World Music Talk

Frederic Chopin

Piano's most popular composer.

Frederic Chopin is probably the single most influential composer for the piano who ever lived. The Polish composer, who lived near Warsaw for most of his life and died in Paris, popularized the mazurka, but also innovated the sonata, prelude and waltz. If you hear a piece of dramatic piano music in a movie or television show today, you can guess it's probably by Chopin (if it's not by French composer, Satie). In his short life--he only lived to the age of 39, Chopin accomplished a great deal. Read more about Frederic Chopin

Matawaka - 'Tuhoronuku'

The Matawaka project takes the sounds of traditional Maori vocals and instrumentation and underlays them with the dirty synth smears of contemporary dubstep. I'm not sure if they're simply hopping onto the trend of throwing dubstep at everything or if there's actually some real genre-evolving work being done here, but at least it sounds cool. Take a gander.

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Inuit Throat Singing

Very different from the overtone singing we usually think of when we hear "throat singing", this style of indigenous music focuses more on the give-and-take between two singers in dialogue. The cycling back and forth produces some really interesting textures. Check it out.

Arnold Schoenberg

Listen to his creepy "Pierrot Lunaire."

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer who lived from the late 19^th century to the mid-20^th century. He was an expressionist composer and his rather esoteric and difficult pieces—which would most aptly be described as interesting or spooky rather than beautiful—have intrigued composers and classical music aficianados for centuries. Schoenberg’s music, like that of his contemporaries, wasn’t well received by the general public when he was producing. Read more about Arnold Schoenberg

Irakere Live in Puerto Rico

Bombay Dreams comes to the big screen

I’m always surprised by the fact that so many Americans don’t know anything about Bollywood. Because it is so good. The Indian films are produced in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and feature lavish sets, detailed costumes, beautiful leading men and ladies, lushly scored music and dance numbers and always, always have very romantic love stories. Basically Bollywood movies are American soap operas with Indian dress and singing.

Perhaps because of the English speaking world’s relative unfamiliarity with Bollywood movies, musical theater superstar Andrew Lloyd Webber (of Cats and Phantom of the Opera Fame) produced a musical called Bombay Dreams in 2002. A.R. Rahman, the composer who scored the music for mega-hit Slumdog Millionaire, wrote the music for the musical. Bombay Dreams opened on London’s West End in 2002 and then went to Broadway in 2004. The show toured the United States beginning in 2006.

Huun Huur Tu at Philadelphia Folk Festival

I was lucky enough to see Huun Huur Tu, an ensemble of Tuvan throat singers and musicians, perform live at the Old Town School of Music in Chicago this past year. Believe me when I tell you that YouTube doesn't quite capture the experience. Not all the overtones that can be produced from the human throat can be encoded in .flv. It's music that has to be experienced live in order for your ears to physically pick up on all the tones being sung. But recordings do give a decent enough approximation of how throat singers can produce multiple tones at once. It's pretty amazing stuff. Check out Huun Huur Tu's 2006 performance at the Philadelphia Folk Festival below.

Gustav and Alma Mahler were making music, breaking hearts before it was cool

Gustav Mahler is all over Vienna and it was all over him. He knew the most prominent thinkers of his generation—composers, artists, philosophers, from Wagner to Schopenhauer. His life and his music blended seamlessly—his music was his canvas, his music was Vienna, Vienna was his canvas. And part of that life meant that he, and his wife Alma, were crushing lovelorn souls all over the city. She even had a guy make a life-sized doll of her. Mahler's a good looking guy, sure, but I'll never understand why Alma didn't go with a guy that made a Real Girl of her...

Pure Moods III

As a big lover of Pure Moods I, I figured I would love the other installments of the album series. When I saw a copy of Pure Moods 3 at a record store, I just had to pick it up—and it was only a few dollars! It must have been a hidden gem, I thought, and purchased it, happily swinging my bag home. Read more about Pure Moods III

Categorizing a few of the world's stringed instruments

I brought my mandolin to play in a park this weekend and people looked at it like I’d shrunk a guitar with a shrink ray. I didn’t know a mandolin was so exotic. But it got me thinking, if they don’t recognize this very American stringed instrument, would they recognize a lute, a dobro, a dulcimer, an erhu or a sitar, the stringed instruments of the world? Take a read about these instruments and see if you find them in your favorite local park—in India.