Friday, July 4, 2014
Kailao
Title- Kailao
Performers- Amadinda Percussion
Culture or Origin- Polynesian island chain (in the pacific) of Tonga
Orchestration- numerous membranophones- nafa (drums)
This is an example of Tongan drumming. Specifically the Kailao, or traditional war dance. Though this is just an example of the music itself, without the dancing, In this music, the men, bearing stylized clubs (pate kailao), dance in a fierce manner that emulates fighting, all to the accompaniment of a beaten slit drum or a tin box, which sets the tempo. These are not the traditional slit drums, which would be more akin to idiophones, but a more modern usage of membranophones to which this dance has started to use in the 20th century. Unlike most other Tongan dances, the Kailao is performed without singing. Though this is true for this video, you will notice at numerous points shouting, which would be indicative of the fierce warrior shouting, which in turn leads me to my next point. The sequences of movements to be performed by the group are called by the lead dancer (often with this similar style of shouting as previously mentioned), who will give the name of the sequence, then will signal when to do it. The sequences can involve mock combat between dancers, changes in formation, and tricks involving the pate kailao themselves. The dance displays the dancers' discipline, obedience and skill with their weapon. Obviously the use of instrument classification systems in this example already proved useful, helping illustrate my point about how the instruments have changed over time in this style. If I had just said drums, the change would not have been nearly so understandable, or definable.
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I thoroughly enjoyed watching this video. The facial expressions of the leader were great. With the music, though the official classification for the drums is membranophone, the players use them as idiophones as well doing what Westerners would refer to as rim shots. This actually reminds me of the example we listened to for the listening quiz this week. Especially when you talked about the different warriors fighting as the music played. Very nice example, I quite enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI concur with what you said about how they are being used. I was trying to illustrate that they never used to be membranophones at all, that they were an interestingly designed idiophonic drum with no skin/membrane utilized in the past..
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed watching this video, it brought back memories of my percussion studio where we spent many hours studying the music of other cultures and how to represent their style in an American setting. I find it interesting that my heart rate and adrenaline begin to pump as the music continues. I suppose that this is the intended effect for a piece such as this. Thank you for the post!
ReplyDeleteI posted a comment to this blog but it isn't showing up. Darren, did you delete it? I'm not getting any credit for having responded this week because it isn't here. Perhaps I did something wrong when I commented? Did you get my comment?
ReplyDeleteI posted to your blog on Sunday, but it never showed up….So here it is again! I really enjoyed watching this video. Both my husband and I really love music from Hawaii, it reminds us of being on a tropical island and of the Polynesian Resort in Disney World! It would have been really neat if the men in the video had traditional clothing on and if there were the dancers you spoke of in your post. I feel like this style of music is very much like African drumming/dancing from the sound of your post. The drums look very similar to African drums and it sounds like the reasons for the drumming and dancing are similar to Africa. I think how the drums are played is different, whenever I have seen African drumming there is usually only one drum per person where as in Tongan it seems like there is at least one person playing multiple drums.
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