Syncretism in Music

http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/NewsDetail.aspx?storyid=16349&date=2017-02-19&pageid=1

                                                                  

                                                       Is Fusion Music Just Noise?

Syncretism is an important part of ethnomusicology - the study of music in a cultural context. But syncretism is conceived and interpreted in different ways by musicians, cultures and various  music schools.

In dialogue with Maestro Vasco Negreiros (resident composer from Portugal for the Ketevan Music Festival), the term has a different connotation. He says, “For a composer, creating music is an ongoing process. New meanings and languages come into being as a natural process of circumstance and environment at a place. When a composer encounters new music, the engagement results in a shift, and novel compositions are created out of this interlude.”

Rudolf Ludwig, the executive director of the festival in an exchange with Tamas Bubno (musician from Budapest – Hungary) expressed his sheer delight, “That was a new sound I heard in your singing that I have never heard before.”  Maestro Santiago Lusardi Girelli expounds on this process as creating something with a unique identity and life of its own, from prevailing musical practices. He says, “The Brazilian Bossa Nova and Portuguese Fado are apt examples of such an evolution.”

Rooted in the theme ‘East Meets West’, an artistic laboratory is at play in Goa, where new symphonies are being created between acoustically varied forms of music. Boundaries of geography and history are no longer barriers to create bewildering fusion art such as when the sounds of ‘OM, Amen and Alleluia’ merged to the beat of violin, tabla and sitar in the Ketevan Cantata at old Goa, last Sunday. The evening today (19 Feb) promises another synergetic musical journey through the  colonial period in South America on routes of faith and sorrow.  Syncretic musical dialogues are being sought and sealed in the seaside town of Estado da Goa.  

 A holy syncretism of radically diverse genres of music from diverse sources has the musical audience shifting from strangeness to a zone of comfort and bliss – threshold of a new home that promises harmony.  Maestro Vasco delineates, “That feeling of being at home, when you are not at home is the quality of musical experimentation that takes the audience from zones of discomfort and the unfamiliar to feeling of ease, graduating to appreciation and acceptance”. He further adds, “A layering of known sounds with small windows of unknown noise seals the new onto the old familiar patterns, and a different music is born.” 

When Steve Reich created the piece ‘Music for 18 Musicians”, he became known for his phasing, rhythm and pulse beats in music – a path-breaking composition in the musical world. It expressed an influence of a steadfast rhythmic percussion (strong African character) and sustenance of breath and its cycle (Indian practice). These influences became clear and pronounced in his music, rendering the effect without any blatant imitation.

Another beautiful example is Rastafarianism- the music of Bob Marley. It was a blend of Ethopian-Hebrew spirituality, 19^th century Pan-African music, the Caribbean religious slave spirituality and of course the spiritual use of marijuana. Rastafarianism is a product of all the above and yet it is in a class of its own.

Similarly, when the Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar met George Harrison and Philip Glass, a door was opened, but the approach was from two different directions. Philip.G. was experimenting in classical concert music and George.H., with world popular music. Both had so much to take from Ravi.S. , yet each produced world music in a style of his own.

On the downside, the debate on syncretism brings us to the question – is this phenomenon leading us to a ‘forced east-west marriage’ or ‘music is noise’ platforms – a marketable world fusion musical genre? Maestro Vasco Negreiros shudders at these forced combinations – born out of a gimmickry to sell, and be commercially successful musicians. “There is a need to go deep into the basics and culture of a whole musical school, which require a profound commitment and knowledge, before it will reveal itself to you.” To be able to creatively harness it, the musician first needs to be intimate with it. Besides complete absorption and hard labour, it flows freely only when the energy and the moment is right.

Another quest involving synergetic music brings to light processes that create meeting ground for divergent music schools. Indian music is monophonic and ‘stripped of harmony’ as earlier western musicians put it. It is about melody (ragas), rhythmic cycles (talas), ornamentations (alankar) and ‘gamkas’ (traversal from one note to the other) in one scale; whereas western music is polyphonic and more so about harmony and counterpoint. “The answer lies in seeking keys which are neither major nor minor, the non gender keys”, says maestro Vasco.N.  In fact the daily ‘raiyas’ is about seeking perfection and finding those intermediary elusive tones between different sounds. Here, syncretic music then becomes meditative!