Music - MYP 4 and 5 - Samuel Wright - Hodder 2020

UNIVERSAL NATURE OF
THE
MUSIC
Figure 9.60 The Ramakien (Ramayana) mural paintings
■
the galleries of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha,
along
9 Does music have boundaries? 263
Can world, or global music redefine boundaries,
genres and styles?
Musical traditions, particularly their rhythms and melodies,
can be extremely resilient. Some cultures find new ways
of connecting their music to their shared histories, in
powerfully significant ways. They build an ensemble where
everyone performs together, partaking in the same story.
In Bali, for example, there is a tradition of storytelling that
results in a combined tonal soundscape, not that dissimilar
from the ringing Gamelan metallophones.
Figure 9.57 ■
Bangkok Thailand.
Figure 9.58 ■
Not many institutions have their own set of Gamelan,
but you can perform an amazing piece just using body
percussion! In Balinese Gamelan, there is a particular work
called the
describes a scene from the epic poem
Kecak that
. Much like an response, musicians
Ramayana
ekphrastic
of
retell the part where a princess is rescued by the hero Rama
and an army of monkeys. The work is usually performed by
a chorus of men chanting an onomatopoeic syllable ‘chak’,
intended to sound just like the army of monkeys. The
combined effect is hypnotic and powerful. You can interact
with the epic poem and its manuscript here:
www.bl.uk/collection-items/ramayana. Then as a class,
watch the live performance of this chant on YouTube from
Figure 9.59 ■
the 1993 film Baraka at https://youtu.be/2WHx2ITKtUg?t=105