Ill send the PDF's soon.
Bodhi
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Masel
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an iraqi maqam is different than an arab maqam. it is more like a "composition" in a certain maqam. each maqam must use certain small motives in a
certain order (i forgot the name for this) that are common to many maqamat, also the poem to be sung is decided by the person who composed the maqam,
as well as other things such as which rhythm - if any - to be used. taken out of this context not every maqam has it's own charachter.
awshar however as far as i know uses mainly this scale: E-b- F G A Bb C D kind of like turkish segah.
here is nazam el-ghazaly singing part of maqam awshar and then a peste (song sung at the end of the maqam). notice he starts in what we could call
huzam and then moves to awshar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAReYhm5HcU
this is "meyhana meyhana" a very nice song in awshar composed by saleh el-qwaiti sung here by redha abdullah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El9M-XQrsAU
i dont know maqam awshar well enough to tell if naseer shamma was really playing it or just improvising i get the feeling the latter is more correct
and he called it awshar to sound more exotic.. to me it is segah/huzam
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skeletonleaves
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I know this thread is a decade old now, but I want to revive it to see if anyone has figured this out yet. I'm having the same issue as David here.
Almost every single written and/or explanatory source I can find in both English and Arabic (besides the ones David mentioned in the original post)
states that the second jins is Nahawand – no other ajnas on the 3rd degree of the scale are described in the sources I can find. I see this given
out as the scale for Awshar so frequently and confidently that it seems like it must be some sort of consensus among a significant number of
musicians. However, there seem to be few actual performances of Awshar wherein Nahawand 3 is a prominent jins (or even appears at all). At least, far
fewer than what's described below –
In the majority of performances I've found of Awshar, whether traditional recordings in the Iraqi Maqam repertoire or taqsims (Munir Bashir, Naseer
Shamma, and Avraham Salman particularly), Nahawand does not appear at all even as a modulation. Instead the most prominent jins here seems to my ears
like a modified jins Kurd with a half-sharpened 3rd degree, corresponding to the scale given in the Jamil Bashir book that David mentioned. Similarly,
in the CD booklet to Munir Bashir's "Art of the Oud," the scale for Awshar is written out as:
Eq F G Ab (Aq) Bb (Bq) C
In many performances there also seems to be a sort of playful interaction between this modified jins Kurd, the normal jins Kurd, and jins Bayati
(sometimes Hijaz too), and this is displayed in Munir Bashir's taqsim. Nahawand is often nowhere to be found.
Interestingly, despite what's written in his book, Jamil Bashir DOES use jins Nahawand in his Awshar taqsim, far more prominently than the modified
Kurd.
Have any members familiar with maqam Awshar joined the forum over the last decade who can shed some light on all this? Are there simply 2 versions of
what we call "maqam Awshar"? Is it possible that in Ottoman times there were 2 different maqams which today are both described with this name? Is it
all just personal preference, as David suggested? The ajnas in question (Nahawand vs Kurd) are too different to be easily confused for each other so
I'm at a loss for why there is such a gap between how this maqam is described and how it is actually played.
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majnuunNavid
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I have this same difficulty in explaining Persian modes like Afshari to my students of western backgrounds IF they insist on trying to identify the
notes used in a scalar way.
Modes like Afshari, Awshar, Persian Mahur are better explained by identifying overlapping melodic structures that when combined and performed in a
certain way create a unique identity.
Even the ajnas concept can only take us so far here. For example, at a certain point a jins can become a misleading term because even though the
intervals that can be recognized as jins nahawand for example might be present, no melody remotely recognizable as "nahawand" is present.
For example: The mode/dastgah called Mahur in Persian music is sometimes outlined in a basic way as a scale.
C d e f g a b C
When one encounters the music though, this becomes meaningless. The first 5 minutes of a performance can potentially stay in the zone of:
g a b C d e f - so there's no basic scale. There are sets of notes that have interval relationships (ajnas), but the ajnas used are a poor indicator
of how to predict melody
Then when melody starts to develop beyond that b flat is used... Where's B natural? And the student soon realizes that there's more to just the basic
scale. You can only really make sense of this if you pay attention to the melodic themes that are occurring. These melodic themes are arbitrary and
passed down from generation to generation in orally.
So I would suggest that we approach awshar by identifying essential melodic structures and describe them in an overlapping fashion. You could go
further by giving each a heirarchy by identifying the order in which each melodic structure generally appears.
This is how I would attempt to describe awshar from performances I've heard:
Eq f g aq (segah tetrachord)
c d Eq f g (rast pentachord)
g a bb (partial nahawand trichord)
g aq bq c (hijaz/sikah baladi/mokhalef-e segah tetrachord)
g aq bb (partial bayati trichord)
Does this describe anything at all? Ultimately, words don't adequately describe what happens in some modal music, and I don't we'll ever arrive at an
adequate solution.
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Jody Stecher
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Yes, yes. Good points, Navid. There are two things in your post that I don't understand. What do you mean by "arbitrary", please? And what do you mean
by "overlapping". I especially am puzzled by "overlapping" which suggests polyphonic counterpoint. I know you mean something else, but I don't what.
Thanks!
| Quote: Originally posted by majnuunNavid | I have this same difficulty in explaining Persian modes like Afshari to my students of western backgrounds IF they insist on trying to identify the
notes used in a scalar way.
Modes like Afshari, Awshar, Persian Mahur are better explained by identifying overlapping melodic structures that when combined and performed in a
certain way create a unique identity.
Even the ajnas concept can only take us so far here. For example, at a certain point a jins can become a misleading term because even though the
intervals that can be recognized as jins nahawand for example might be present, no melody remotely recognizable as "nahawand" is present.
For example: The mode/dastgah called Mahur in Persian music is sometimes outlined in a basic way as a scale.
C d e f g a b C
When one encounters the music though, this becomes meaningless. The first 5 minutes of a performance can potentially stay in the zone of:
g a b C d e f - so there's no basic scale. There are sets of notes that have interval relationships (ajnas), but the ajnas used are a poor indicator
of how to predict melody
Then when melody starts to develop beyond that b flat is used... Where's B natural? And the student soon realizes that there's more to just the basic
scale. You can only really make sense of this if you pay attention to the melodic themes that are occurring. These melodic themes are arbitrary and
passed down from generation to generation in orally.
So I would suggest that we approach awshar by identifying essential melodic structures and describe them in an overlapping fashion. You could go
further by giving each a heirarchy by identifying the order in which each melodic structure generally appears.
This is how I would attempt to describe awshar from performances I've heard:
Eq f g aq (segah tetrachord)
c d Eq f g (rast pentachord)
g a bb (partial nahawand trichord)
g aq bq c (hijaz/sikah baladi/mokhalef-e segah tetrachord)
g aq bb (partial bayati trichord)
Does this describe anything at all? Ultimately, words don't adequately describe what happens in some modal music, and I don't we'll ever arrive at an
adequate solution.
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Brian Prunka
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If I may hazard a guess, I suspect that Navid is using 'arbitrary' in the narrow, somewhat technical sense of not proceeding from logic or other
systematic rules (rather than the colloquial meaning of 'random' or 'personal whim'). So the melodies that make up a particular maqam cannot be
described as proceeding from a logical or systematic basis (what we often look for in music theory) but rather are just aggregated cultural
conventions.
Even when one can find some rational or logical justification for a particular choice, the ultimate fact is that it's still a choice and the set of
choices that make up the particular maqam practice neither reflect any kind of inevitable logic nor do they ultimately proceed from systematic
principles.
This same sense is how Sami Abu Shumays uses the term in his discussions of Arabic music theory in 'Inside Arabic Music.' Arguably, all
musico-theoretical choices are ultimately arbitrary in this sense, although if you set aside certain foundational axioms and aesthetics (say, a
preference for polyphony vs. melodic expressiveness) it can be the case that some musical principles are systematically derived, at least in
significant degree.
So as I understand Navid, he is saying that there is no way to describe a maqam like Awshar merely in theoretical/logical/structural terms.
That the definition of the maqam is the actual musical content of the phrases and organization of such over time. When he says 'overlapping' it seems
like he's referring to pitch range/register of the ajnas and melodic material but not implying simultanaeity: polyphony is when multiple melodic
events are happening at the same time. In his example, the rast pentachord and segah tetrachord overlap in pitch content, but he's not saying that
they are happening simultaneously, just that at the level of the maqam, there are overlapping sets of pitches/melodic content. So to learn it, you
really have to grapple with the characteristic melodies and presentation/development/unfolding, as they are part of the 'real' definition.
For what it's worth, this is how I understand all maqams to operate, however with certain maqamat the theory is a nearer approximation than others.
I.e., some maqams lose a little bit when described as scales/ajnas, others lose a lot.
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Jody Stecher
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oh! If that's the case, then "overlapping" is accurate and, once the context is understood, is word choice that does not confuse. I'm not entirely
happy with "arbitrary" because that would suggest other things, including random phrases generated by a computer programmed by someone with not much
musical sense. I would say these patterns or phrases or sequences are, as you and Navid have said, culturally determined, or 'received', and
ultimately derived from aesthetic reasons rather than stemming from a set of rules or prescriptions. As I live longer and review the various modal
musics to which I've been exposed (including but not limited to India, Central Asia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Greece, Iran, the entire "middle east" and
the Maghreb") it looks more and more to me that all the modal musical "Systems" of these places and peoples are attempts to systemize something
pre-existing. To get all the aspects of a given music into the system that strives to be tidy inevitably some of the musical realties have to be
shoved into Prescribed Boxes with an Industrial Strength Shoehorn. Much beauty can be found in the music created by following the rules, but it's
often better when the musician realizes that these "rules" are more useful as mostly adequate descriptions rather than as prescriptions.
| Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka | If I may hazard a guess, I suspect that Navid is using 'arbitrary' in the narrow, somewhat technical sense of not proceeding from logic or other
systematic rules (rather than the colloquial meaning of 'random' or 'personal whim'). So the melodies that make up a particular maqam cannot be
described as proceeding from a logical or systematic basis (what we often look for in music theory) but rather are just aggregated cultural
conventions.
Even when one can find some rational or logical justification for a particular choice, the ultimate fact is that it's still a choice and the set of
choices that make up the particular maqam practice neither reflect any kind of inevitable logic nor do they ultimately proceed from systematic
principles.
This same sense is how Sami Abu Shumays uses the term in his discussions of Arabic music theory in 'Inside Arabic Music.' Arguably, all
musico-theoretical choices are ultimately arbitrary in this sense, although if you set aside certain foundational axioms and aesthetics (say, a
preference for polyphony vs. melodic expressiveness) it can be the case that some musical principles are systematically derived, at least in
significant degree.
So as I understand Navid, he is saying that there is no way to describe a maqam like Awshar merely in theoretical/logical/structural terms.
That the definition of the maqam is the actual musical content of the phrases and organization of such over time. When he says 'overlapping' it seems
like he's referring to pitch range/register of the ajnas and melodic material but not implying simultanaeity: polyphony is when multiple melodic
events are happening at the same time. In his example, the rast pentachord and segah tetrachord overlap in pitch content, but he's not saying that
they are happening simultaneously, just that at the level of the maqam, there are overlapping sets of pitches/melodic content. So to learn it, you
really have to grapple with the characteristic melodies and presentation/development/unfolding, as they are part of the 'real' definition.
For what it's worth, this is how I understand all maqams to operate, however with certain maqamat the theory is a nearer approximation than others.
I.e., some maqams lose a little bit when described as scales/ajnas, others lose a lot. |
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Brian Prunka
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I understand the objection to the term 'arbitrary', but ultimately think it is probably the best term we have.
Some thoughts:
Only characterizing the phenomenon of being 'received', while a true description, obscures the point being made in noting the arbitrariness of
particular musical practices.
The fact that the term 'arbitrary' engenders discussions such as this seems to me to be a positive feature, as the belief in 'reasons' determining
musical practices is a particularly widespread and frequently unhelpful starting point. 'Arbitrariness' is a bold and surprising claim on its face
and forces a reckoning with implicit beliefs about how musical styles/genres come to exist.
Even in your statement below, the need to be more careful about implicit beliefs is present:
"these patterns or phrases or sequences are . . . culturally determined, or 'received', and ultimately derived from aesthetic reasons rather than
stemming from a set of rules or prescriptions."
Arguably, saying that the sequences are derived from aesthetic reasons is at least potentially misleading.
One could make a pretty strong case that the aesthetics are derived from the sequences and not the other way around.
The notion that there is a cause and effect relationship between "reasons" and "practices" is one of the underlying assumptions that I think is being
challenged. It's not just a distrust of prescriptive rules, but a fundamental skepticism toward the idea that musical practices are generated from
general to specific.
Ultimately, these choices are collective aesthetic agreements that occur between many people over time within a particular cultural context — they
are created via a kind of generative feedback loop where there are not separate causes and effects but rather the specific interactions between
specific people in a specific time and place. The exact specific operations of the universe that led to those people interacting in that way at that
time in that place—it's not only random, but wildly improbable as a particular occurrence. In this sense, it really is totally arbitrary that any
practice exists in the way it does.
Saying that cultural practices can be passed down and received doesn't really distinguish between the notions specific -> general vs. general ->
specific. The first is a bottom-up approach that fits the traditional models of learning by real musical examples, the second is a top-down approach
the fits more 'modern' models of theory-centered explanations. A theoretical approach is no less culturally 'received' for being theoretical.
I've noticed this is true of jazz, and interestingly as the theory approach became more used, the music that was being made evolved in some ways to
match, creating a feedback loop. In this way, it really becomes difficult to untangle cause and effect when we discuss how musical practices arise.
When I first began having these discussions with Sami a number of years ago, I too had similar objections regarding the associations of arbitrariness
with randomness, chaos and whim. After some discussion and reflection, I came around to the idea that there is something important here and that it's
worth holding space for a more nuanced sense of the word in order to highlight these kinds of issues and prompt this kind of discussion. Perhaps
there is a better word for it, but I'm not sure what it is.
In my own study and practice, I've found that 'rules' can almost always be better understood as a way to direct one's listening and observation.
I.e., the point of a 'rule' is to direct your attention to a tendency or phenomenon so that you can practice listening for it and noticing it (or its
absence or converse).
Real musical 'rules' are only expressible in music. They are too complex to be fully understood except via implicit reference to a large body of
stored musical memory. When expressed in words, they are only vague approximations. This is why the rules are just pointers for what to listen to —
once you're aware that there is a 'rule', the real work is to dive into the actual music and start learning the sound of as many examples of that
phenomenon as possible. It's also helpful to learn the sound of the rule being violated, as this can clarify what is being gained or lost by
following the rule.
While rules can be used generatively, this is a kind of brute-force and non-musical application (in the sense that it doesn't arise from your musical
imagination, but rather from some abstract notion). Although this can generate interesting and musical results! Particularly when you invent your own
rules or experiment with specific ways to bend or otherwise modify existing rules. I don't mean to suggest that intellectual/theoretical approaches
don't have value, just making a distinction between subjectively musical processes and non-musical processes. For instance, you can use a 12-sided die
to generate melodic material randomly. This can be (and has been) used to create effective music, but it is not "musical" as a process.
A last thought - in my experience people who are "naturally gifted" in music typically tend to automatically gravitate toward the kind of direct
experiential understanding that is at the root of these distinctions (i.e., they learn music through "musical" processes). If you're this kind of
person, this kind of discussion might seem to be splitting hairs or have no bearing on how you learn - because it probably doesn't.
But a lot of people depend on non-musical methods (i.e., "intellectual" processes) to a large extent learn music. While this is not
ideal in the long run, you have to meet people where they are and work with their existing strengths. So a lot of this discussion could perhaps be
understood to exist in the light of "how can people who tend to intellectualize music be guided towards musical/experiential models of understanding?"
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Jody Stecher
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There's a lot to digest in your reply, Brian. I'll need some time to read over one or ten more times to fully comprehend it before I respond. For now,
here below (in caps) is all I have at the moment, which isn't much.
| Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka | I understand the objection to the term 'arbitrary', but ultimately think it is probably the best term we have.
I THINK IT ISN'T :-) "ARBITRARY" CARRIES TOO MUCH BAGGAGE, INCLUDING THE NOTIONS OF UNFAIRNESS AND INHUMANITY.
(.........)
Perhaps there is a better word for it,
THERE MAY NOT BE A BETTER SINGLE WORD BUT THERE IS LIKELY TO BE A BETTER SHORT PHRASE.
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Jody Stecher
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My brain hurts a bit. I have responded, somewhat inadequately, between your lines below. My words are in italics.
| Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka | I understand the objection to the term 'arbitrary', but ultimately think it is probably the best term we have.
Some thoughts:
Only characterizing the phenomenon of being 'received', while a true description, obscures the point being made in noting the arbitrariness of
particular musical practices.
That would be true if the practices were actually arbitrary. Also I didn't mean to suggest that "received" was the one and only characteristic of
phrases that do not seem to fit the official description, which itself is also received once some time has elapsed after the time the phrases first
were created or emerged. Perhaps i should not have emphasized how it came to be but simply said *that* it came to be.
The actual sound and melodic quality of these phrases suggests that Not Just Any Old Phrase could have been there instead. For instance 9 E double
flats in rapid succession followed by a slide from somewhere higher than C sharp all the way down to the open A string would be just as good as the
real phrase under discussion if the real phrase was really arbitrary. "Arbitrary" suggests that Musicality is an illusion and that one phrase is as
good or bad as the next.
The fact that the term 'arbitrary' engenders discussions such as this seems to me to be a positive feature, as the belief in 'reasons' determining
musical practices is a particularly widespread and frequently unhelpful starting point.
I think I disagree. There is usually one reason: an influential musician sang or played that phrase and it was copied and retained by others.
'Arbitrariness' is a bold and surprising claim on its face and forces a reckoning with implicit beliefs about how musical styles/genres come to
exist.
Even in your statement below, the need to be more careful about implicit beliefs is present:
"these patterns or phrases or sequences are . . . culturally determined, or 'received', and ultimately derived from aesthetic reasons rather than
stemming from a set of rules or prescriptions."
Arguably, saying that the sequences are derived from aesthetic reasons is at least potentially misleading.
One could make a pretty strong case that the aesthetics are derived from the sequences and not the other way around.
The notion that there is a cause and effect relationship between "reasons" and "practices" is one of the underlying assumptions that I think is being
challenged.
Point taken. i agree with that.
It's not just a distrust of prescriptive rules, but a fundamental skepticism toward the idea that musical practices are generated from general to
specific.
I don't understand the above sentence. *What* is not just a distrust of etc"?
Ultimately, these choices are collective aesthetic agreements that occur between many people over time within a particular cultural context — they
are created via a kind of generative feedback loop where there are not separate causes and effects but rather the specific interactions between
specific people in a specific time and place.
I agree. But I see nothing arbitrary about that process.
The exact specific operations of the universe that led to those people interacting in that way at that time in that place—it's not only random, but
wildly improbable as a particular occurrence. In this sense, it really is totally arbitrary that any practice exists in the way it does.
I don't see it as either random or improbable. I'll try to succinctly explain what I mean. To do that (sigh) I must digress. I remember Gen'ichi
Tsuge's explanation in the 1960s about the difference between Iraqi maqam and neighboring musics to both east and west. He said (this is a close
paraphrase): Iraqi maqam sounds Iraqi. Music in Cairo sounds Egyptian. Dastgah music sounds Persian". Context made it clear what he meant. Applying
this meaning to our current conversation I'll go out on a limb and suggest that if the interaction you have mentioned took place in a different
cultural/geographic setting the result would be predictably different in the sense that it would sound Iraqi or Eqyptian or Persian etc. Each existing
musical culture, even though each evolves and changes (someone might argue that Tunisian Malouf is unchanging but that is for a different
conversation), does have parameters and characteristics that are discernible during time periods, some of which are longer or shorter than other
periods.
Saying that cultural practices can be passed down and received doesn't really distinguish between the notions specific -> general vs. general ->
specific. The first is a bottom-up approach that fits the traditional models of learning by real musical examples, the second is a top-down approach
the fits more 'modern' models of theory-centered explanations. A theoretical approach is no less culturally 'received' for being theoretical.
Agreed. Where does the notion of "arbitrary" enter that observation?
I've noticed this is true of jazz, and interestingly as the theory approach became more used, the music that was being made evolved in some ways to
match, creating a feedback loop. In this way, it really becomes difficult to untangle cause and effect when we discuss how musical practices arise.
This is true
When I first began having these discussions with Sami a number of years ago, I too had similar objections regarding the associations of arbitrariness
with randomness, chaos and whim. After some discussion and reflection, I came around to the idea that there is something important here and that it's
worth holding space for a more nuanced sense of the word in order to highlight these kinds of issues and prompt this kind of discussion. Perhaps
there is a better word for it, but I'm not sure what it is.
Let's create a new word! :-)
In my own study and practice, I've found that 'rules' can almost always be better understood as a way to direct one's listening and observation.
I.e., the point of a 'rule' is to direct your attention to a tendency or phenomenon so that you can practice listening for it and noticing it (or its
absence or converse).
Real musical 'rules' are only expressible in music. They are too complex to be fully understood except via implicit reference to a large body of
stored musical memory. When expressed in words, they are only vague approximations. This is why the rules are just pointers for what to listen to —
once you're aware that there is a 'rule', the real work is to dive into the actual music and start learning the sound of as many examples of that
phenomenon as possible. It's also helpful to learn the sound of the rule being violated, as this can clarify what is being gained or lost by
following the rule.
While rules can be used generatively, this is a kind of brute-force and non-musical application (in the sense that it doesn't arise from your musical
imagination, but rather from some abstract notion). Although this can generate interesting and musical results! Particularly when you invent your own
rules or experiment with specific ways to bend or otherwise modify existing rules.
I don't mean to suggest that intellectual/theoretical approaches don't have value, just making a distinction between subjectively musical processes
and non-musical processes. For instance, you can use a 12-sided die to generate melodic material randomly. This can be (and has been) used to create
effective music, but it is not "musical" as a process.
A last thought - in my experience people who are "naturally gifted" in music typically tend to automatically gravitate toward the kind of direct
experiential understanding that is at the root of these distinctions (i.e., they learn music through "musical" processes). If you're this kind of
person, this kind of discussion might seem to be splitting hairs or have no bearing on how you learn - because it probably doesn't.
But a lot of people depend on non-musical methods (i.e., "intellectual" processes) to a large extent learn music. While this is not
ideal in the long run, you have to meet people where they are and work with their existing strengths. So a lot of this discussion could perhaps be
understood to exist in the light of "how can people who tend to intellectualize music be guided towards musical/experiential models of understanding?"
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majnuunNavid
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Yes, I really shouldn't have used the term arbitrary. Scratch that, but Brian explains what I meant.
I don't think it's arbitrary, I may disagree with Sami to some degree here. It's not arbitrary, but to an outsider who isn't plugged into the culture
it may APPEAR to be arbitrary.
There is always a rhyme and reason to everything we create, whether we are aware of it or not. Most of the time it's because my teacher played it this
way, so I play it that way too. My Dad follows this religion so I do too. My family was always in the bread baking business so I'm continuing the
family tradition.
But I think that at some point melody creation or more accurately "melody discovery" has to come "out of nowhere". But it's not arbitrary. Ultimately,
it stems from what an individual human creator perceives as evoking beauty. Beauty and pleasure are likely the first inspirations for musical creation
from the beginning of music. To some degree beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but simultaneously there are some culturally learned, agreed-upon
definitions of beauty that humans can sometimes agree on. I'm imagining a hypothetical point in time of proto music.
Logic and mathematical patterns when brought into the material world have beauty to them. That is why we use geometric shapes in architecture. But
also deviating from logic has beauty in it too.
I think to the beginning of my own musical journey and attempts to improvise. In some ways it was random. I was trying to discover some combination of
notes that gave me the same pleasure as compositions I learned.
The overlapping structures didn't format as I intended them to. I had them placed visually overlapping but the formatting here pushed everything to
the left so the overlapping. But it is as Brian and Jody have summarized.
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Jody Stecher
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Oh! If the formatting had appeared as you intended, Navid, I would have understood "overlapping" right away.
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skeletonleaves
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Navid, back to what you were saying originally, I think you bring up a good point about looking at Awshar through a lens of overlapping melodies
instead of ajnas. Sami speaks of a "melodic vocabulary" that musicians pick up, often from songs, that they will then make reference to in a taqsim
when a particular jins or combination of ajnas is used. From my own listening, this phenomenon seems to be more blatant or intense in taqsims of Iraqi
maqams. Players will lift whole sections of songs from the Iraqi Maqam repertoire to their taqsims, not merely fragments of melodies but entire lines
and phrases which are heavily emphasized.
Which chunks of melody from the repertoire they decide to pick and play with are at the discretion of the performer, so I guess it makes sense that in
two different taqsims based on the same Iraqi maqam, it can appear on the surface that two different scales or sets of ajnas are being used at the
most basic level, leading to this confusion. This isn't to imply that something similar doesn't happen with non-Iraqi maqams and the corresponding
taqsims that performers base on them, but the Iraqi tradition really does seem to have its own style of composition here.
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Brian Prunka
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Jody, I appreciate your responses above. I don't disagree with your conclusions about music for the most part, but you seem to be insisting that
"arbitrary" means that it is random, or that any and all choices must be equally meaninigful. That's simply not a given.
Here is a definition from Merriam-Webster:
arbitrary:
based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something
It's true that one meaning of "arbitrary" is "existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance", but that is not the only
meaning.
Words can have more than one meaning, and to insist that a word must mean [meaning a] when the person using it has explained that they are using
[meaning b] is a bit counterproductive. As musicians, we are not strangers to specialized meanings. "Dynamic" "Scale" "Note" "Pitch" all have many
meanings yet we don't usually have arguments where we insist that the word must mean something other than that of the person using it.
I do disagree with you saying that it was not improbable for Iraqi music to come into existence. For evidence, I present the fact that it has only
happened one time out of billions of years. If it was a likely occurrence, it seems like it might have happened at least twice.
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Jody Stecher
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Brian, I was not aware of another meaning of "arbitrary". That is not the same as insisting that another meaning could not exist. I simply did not
understand it meant anything else but "for no good reason at all". I agree that the Musical Thing we've been discussing came into being through
individual preference and maybe even convenience. That aligns with other things I said and think. So now I understand what you meant.
I don't understand what you mean about me saying that Iraqi music was not improbable. I didn't say that or if I seemed to I didn't mean to.
I think Iraqi music grew out conditions that were ripe for it to occur.
This is the same thing you wrote in an earlier message but you think it is unlikely that it happened in the way that it did. I get that--or nearly.
The idea is too new to me to agree or to disagree.
I do see that a different music could have come out of the very same complex circumstances that gave rise to Iraqi music.
Apologies if I seem thick or stubborn. I don't mean to be. I can be literal minded. I'm just trying to sort out what is so, to the best of the ability
of my little brain.
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Brian Prunka
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No apologies needed Jody! It's a bit of a departure from how we often think about music. I feel like if we were conversing in person (which is how I
discussed this idea with Sami Shumays), we would have had an easier time understanding each other. It was a bit of a head-scratcher for me for a
minute as well, and it was only with some clarification that I got the distinction between "arbitrary" and saying "random" or "by chance".
I understand the disagreement if it seemed like I was saying that the music was random or any choice would have been equally as good as any other –
I don't think that at all, and would also disagree with someone who claimed that!
"I do see that a different music could have come out of the very same complex circumstances that gave rise to Iraqi music."
This is pretty much it - it's not that there weren't choices made that pleased the people at the time, but that there is no other real 'reason' and
they could easily have made different choices at many points that would also have been valid in the end (though resulting in different aesthetics and
music). It doesn't mean that absolutely any choice would have worked just as well.
We're all coming from a love of music and trying to understand it the best we can. I do think this idea helps achieve greater understanding in many
instances, but if it doesn't resonate with you that's fine too.
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Jody Stecher
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Thanks, Brian :-)
To be clear (maybe): I didn't think that you believed any old phrase was as good as another. I was saying that the word "arbitrary" is problematic.
The idea behind "arbitrary" as Sami Shumays meant it resonates well enough with me. It's the word chosen to represent that idea which seems to
me to be less-than-ideal.
| Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka | No apologies needed Jody! It's a bit of a departure from how we often think about music. I feel like if we were conversing in person (which is how I
discussed this idea with Sami Shumays), we would have had an easier time understanding each other. It was a bit of a head-scratcher for me for a
minute as well, and it was only with some clarification that I got the distinction between "arbitrary" and saying "random" or "by chance".
I understand the disagreement if it seemed like I was saying that the music was random or any choice would have been equally as good as any other –
I don't think that at all, and would also disagree with someone who claimed that!
"I do see that a different music could have come out of the very same complex circumstances that gave rise to Iraqi music."
This is pretty much it - it's not that there weren't choices made that pleased the people at the time, but that there is no other real 'reason' and
they could easily have made different choices at many points that would also have been valid in the end (though resulting in different aesthetics and
music). It doesn't mean that absolutely any choice would have worked just as well.
We're all coming from a love of music and trying to understand it the best we can. I do think this idea helps achieve greater understanding in many
instances, but if it doesn't resonate with you that's fine too.
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Chris-Stephens
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Amazing discussion guys, I love this topic of what 'arbitrary' means in the context of improvised modal music. I've talked with Sami about this too
and one thing I really remember him saying is the notion that the only reason any musical pattern or idea exists is because the people who played it
and listened to it "liked the way it sounded". This got me thinking about what I know about the Raga Samay cycle of north indian classical music.
Basically their idea of certain note combinations being INTRINSICALLY related to certain moods/times of day/seasons seems to me to conflict with the
notion of music being arbitrary, or even the idea that beauty is subjective.
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