Music & Ethnicity

“Tomorrow is always another day to make

things right.”
– Lauryn Hill
 GOALS

• To investigate the way in which music supports and reflects

Ethnic identity and values.

• To explore the ways in which a sense of musical ethnicity

crosses and bridges both cultural and social boundaries.

• To become familiar with musical expressions of Ethnicity in

select times and places.
• What is YOUR ethnic background or heritage? Does your
family express this background in a particular way? In music,
dance, cooking styles/specific dishes, fashion, etc.

• What factors make some some cultures stand out more

prominently than others?
 Identity and Ethnicity in 20th-Century Europe
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
• Basque, Swiss, French and Spanish ethnic music.
• Influenced by the “exotic” at 1889 Exposition Universelle, Paris.
• “Habanera” from Rapsodie espagnol (1907-08)
• Non-European imagery in
• Orchestration/timbre
• Afro-Cuban rhythms

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 “Habanera” from Rapsodie espagnol
Maurice Ravel
• 0:00 Tones of the muted strings evoke dreamscape. Perhaps a reference
to the shimmering textures of a Javanese gamelan.
• 0:22 A gentle pulsing melody begins in the woodwinds. The melody seems to
push upward and then fall back.
• 0:43 Listen to the habanera rhythm (long/short/short/long).
• 1:10 The horns play a long drawn-out chord.
• 1:24 Solo clarinet and violins play the earlier melody.
• 1:54 The habanera rhythm is expanded and developed.
• 2:14 The strings enter.
• 2:26 And finally the horns.
• 2:38 The opening texture returns. The music evaporates.
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Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Hungarian pianist, composer, scholar of
folk music.
Placed Hungarian ethnic (folk music) in
context of Western European art music.
“Allegro Barbaro” for solo piano (1911)
• Aggressive dissonances.
• Harmonies, scales, rhythmic patterns
of folk music.

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 “Allegro Barbaro,” by Béla Bartók

0:00 Hammering alternating chords create a rhythmic ostinato.

0:03 Theme 1 sounds over the ostinato.
0:11 Theme 1 again, expanded and at a higher pitch
0:29 Ostinato alone, as in the beginning.
0:33 Theme Group 2, four ideas derived from theme 1’s extension
material. The ostinato gradually disintegrates.
0:59 Theme 1 returns, now with a thinner texture.
1:19 Theme 2 ideas intermingle with the ostinato
1:35 Theme 2 material in the lower register joins with the ostinato
and theme 1
1:48 Flourishes momentarily disrupt the pounding ostinato.
1:57 Theme 2 material restarts the rhythmic engine.
2:12 Ascending passage. A final statement of the ostinato pattern.
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 Klezmer
Brought to U.S. by Eastern European Jewish immigrants,
early 20th century
Today, a popular “World Music” genre
***
“Perets-Tants” performed by The Klezmatics
Trumpet, violin, accordion, saxophone and drums
• Harmonic and melodic elements of Jewish traditions
• Rhythmic elements of Western popular music
• Form: Intro AA BB CC DD CC DD E / AA’ BB’ CC’ DD CC’’ DD

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 The African Diaspora
• Roots in African American work songs, field hollers,
and spirituals.
• African influences:
Social values: storytelling, group participation,
improvisation.
Musical style: call-and-response, rhythmic
patterns, sliding pitches.
Jalolu/kora tradition: blues singer + guitar
accompaniment.
Storytelling genre
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 The Jalolu
Musician/Historians of West Africa
Mandinka people
An ethnic group of 11 million across West Africa.
Common ancestry, language, and traditions.
Oral histories performed by jalolu.

Jali (pl.: jalolu, Fr.: griot)

singer, poet, instrumentalist, storyteller

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 Kora
a plucked 21-string chordophone

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Balafon, xylophone

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Ngoni, five-stringed lute
Bolon, an arched harp

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Two categories of kora playing
• Kumbengo – accompanimental, supports singing
• Birimintingo – soloistic, improvisatory, and virtuosic

Two styles of singing

• Donkilo – basic tune, repeated to underscore a story’s concept
• Sataro – speech-like verse to advance the story

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 “Kelefaba”
Texture: Homophonic
Meter: Duple
Form: Strophic

0:00 Kora fades in with kumbengo-style accompaniment.

0:24 Birimintingo style

0:34 Kumbengo-style, a sign that singing will soon begin.

0:40 Song begins. “Kelefaba” in donkilo style

 Spirituals
“[Slave songs] breathed the prayer and complaint of souls over-flowing with the
bitterest anguish.”
—Frederick Douglass

“Go Down Moses,” invited comparisons between the Israelites in Egypt and
American slavery.

The Lord, by Moses, to Pharaoh said: Oh! let my people go.

If not, I'll smite your first-born dead—Oh! let my people go.
Oh! go down, Moses
Away down to Egypt's land.
And tell King Pharaoh
To let my people go.
 Spirituals cont.
Traditional African American Spiritual
“Goin’ Home”

Antonin Dvorak
Symphony # 9 “The New World” (1893)
Movement 2
 Fisk Jubilee Singers
• 1871 fund-raising tour
• To the Northeast and
eventually Europe
• Begins the dissemination of
true Black American music
Standard blues form: 12-bar blues
• Three 4-bar lines for each stanza of lyrics.
• First line of lyrics is repeated + second line of
lyrics: AAB.
• A common harmonic progression (chords change
every measure).
A: I-IV-I-I (do fa do do)
A: IV-IV-I-I (fa fa do do)
B: V-IV-I-V (sol fa do sol)
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“Cross Road Blues”
Robert Johnson (1911-1938)
• I went to the crossroad…
I went to the crossroad…
Asked the Lord above…
… standin' at the crossroad…
… I tried to flag a ride.
Didn't nobody seem to know…

• Standin' at the crossroad…

Standin' at the crossroad…
• I believe…
•
You can run…
• You can run…
That I got the crossroad blues…
 B.B. King (1925-2015)
“Sweet Little Angel”

• I've got a sweet little angel…

• Yes, got a sweet little angel…

• When she spread her wings…

Lucille Bogan(1897-1948)
“Black Angel Blues”
 Jazz
• Initial development in early 20th-
century New Orleans

• Jazz combines
• African music’s spontaneity, timbral
inventiveness, and rhythmic vitality
with…
• European harmonic structure.
 3 Composers
• Band Leader Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington
• Pianist Thelonious Monk
• Saxophonist Albert Ayler
 Ethnicity in American Popular Song
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974)

Wrote more than 3,000 works.

Compositions reflected African American heritage.
Led prestigious namesake jazz orchestra for 50 years.
Helped develop an American musical style.
Helped revolutionize American music.
 “Caravan”
Juan Tizol (1900-1984) and Duke Ellington

• Orchestration, harmonies, rhythms evoke exotic

atmosphere
• Extra-musical sounds
• Overall form: AABA AABA (Coda)

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 Be-bop
• Develops in the 1940s
• Small groups (quartets/quintets)
• Virtuoso playing
• Focus on improvisation
 Thelonious Monk (1927-82)
• NYC-based pianist

• Idiosyncratic life and musical approach

• “Criss Cross”
• 32-bar song form
• Syncopated melody
 Albert Ayler (1936-70)
• NYC-based
• Saxophonist
• Experimentalist
• Highly emotional approach

• “Summertime”
• Highly emotional performance
• Crying and despair
 Marian Anderson (1902-1993)
• Contralto
• D.A.R. prohibited performance in
Constitution Hall.
• At the invitation of Eleanor Roosevelt in
1939, she sang at the Lincoln Memorial for
75,000 people.
• 1st Black American to sing at
Metropolitan Opera (1955).
• Active in the civil rights movement.
• Received the Presidential Medal of
Freedom (1963)
Marian Anderson singing at the 1957 Presidential Inauguration.
 Concert Music
Harry T. Burleigh
(1866-1949)
Set spirituals for solo voice
Spirituals became art songs
“Deep River”
 Ethnicity in Western Art Music

William Grant Still (1895-1978)

• First African American to conduct a white American orchestra.
• First symphony composed by an African American to be
performed by a major American orchestra.
• Wrote 8 operas, 5 symphonies and numerous other classical
works.
• Composed ethnic music “without Caucasian influence.”
 William Grant Still (1895-1978)
Symphony #1 “Afro-American” (1930)
•Most celebrated of Still’s works.

•Incorporated Western art music traditions: standard

orchestra sonata form

•1st mvt. in loose sonata form

• Introduction
• Exposition (contrasting themes)
• Development
• Recapitulation

•Written to show that blues “could be elevated to the

highest musical level.” 35
• Josephine Baker, Paris 1927.
 Tyshawn Sorey (b.1980)
Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine
• One-act song-cycle

• Soprano and small ensemble

• Revisits Josephine Baker’s life and

music

• Monologues, songs, instrumental

interludes
 Nathalie Joachim
“Papa Loko” (a Vodún deity)
• Voice, string quartet, electronics
• Resetting of a traditional Haitian melody
• AABA
• An investigation of her Haitian heritage
 “Strange Fruit” (1939)

• Poem by Abel Meeropol

• A response to lynching of Black

Americans

• Famously sung by Billie Holiday

“I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968)
By James Brown

• Written after assassination of Dr. Martin

Luther King, Jr.
• Call and response
• Children’s chorus
• Verse, bridge, hook
 “Fight the Power” (1989)
• Public Enemy and The Bomb
Squad

• Soundtrack for Spike Lee’s Do

the Right Thing

• Mostly constructed with

samples
West to East: Return to West Africa
African musical root in African American blues and jazz
and
Western music influences current African music

Blues in Mali: Salif Keita (b. 1949)

• Popular musician
• Mandinka jalolu traditions
• African American musical traditions
• Promotes message of social truth
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