Beni2 -> RE: Western art music is to Scale/mode as Flamenco, Arab, Hindustan are to...? (Jan. 26 2021 16:54:54)
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This was really directed a JoeVidetto as I noted in the post above. He was asking about how to communicate with other musicians. My point is that NO ONE HAS PRODUCED A DEFINITIVE THEORY THAT EXPLAINS FLAMENCO IN A PRACTICAL WAY. Here are some of the problems I wanted to highlight that have to do with translation. Rough translations for scale and mode on Western art music in Arabic music are ajna (pl. Jins) and maqam. In Hindustani music thaat and raga. Jins ("genus" from the Greek) does not really translate and is used as a placeholder for trichord, tetrachord, or pentachord. Jins get combined to make maqam but a maqam has conventional turns and gestures and is close to "mode." Hindustani thaats (I believe there are 10 in Bhatukandes classification) are more like scales. They are abstract collections of pitches. Raga are conventional turns and gestures and so raga is more like mode. In fact, from the ten thaat derive something like 32 raga. Thaat are heptatonic (seven notes) and many more or less map onto western "scales." However, derived raga use alterations, sometimes microtonal, and sometimes these are determined by direction. THEREFORE, when using the foreign concepts to describe our explain flamenco, it would be less egregious to use "jin hijaz" or "thaat bhairav" when discussing pitch content, a user similar to "scale." Although Ricardo pointed out that it's kind of nitpicking from a layperson's perspective (and I agree), these concepts have real meaning in their cultural contexts. For example, when two "classical" musicians talk about church modes, they will have common ground conceptually. One might ask, "Boethius or Glarean" but they both get it. Likewise, jazzers might recognize double harmonic major while a historical or ethno- musicology might recognize the double harmonic major as a double phrygian dominant, "oriental," or bhairav thaat. As for connections of any of these conceptual and theoretical fairings with flamenco, I would (and do) argue that 1) Western theory gives 99% of the conceptual tools w would need for a good explanatory theory, and 2) there is a long history of guitar accompanied song and dance in Spain from which flamenco inherited some of its structural and musical components. They are, of course, arranged differently and have evolved but they are there.
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