Building bridges between Jews and Arabs with microtonal music

From http://www.jewishsf.com/bk990716/ebazaatar.shtml

"Mideast music has its own system of scales and tones. That means Mizrahi music cannot be reproduced on instruments like the guitar and the synthesizer, which are limited to the Western scale."

(I don't know the John Erlich who is quoted in this article, but I'm sure we are brothers in spirit.)

"This music is a way to build bridges with Arab communities. We take war between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East for granted in the 20th century, but that has not always been the case," Elkayam said.

"Our music can be very nostalgic for both Jews and Arabs. It breaks down barriers and provides a common language so Arabs can feel connected to Jews."

A common language, and one not expressible in the Western 19th/20th century tuning system. Is this what you call "only artificial and intellectual thing, nothing more"? From a closed-minded Westerner, we may expect statements like, "it's too false to listen !
And the way is false ! Nobody and never will like microtonal compositions :) The true music dont have one future in this direction... The rest is "bla bla " in french..." This kind of patronizing, high-and-mighty, our-way-is-the-right-way thinking, is exactly what got the world into the mess that it is in today!

on 9/18/01 4:49 AM, tuning@yahoogroups.com at tuning@yahoogroups.com wrote:

> From: paul@stretch-music.com

> From http://www.jewishsf.com/bk990716/ebazaatar.shtml

> "This music is a way to build bridges with Arab communities. We take war
> between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East for granted in the 20th century, but
> that has not always been the case," Elkayam said.
>
> "Our music can be very nostalgic for both Jews and Arabs. It breaks down
> barriers and provides a common language so Arabs can feel connected to Jews."

Paul,

Thanks for posting this article. This subject is near and dear to me, as I
perform Jewish/klezmer music in one of my performing lives. Ever since
Tuesday I've felt an acute awareness of hightened possibilities of
encountering negative responses when playing Jewish music due to escalating
anti-Arab/Jewish prejudice and fear. The scale that is most used in Askenazi
Jewish music, freygish or Ahava Raba, is in fact the same scale as Hijaz,
used extensivelly in Arabic music. We personally haven't encountered any
problems as of yet (that I know of) playing klezmer music in our gigs this
past weekend, however, I have a dear friend in CT who has encountered some
audience members expressing their feelings that this music wasn't
appropriate at this time. This type of thing will not keep me from
expressing myself in the music of my culture and spiritual life, however, I
do think we are entering difficult times ahead as musicians expressing our
melodic creativity in the beautiful middle-eastern modes of our heritage.

I for one, would like to see more Jewish/Arabic music fusion as a step
toward healing the chasm that divides us.

Seth

--
Seth Austen

http://www.sethausten.com
emails: seth@sethausten.com
klezmusic@earthlink.net