World Music Exam Ii Terms

Front 1

agbekor

Back 1

a war dance of the Ewe people; the name means "clear life"

Front 2

akami

Back 2

noise, disordered sound, an out-of-balance social condition

Front 3

atsia

Back 3

an Ewe word that means (1) stylish self-display, looking good, or bluffing and (2) a preset figure of music and dance

Plural: atsiawo

Front 4

axatse

Back 4

a dried gourd, about the size of a cantaloupe, covered with a net strung with seeds

Front 5

call-and-response

Back 5

a musical form in which one part seems to be linked as a "response" to the previous part. The response part appears to an an "answer" or "comment" on the first or "call" part.

Front 6

drum language

Back 6

the vernacular meaning of a drummed phrase

Front 7

Ewe

Back 7

Ethnic group that performs Agbekor

Front 8

gung-gong

Back 8

a cylindrical, carved drum with a snare on each of its two heads

Front 9

libation

Back 9

a ritual communication to the spirit world involving drinks and speech

Front 10

lunga

Back 10

a Dagbamba verbal artist, genealogist, counselor to royalty, cultural expert, entertainer; also, the name of the hourglass-shaped tension drum that he plays

Front 11

polymeter

Back 11

simultaneous presence of different structures of music's temporal organization, such as time span and/or beats

Front 12

polyphony

Back 12

multipart music

Front 13

primitive

Back 13

a derogatory term placing an ethnic group at an early stage of cultural or technological evolution

Front 14

Sahel

Back 14

the semi-arid zone known to ancient Arabs as the southern "coast" of the sand sea (Sahara desert) where the Sudan ("Land of the Blacks") began

Front 15

work music

Back 15

musical performance that lifts the workers' spirits and enables them to coordinate their efforts and maintain a positive attitude toward their job by setting the mood of the workplace.

Front 16

acoustic guitar

Back 16

the original form of the guitar, without any electronic amplification

Front 17

autobiography

Back 17

speaking, singing, or writing about one's own life
(in biography, the subject is understood to be someone else's life)

Front 18

blues scale

Back 18

a scale found in blues, jazz, gospel, soul, and just about every kind of African American music. Singers and musicians play around with the third and seventh scale degree, moving the pitch microtonally between the major and minor interval

Front 19

downhome blues

Back 19

early blues, chiefly sung by men accompanying themselves on acoustic guitar. sometimes called "country blues" even though the music was sung and played in cities by people who grew up there.

Front 20

electric guitar

Back 20

a guitar whose sound comes chiefly from electromagnetic amplification. the pioneer of electric blues guitar was Aaron "T-Bone" Walker, whose urban blues recordings just after WWII were extremely popular

Front 21

field holler

Back 21

a type of African American work song in free or flexible rhythm that a worker would sing by himself, without accompaniment, in a place such as a cotton field. field hollers are on of the ancestors of blues.

Front 22

gospel song

Back 22

a song that focuses on the Christian life. usually more lively than a hymn

Front 23

hymn

Back 23

a song of praise to God

Front 24

improvisation

Back 24

the art of making music spontaneously; composing at the moment of performance rather than ahead of time

Front 25

stanza

Back 25

a song form in which successive verses are set to the same melody. sometimes the words stanza and verse are used interchangeably. a more technical term is strophe

Front 26

urban blues

Back 26

later blues, closer to rhythm and blues than any other form of blues, which arose after WWII. electric instruments, a saxophone or horn secion, and single-string, lead guitar work characterize this music. T-bone Walker and B.B. King were its early stars

Front 27

work song

Back 27

African American song genre in oral tradition, used to accompany work and make the time pass more pleasantly and/or to pace and coordinate the work itself.

Front 28

bomba

Back 28

in the context of African Ecuadorians living in the Chota river valley of northern highland Ecuador, a double-headed drum held between the knees and played with the hands. Also used to describe a traditional musical genre, of this same cultural region, in sesquialtera meter. Also a name for a genre of African-derived traditional dance music in Puerto Rico, and known for drum types used in those ensembles

Front 29

counterpoint

Back 29

combining two or more melodic parts

Front 30

isorhythm

Back 30

equal rhythm, the same rhythm. applies to northern Ecuadorian highland Quichua sanjuan, in which the rhythm of the first half of the phrase is characteristically identical or nearly so to the rhythm of the second half.

Front 31

k'antu

Back 31

a type of ceremonial panpipe music from the altiplano, or high plateau of Peru-Bolivia. the word might be related to a widely known flower of Bolivia, or it might be derived from the Spanish word for song

Front 32

kena

Back 32

an Andean vertical notched flute.

Front 33

metaphor

Back 33

an assertion that one thing is also something else; a comparison of analogous qualities, often involving similarities that are not immediately obvious, a comparison that typically enhances meaning

Front 34

Nueva Cancion

Back 34

Literally a new song. A political song movement through which people stand up for themselves in the face of oppression by a totalitarian government or in the face of cultural imperialism from abroad. it developed first in the southern cone of south america and has since spread throughout latin america

Front 35

quijada

Back 35

percussive instrument made from jawbone of donkey, horse, or cow; the animal's molars, when loosened by exposure to the elements, produce a clear dry crack when struck with the fist. used today in afro-peruvian musics.

Front 36

sanjuan

Back 36

originally either a type of song played at the festival of st. john the baptist or a type of dance performed.
today it is a northern equadorian highland Quichua genre that displays isorhythmic 8 beat two part phrase strucutre characterized by related melodic patterns.
lyrics are repeated in couplets and display features of semantic parallelism and distalled balladry.

Front 37

sesquialtera metrical rhythm

Back 37

music that can be felt in both 3/4 and 6/8 metrical rhythm either simultaneously or alternatively. this is in the heart and soul of much hispanic and latin american regional folk music.

Front 38

zampona

Back 38

refers to panpipes, a set of end- blown bamboo tubes lashed together, each tube producing a particular pitch.
in southern andes
played in two ranks, or lines, of pipes and, in traditional performance format, are played in hocket, with the two ranks being divided between two different performers. traditionally played in large ensembles, accompanied by drums.

Front 39

Agbekor vulolo

Back 39

1) slow drumming
2) engages in subject of war
3) call-and-response
4) rise and fall of speech tones
5) celebrates invisibility of Ewe warriors.

Front 40

Nag Biegu

Back 40

1) A Praise Name Dance of Dagbon
2) Has two-part musical form
3) There are lunga drummers in this song
4)Use gung-gong drummers
5) Drummed chorus phrase acts like a "hook" to make it catchy

Front 41

Nhemamusasa

Back 41

1) revered as one of the oldest and most important pieces by the Shona
2) played for Chaminuka
3) literally means "cutting branches for shelter"
4) song for war
5) song sparks powerful meaning

Front 42

Amazing Grace

Back 42

1) Christian Hymm
2) A deacon leads the hymm
3) call and response
4) fall into stanzas
5) syle of the performance is black African.

Front 43

Rosie

Back 43

1) work song
2) meter regulated the axe blows when the workers were felling large trees
3) helped workers work faster
4) sung by black prison inmates
5) call (leader) and response (group)

Front 44

Poor Boy Blues

Back 44

1) field recording
2) performed by the Lazy Bill Lucas Trio
3) Bill Lucas is the vocalist
4) accompanied by electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and drums
5) blues song

Front 45

El aparecido

Back 45

1) a nueva cancion
2) sesquialtera metrical rhythm
3) uses variants of major and minor scale
4) has a counterpoint in the 4th stanza repeat
5) the lyrics represent the turbulence of the time

Front 46

Muyu muyari warmigu

Back 46

1) sanjuan
2) the A phrase predominates the song
3)consists of vocal and harp
4) fundamentally repetitive in form
5) field recording inside a school house

Front 47

Azucar de cana

Back 47

1) Afro-Peruvian Lando
2) Song has flirtation and eroticism
3) Quijada playing
4) call and response texture near the end with solo vocalist and the chorus.
5) talks about culture and ecology of the song's home region including the harvest, milling, aroma, and drink of the sugar cane.

Front 48

bonus

Back 48

-predominating, all-pervasive influence of religion in the intimate life of family and community
- sea lagoon river streams animals birds reptiles earth worshiped as divine