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Posts: 3526
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
The title is something in Ladino...
The unknown title notwithstanding, You might actually be on to something, Stephen. If so, the question is from where? Ladino is the language spoken by the Sephardic Jews originally expelled from Spain in 1492. The piece does not sound like it is from the North African region where many settled. The other two concentrations of Sephardim were those speaking 'Oriental' Ladino in Turkey and Rhodes and those speaking 'Western' Ladino in Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, all of which became part of the Ottoman Empire. This is pure speculation, but I would place my bet on the latter.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to BarkellWH)
The human hearing apparatus originated in the jaw of a shark like creature over three hundred million years ago.
Musical DNA is as shared if not more. All positions are defeasible, when they acknowledge uncertainty.
Eventually we will arrive at a man with a bow or a gourd in Africa and the last stop on the way there probably predates Abraham.
It seems likely, to me at least, that elements of jewish music were transmitted throhought europe and Asia by speakers of Romani as well as Yiddish and other languages. Flamenco connoisseurs should probably note this.
Anyway this is definitely an American tune, Nature Boy
Does anyone remember Tommy Tedesco's article on musical authenticity and studio producers from his column in Guitar Player magazine ?
Posts: 3526
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to guitarbuddha)
quote:
Eventually we will arrive at a man with a bow or a gourd in Africa and the last stop on the way there probably predates Abraham.
Recent studies have confirmed that one to two percent of the DNA found in modern humans of European, Middle Eastern, and East Asian origin was contributed by Neanderthals, thus indicating that modern humans migrating out of Africa about 60,000 years ago interbred with Neanderthals, who first appeared in Europe and the Middle East about 400,000 years ago. The archaeological record demonstrates that Neanderthals were using simple tools and were not the dumb brutes of popular imagination. They disappeared about 30,000 years ago, but not before interbreeding with modern humans sufficiently to ensure we still carry their DNA.
It is interesting to speculate on the possibility of your man with a bow and gourd encountering a Neanderthal woman as he migrated out of Africa into the Middle East, sitting down in front of her and playing his music, simple though it may have been, and wooing her with something she had never heard before. Perhaps that is why the Neanderthals eventually disappeared. The male Neanderthals simply could not compete for the affection of their women, who were attracted by the musicians out of Africa, who (in the spirit of evolution through natural selection) genetically overwhelmed the Neanderthals out of existence. Fanciful? Perhaps.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to BarkellWH)
Hey Bill I like your story a great deal. Especially the fact that our hero wins over the exotic maiden with music and not his bank balance, gives us all something to hope for..
But.
The common ancestor of both Neanderthal and Homo Sapien Sapien was definitely African.
Spotaneous interbreeding which leads to successful and fertile offspring is an interesting construction, contradicting as it does the definition of what a species is. But I do note that when convenient some older Paleontologists still use it. Constant trade and contact seem far far more likely rendering the somewhat arbitrarily defined events at the 400,000 and 30,000 year figures as useful but also misleading constructions. I would bet that music had been played on a bow or a gourd long before the earlier figure given that the organisation required to enjoy music making at home with (hunting) technology to hand is much less than that required to undertake a lengthy tour, as some of us have found out.
Here is a silly article which willfully ignores the fact that instruments made of plant material do not weather nearly as well as teeth and horn.
But all this homocentric theorising will probably be appalling any birds and whales reading this forum as they laugh at our poor attempts at music making. Especially since ours came so many millions of years after they had achieved musical heights which even today no human can scale.
(Sorry Juan, put us out of our misery at your leisure please)
Posts: 3526
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to guitarbuddha)
quote:
The common ancestor of both Neanderthal and Homo Sapien Sapien was definitely African. Spotaneous interbreeding which leads to successful and fertile offspring is an interesting construction, contradicting as it does the definition of what a species is. But I do note that when convenient some older Paleontologists still use it. Constant trade and contact seem far far more likely rendering the somewhat arbitrarily defined events at the 400,000 and 30,000 year figures as useful but also misleading constructions.
The common ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans is thought to have first appeared in Africa about one million years ago. But a branch eventually evolved into the Neanderthals that first appeared in Europe and the Middle East 400,000 years ago. Meanwhile, another branch evolved into modern humans in Africa, migrating out about 60,000 years ago. The 400,000, 60,000, and 30,000 year dates are based on the most recent fossil record. These can change as further discoveries narrow it down.
None of this is settled science, but the most recent research finds that for European, Middle Eastern, and East Asian populations, genes that provide the physical characteristics of skin and hair have a high incidence of Neanderthal DNA — possibly lending toughness and insulation to weather the cold in those regions. Since the Neanderthals lived in such climates, and since (and here it gets interesting) no Neanderthal DNA has been found in modern African populations, the thinking is that there was interbreeding between the two when they met in Europe and the Middle East.
As you point out, this contradicts what we know of interbreeding between species, i.e., species may interbreed and produce offspring, but the offspring are sterile. (Male donkeys and female horses interbreeding and producing sterile mules is an example.) Nevertheless, This may be the exception. Stranger things have occurred.
But I'm going to stick with my hypothesis that modern human males wooing female Neanderthals musically with the gourd and bow gave them an evolutionary advantage over their less adept Neanderthal male relatives, an advantage that led to the eventual extinction of the Neanderthals. I like the idea of music winning out over strength.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
Posts: 3526
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to estebanana)
I'll go with Sephardicus Neanderthalensis Orientalis (post Ibericus) and raise you one.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to jg7238)
Oh the Ottoman Neanderthal! Ok sure.
You know too, one of my anthropological pet peeves is to equate Neanderthal or use Neanderthals as a euphemism for dumbness. They were just big boned, but not unintelligent. If someone ever calls me a Neanderthal thinking it's an insult, I thank them. Of course Cro Magnon, now there's a shifty chap.
Posts: 3526
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to estebanana)
Spot-on, Stephen. Neanderthals used tools and fire, and they buried their dead. They were not the dumb brutes of popular imagination. I think they got the reputation for being dumb because of their protruding brow and receding chin.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to BarkellWH)
quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
But I'm going to stick with my hypothesis that modern human males wooing female Neanderthals musically with the gourd and bow gave them an evolutionary advantage over their less adept Neanderthal male relatives, an advantage that led to the eventual extinction of the Neanderthals. I like the idea of music winning out over strength.
Cheers,
Bill
For sure Bill you have a point there. Neanderthal brains were actually larger than modern humans (as measured by their skull cavity size ) so it is reasonable to assume that they had intelligence in spades. This has lead to an assumption that their EXtelligence or ability to copy and synthesize from ideas in a rapidly evolving culture was not as strong as it is modern humans.
And that fluid culture (or meme pool as Dawkins might have it) is for sure what makes the worldwide dissemination of musical ideas from various sources BACK AND FORTH over at least 30 millenia.
And that gets us to the conflation of race and species. At any given point a human can look around at their ethnic group and decide on what is normative from their cultural perspective. These concepts and distinctions can then be thrown outward onto other 'races'. But all such distinctions are created in a particular place and at a particular time.
Same with music. One can look at recorded music as it ememged with Edison and define common usage in varying ethnic groups as indicative of pure racial musical tendencies. But beneath this artificial time barrier there is a seething pool of absorption and selection which relies on millennia of cultural exchange.
And now to push the boat out. It is normal to equate swing or the backbeat on two and four with the music of African Americans (horrible term but it must suffice) but equally probable is that this backbeat was learned from the fiddle playing of their Scottish overseers.
Or the extensive use of the dorian mode in Irish folk music and it's 'coincidince' with some African music. Not so much of a coincidence when you consider that Irish Wolf Hounds were traded to Africa before their ''extinction''
Although on a related note the now common modern Irish Wolfhound was ressurected from racial variation WITHIN the enormous canine gene pool which certainly represents a SINGLE species.
Posts: 3526
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to BarkellWH)
Is the evolutionary process, driven by natural selection, working itself out in American high schools today? Who gets the girl today, the musician or the jock? During my antediluvian high school days long ago, both musicians and jocks got girls, but it was a different type of girl in each case. Not sure which one gained the evolutionary advantage.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to BarkellWH)
One must always remember that when one excludes a creator from evolution (as in fact nature actually has) then any particular moral or easthetic goals that we would like to impose on a creator become redundant. Things evolve to survive and that is about that.
Music is always one of the first things thrown out of the boat when things get tricky and as long as we have a cultural model which relies on warlike patterns of boom and bust then music will always suffer periodically whereas avarice and thuggery weather all.
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to jg7238)
quote:
RE: A little tune(Not sure who or wh... (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
Anyway, I was thinking how nice this would be if played as a cuple' por bulerias. What do you think about that idea Juan?
Yeah Stephen, I think that could be done. I'll mess around with it a bit in toque por buleria and maybe post it or someone else can try it.
Yeah that would be cool, I think it would cuple' very well and you could put it in your regular bulerias solo and then re-phrygerate back to A key when you want, it would be really good. I'll wait o hear it.
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