Lysander - 1-28-2014 at 02:08 AM
majnuunNavid got me thinking. I tend to move more towards the darker than lighter side of music. However, I know that there are many sad and
thoughtful traditional oud tunes, but are there any "dark" ones? Melodies that are unsettling and might use a lot of augmented and diminished
melodies, I imagine. Not sure. Maybe Saba or Nawa Athar might be a place to start but any ideas are good.
Since there are plenty of light tunes there must be, conversely, dark ones. Any ideas?
hartun - 1-29-2014 at 07:52 PM
i don't know about "dark" if you mean in a sense like anglo-american rock music with existential crisis, possible references to satan, maybe
suicidal....but...I know you said "i know that there are many sad and thoughtful" tunes .....but there is another quality which is not the same as sad
and thoughtful, which is closer to "dark". this is what in the armenian community we call "heavy".
the heaviest song I can think of is "Aman Memo" which you can hear on the CD Armenians on 8th Avenue.
some other heavy songs would be in my opinion "Kadifeden Kesesi" (when played in a certain way), "Baglamamin Dugumu", "Hele Hele Ninnaye", "Gorunce O
Dilberi", "Alli Da Yemenim", the whole album "Kef Time Detroit" has mostly a heavy feel to it with some light stuff thrown in. theres the old version
of "Halime" which is also heavy as opposed to "Yeni Halime" which is light although I have no idea where you can find a copy of that. "Telegrafin
Telleri" is I would say heavy.
a lot of the greek music is dark too, the rebetiko which usually is played on bouzouki not oud. like "5 greeks in hell" or the one about some prison i
forget the name.
I don't think this "heavy" is what you mean by "dark" but I don't think that "dark" exists in middle eastern music or culture. in near eastern music
the opposite of light is not dark as in color its light vs heavy as in weight. (in armenian they use this too arak or tetev (fast and light) vs. dzanr
(heavy))
i don't consider "heavy" songs to be "sad and thoughtful" that sounds, well, too light to describe them. but "heavy" songs are more like the blues
rather than "dark" rock music. actually they are exactly like the blues, only more painful.
actually the greek rebetiko might be closer to the anglo-american sense of dark, than "heavy" songs are. but i think also every group has its own way
to express these emotions, the greeks express sadness in a different way from armenians or arabs or african-americans.