Music from Krk

http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=659

Whoa?

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=659
>
> Whoa?
>
> -Mike
>

In Dalmatia and the Croatian islands in general you'll almost exclusively hear klapa, which I think is Venetian in origin. That's very different, lots of 5-limit JI.

Similar kinds of close-voiced singing, like in the example posted, with deliberate beating are found in little isolated pockets in what was the ancient world. The Bulgarians call the beating "making it ring like bells". Sardinia has a version with killer buzzing dis/concords. If I remember correctly, there's a similar kind of singing on the Istrian peninsula, near Krk- there's some strange stuff in that region, like the last people who speak some ancient kind of Romanian, of all things.

A composer from Dalmatia gave me a great recording of traditional Dalmatian microtonal singing a while ago, but I can't find it at the moment. If I find it I can float you a copy, if you really dig it. Sadly, all these treasures seem to be little-known, even though there are good documentaries and people who maintain the traditions. And all this gets mixed up with nationalistic crap- for example Serbian TV was awesome during the war, amazing authentic folk performances, but it's been plastic ladies doing "turbo-folk" ever since.

Mostly this stuff is forgotten.