African folklor : The morna music:

The morna (pronunciation in both Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole: [ˈmɔɾnɐ]) is a genre of Cape Verdean music, related to Portuguese fado, Brazilian modinha, Argentinian tango, and Angolan lament, the rumba for Cuba.

Lyrics are usually in Cape Verdean Creole, and instrumentation often includes cavaquinho, clarinet, accordion, violin, piano, and guitar. Morna is often compared to the blues there is little research on the relationship between the genres, though there are interesting similarities and significant cultural connections between Cape Verde and the United States[citation needed].

The best internationally known morna singer is Cesária Évora. Morna and other genres of Cape Verdean music are also played in Cape Verdean immigrant communities abroad, especially in New England in the US, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, West Africa, and parts of Latin America.

Instrumentation

The main instrument associated with the morna is the guitar, popularly called “violão” in Cape Verde. In its most simple form, a guitar is enough to provide the accompaniment for another soloist instrument that can be another guitar, a violin (popularly called “rabeca” in Cape Verde), the singer’s voice or any other melodic instrument. The specific way of strumming the strings in a guitar is popularly called “mãozada” in Cape Verde. The strumming of the morna articulates a bass (played with the thumb, marking the accentuation of the rhythm) with chords (played with the other fingers, either in an arpeggio, either rhythmically, either in a combination of both). The morna can also be performed on a piano, with the left hand providing the bass and the accompaniment and the right hand providing the accompaniment and the melody.
The composition of band for playing a morna is not rigid. A medium-sized band may have (besides the aforementioned guitar) a cavaquinho (that plays the chords rhythmically), a ten or twelve string guitar (popularly called “viola” in Cape Verde, that provides an harmonic support), a soloist instrument besides the singer’s voice and some percussion instrument. A bigger band may have another guitar, an acoustic bass guitar, more than one soloist instrument (violin, clarinet, trumpet, etc.) and several percussion instruments (shaker, güiro, bongos, etc.).

Source : wikipedia

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French Opera - The Classical Tradition

French opera is one of Europe's most important operatic traditions, containing works by composers of the stature of Rameau, Berlioz, Bizet, Debussy, Poulenc and Olivier Messiaen. Many foreign-born composers have played a part in the French tradition too, including Gluck, Cherubini, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Offenbach and Verdi.

Opera Paris House

The early operas in France date back to the reign of King Louis XIV wich was known as the 'Sun King' because of the splendor of his court. France did not only become Europe's major political power but it achieved artistic dominance as Louis XIV spent lavishly and became patron of cultural figures that included writers Molière and Racine, and composer Lully.

lully french opera

Jean-Baptiste Lully is regarded as the "father of French opera." Born on November 28, 1632 in Florence, Italy, Giovanni Battista Lulli was the son of a miller, though he later claimed that his father was a nobleman. Lully had a natural talent for dancing and playing the guitar but had little musical education. In 1646, at the age of fourteen, he was 'discovered' by the Duke of Guise, who took him to France. He got a job as a scullery boy. His employer, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, provided a teacher to cultivate his musical talents before he was dismissed.

Lully and his librettist Quinault created tragédie en musique, a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's most important successor was Rameau. After Rameau's death, the German Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, but simplified and with greater focus on the drama. At the same time, by the middle of the 18th century another genre was gaining popularity in France: opéra comique, in which arias alternated with spoken dialogue.[2] By the 1820s, Gluckian influence in France had given way to a taste for the operas of Rossini. Rossini's Guillaume Tell helped found the new genre of Grand opera, a form whose most famous exponent was Giacomo Meyerbeer. Lighter opéra comique also enjoyed tremendous success in the hands of Boïeldieu, Auber and others. In this climate, the operas of the French-born composer Hector Berlioz struggled to gain a hearing. Berlioz's epic masterpiece Les Troyens, the culmination of the Gluckian tradition, was not given a full performance for almost a hundred years after it was written.

In the second half of the 19th century, Jacques Offenbach dominated the new genre of operetta with witty and cynical works such as Orphée aux enfers; Charles Gounod scored a massive success with Faust; and Bizet composed Carmen, probably the most famous French opera of all. At the same time, the influence of Richard Wagner was felt as a challenge to the French tradition. Perhaps the most interesting response to Wagnerian influence was Claude Debussy's unique operatic masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande (1902). Other notable 20th century names include Ravel, Poulenc and Messiaen.

Source : frenchopera.suite101.com
Wikipedia.com

French Opera - The Classical Tradition: Berlioz - Les Troyens

Jean Baptiste Lully - Idylle sur la paix

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Algeria Flok : Introduction To Rai Music

Raï is a form of folk music that originated in Oran in Western Algeria from Bedouin shepherds, mixed with Spanish, French, African and Arabic musical forms, which dates back to the 1930s and has been primarily evolved by women in the culture. Raï music literally means opinion but is colloquially used as an interjection along the lines of "oh, yeah!"

Singers of raï are called cheb (shabb, young) as opposed to sheikh (shaykh, old), the name given to Chaabi singers. The tradition arose in cities like Oran, Relizane and Mostaganem, primarily among the poor. Traditionally sung by men, at the turn of the 20th century, female singers became common. Raï musicians as early as the 1930s were singing about social issues which affected native populations. These ranged from disease to the policing of European colonies.

History of Rai Music .

Raï began in 1900 : in western Algeria but came into its own in the harbour city Oran during the 1920s. Its basis was in Arabic love poetry and Bedouin folk music. Traditional rai had two styles; female meddahas who sang for other women at private gatherings, and the more ribald lyrics of the cheikhas (including Rimitti) who added more Bedouin rhythms and performed in cafes, bars, bordellos, accompanied by percussion and wailing "gasba" (rosewood flute). Oran's French colonial population in conjunction with its proximity to Morocco and Spain, added further to the cultural cocktail.

Modern Raï Music

Began in the 1950s and 60s. Male singers - cheikhs (lit. old, or, master) introduced violin and accordion. Most well-known was the heavily Western influenced Bellemou Messaoud who incorporated the trumpet, violin, lute from the other modernists, adding an 'call and response' echo effect infused with jazz, cha cha, and, mambo flavours. This rhythm and melody gave way in the late 1970s and early 1980s to the pop style of raï pioneered by Ahmad Baba Rachid in Tlemcen. The pop-singers called themselves "Cheb" (young) to underline the break they were making from the self-contained, rich poetry of the cheikhs. Instrumentation consisted of; bass guitars, drum machines and the synthesiser, though the Western technology did not sacrifice the traditional sound at the altar of western rock. Traditional melodic structures were now "sandwiched between double percussion of Western drums and darbuka " in a quarter-tone scale - with denser, faster and more streamlined rhythms : accented rhythms may be "played at the speed of a camel loping somewhere in Jamaica with eastern tunes over a funk or dub backing" but inspiration comes from songs of the 1930s and 40's, berrah (criers) from Oran's Medina J'dida, and, suburban chants are mixed with bidhaoui (Casablancan electronic music).

International success

Cheb Khaled was the first international superstar, though his popularity did not extend to the United States, Latin America and certain other areas. His 1988 Kutché album did the most to popularize him and the whole genre of raï. Other prominent performers of the 1980s included Houari Benchenet, Raïna Raï, Mohamed Sahraoui, Cheb Mami, and Cheb Hamid.

International success grew in the 1990s, when Cheb Khaled's 1992 Khaled was a major French hit and also saw success in India and elsewhere. With Khaled no longer in Algeria, new stars began singing lover's raï, a sentimental, pop-ballad form best-known for stars like Cheb Tahar, Cheb Nasro and, especially, Cheb Hasni. Later in the decade, funk, hip hop and other influences were added to raï, especially by performers like the French star Faudel and raï-rock fusionist Rachid Taha, the latter of which took raï music and fused it with rock. He takes themes from punk and mainstream rock music and blends them with traditional raï. The artist does not call his creation raï music, but rather describes it as a unique combination of folk raï and the harsh sounds of punk. Another notable mix of cultures in Arabic music of the late 1990s came through songs released by artist Aldo though this is generally referred to as Franco-Arabic music not strictly raï music.

Source : wikipedia

Rai Music Videos

Cheb Bilal - Dayer Dayer


Chab Khaled - Aicha

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French folk music : The Gavotte

The gavotte (also known as Gavot or Gavota) was originally a French folk dance, taking its name from the people of Gavot Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné, where the original dance. It is notated in 4/4 or 2/2 time and is of moderate tempo. The distinctive rhythmic feature of the original gavotte is that phrases begin in the middle of the bar; that is, in either 4/4 or 2/2 time, the phrases begin on the third quarter note of the bar, creating a half-measure upbeat.
Unlike the branle, in which sideways motion was achieved by the dancer’s continually bringing the feet together, the gavotte required crossing of the feet twice in each step pattern, and each step was followed by a hop. Various pantomimic motions, such as the choice of a leader for the next dance, usually formed part of a gavotte performance.

The gavotte in Baroque music

The gavotte became popular in the court of Louis XIV where Jean-Baptiste Lully was the leading court composer. Consequently several other composers of the Baroque period incorporated the dance as one of many optional additions to the standard instrumental suite of the era. The examples in suites and partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach are best known. When present in the Baroque suite, the gavotte is often played after the sarabande and before the gigue, along with other optional dances such as minuet, bourrée, rigaudon, and passepied.

Gavotte dance could be played at a variety of tempi; in his Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), Johann Gottfried Walther wrote that the gavotte is "often quick, but occasionally slow"; and Johann Joachim Quantz wrote in Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (Berlin, 1752) that "A gavotte is almost like the rigaudon, but somewhat more moderate in tempo."

The gavotte in the Baroque period is typically in binary form. A notable exception is the rondo form of the Gavotte from Bach's Partita No. 3 in E Major for solo violin, BWV 1006.
Later composers, particularly in the nineteenth century, began to write gavottes to begin on the downbeat rather than on the half-measure upbeat. The famous Gavotte in D by Gossec is such an example, as is the Gavotte in Massenet's Manon. A gavotte also occurs in the second act of The Gondoliers by Gilbert and Sullivan and the Finale of the First Act of Ruddigore also by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Late in the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, composers especially of piano music began to write self-contained gavottes in Scherzo and Trio form, in which the section that would normally be labelled "Trio" is instead labelled "Musette". Sometimes these works are called simply "Gavotte", and sometimes "Gavotte and Musette".

Gavotte Dance Videos :

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Brazilian Dance : Batuque

Under the influence of the many cultures of the immigrants that settled in Brazil, the variety of rhythms and dances that have been born in this country is more than one can count .
Batuque is one of the oldest dance expressions of Brazil ,originated in a ritual of procreation that came with the African slaves from Congo and Angola. Dancing to the sounds of the drums, a man and a woman improvise moves in the center of circle. When they want to pass a chance to another couple they do that with an umbigada. (navel to navel)

Brazilian dance Videos : the Batuque

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Albanian Traditional Folk Dance : Osman Taka

Albania has a rich folklore and every region has a characteristic dance, one of the popular traditional dance in albania is Osman Taka.

The Dance of Osman Taka

The dance Steps and Moves (Albanian: Vallja e Osman Takës,) is a popular traditional dance of Cham Albanians, which has become widely known in Albania and Greece. The Dance is linked with Osman Taka, a Cham Albanian leader, who fought against Ottoman forces. This dance is an old Cham Albanian dance, but under this name its known only since the 19th century.

Story of OsmanTaka Dance

Osman Taka was one of the main contributors to the National Renaissance of Albania and a well-known dancer of his time. After him is named the Dance of Osman Taka. His early ages are not clear. He was born in Filiates in one of the most powerful and wealthy families of the town. In 1848, he started an armed revolt against the Ottoman Empire and became a protagonist in Albanian resistance against Ottoman forces. When the League of Prizren was formed he was named as the head of the local branch in Preveza. At the same time he was a well-known traditional dancer. After the Ottoman forces managed to seize the Preveza League, they arrested in 1886, Osman Taka and accused him for treason. He was jailed in Yanina and was sentenced to death. When he was asked to give his final wish, he wanted to dance. The folk tradition says that his dance was so beautiful that the local gendarmes of the Ottoman army, did not executed him. After some days he was cought again and was killed in Konispol.

The Dance Steps and Moves

The dance follows a strict tempo with emphasis in the "attitude, style and grace" of the dancer. It is a 2/4 meter with steps "slow-quick-quick". The dance is a row dance, with a lead dancer performing skillfully executed steps. He then drops to his knees, arches his back and extends his chest upward, forming a bridge. The other dancers then step forward onto the lead dancer's stomach and dance on top of his stomach. The dancers hold each other from the hands, bend 90 degrees upwards at the elbows. It takes a sturdy hand, especially if you are supporting the first or last person of the line. This symbolizes the strength and centrality of the lead dancer as he forms a bridge with his body for the other men to cross over.

Osman Taka Dance Video

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Bosnian Flok Dance : The Kolo

Kolo is a folk dance popular in the region of Balkan (Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Slovene), the dance consists of a group of people (usually several dozen, at least three), holding each other by the hands or around the waist dance, ideally in a circle, hence the name. There is almost no movement above the waist.

Traditional kolo has basic steps: you start with your right foot 2 steps right, 2 steps left, 1 right and 1 left. It is universal for every kolo. Kolo may be performed in a closed circle, a single chain or in two parallel lines. Both men and women dance together, however some dances require only men to dance and some dances are only for women.
Each region has at least one unique kolo; it is difficult to master and even most experienced dancers cannot master all of them.

In Bosnia : The kolo is danced mostly by the Serbs and Bosniaks (Sevdah) and also by Croats. Many variations of Kolo are performed and are normally performed at weddings, social, cultural, and religious ceremonies. .Kolo may be performed in a closed circle, a single chain or in two parallel lines. Both men and women dance together, however some dances require only men to dance and some dances are only for women. The music is generally fast paced with very tricky steps. . Kolo costumes vary from region to region but Bosnian and Serbian dance costumes typically are the closest in comparison. Men wear a cap, loose blouse tucked in to trousers that balloon around the thighs and then tightening from the knee down to the ankle. Women wear long white embroidered dresses with very heavy velvet aprons tied at the waist. Both the dress and apron are embroidered with bright flowers to enhance the females outfit. Generally, both men and women wear embroidered velvet vests. One of the most interesting components of the kolo costume is the shoes. The shoes are called Opanci which are made from cured pig skin that is molded to fit the dancers foot .

Bosnian Kolo Dance Videos

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