8: Tihais and Big Band Riffs

A Country Conscript

This analysis is based on A Country Conscript, from The Rhythm of Tides (Por Mares do Imaginário) which I wrote in 1997, featuring Portuguese and Portuguese African artists. The show is based on events in the rise and fall of the Portuguese empire; this particular episode dramatises an incident during the war of independence inAngola. It begins with a dialogue between a conscripted soldier traumatised by the war, who tries to commit suicide, and the compassionate medical orderly who attends him. Their dialogue is then taken up by two jazz soloists – Claude Deppa on trumpet and Chris Biscoe on alto saxophone; the backing riffs for the trumpet solos are built on fragments of the soldier’s anguished song, while the melody and harmony of the alto saxophone part develop the more angular but fluid melody of the orderly.

This may seem a world away from Indian classical music, so let’s just step back a bit…

What is a tihai?

A very characteristic device in South Asian music, the tihai is a three-times repeated phrase used to punctuate or end solo improvisations and conclude pieces; it has to end on the first beat of a time-cycle, or the beginning of a bar in Western terms, and generally appears to contradict – or provide a cross-rhythm to – the basic pulse. Here are three very simple examples; in the variants, rests simply replace notes:

The important thing to note is that where you start determines where you finish up! These examples illustrate patterns constructed out of evenly-spaced notes in 4/4 time across a four-bar phrase; for a South Asian musician the possibilities are infinite. The tihai phrase can be any length (including the judiciously judged gap between repetitions) – mine are only 3, 4 or 5 notes long; and the tal or time-cycle they are played over can be any length too – not just the conventional 8- or 16-beats, but 7, 10, 12, even 10½!

As long as they come from the raga that forms the basis of the piece, the notes that make up the phrase may be freely chosen and the rhythm varied, but every phrase must be repeated identically. My examples suggest a melodic contour, and starting (and hence finishing) points within which the figure can be varied. Finally, bear in mind that all this is improvised! – though of course the musicians spend hours practising what kind of phrase might fit where and in what musical context.

A further variation is the triple tihai, generally used to conclude a performance, where the three-times repeated phrase is itself repeated three times in its entirety.

Using tihais as riffs

Working with musicians like Baluji and Yousuf (see earlier posts) I realised this ingenious device could be used to great effect, particularly in writing backing riffs behind jazz soloists; and in composition there is the huge advantage of being able to work everything out in advance! Here I show how all these features can be explored in an otherwise conventional big band score – the first piece in this series, incidentally, to be built on a standard straight-ahead jazz swing feel. So, back to A Country Conscript…

The piece is built on 32-bar sections (albeit doubled at the beginning and halved towards the end). The trumpet solos are in fast swing over a single chord (essentially a minor 11^th) which changes for each section, with tihais used as backing riffs; they alternate with alto sax sections which begin in slow ballad time, then double on successive entries (until they match the trumpet tempo) and are always in D minor, over astringent chromatic harmony. (The textures behind the alto solos gradually thicken up – they are derived from the opening melody, but are not analysed any further here.) The timings that follow relate to the mp3 file of A Country Conscript.

00’ 00” – the first trumpet section in Eb minor, changing to F# minor (00’ 24”) and back to Eb minor (00’ 39”). The backing figures (derived from the soldier’s melodic material mentioned above) have three-times repetitions across the beat, but are not strictly tihais.

01’ 00” – the alto plays the full ballad melody (derived from the medic’s material) in quarter-time, with piano chords (in D minor, as in all recurrences of this material).

02’ 00” – back to fast 4/4 for the trumpet, now in A minor. The first of the strict tihais comes in here (02’ 02”). It fills four bars, finishing on the first beat of the next four bars and is itself played twice more, rising in pitch and filling out in harmony each time (sketched in the last two bars of the example):

Three things to note here which apply to all the trumpet solo sections:

1. I have adapted the tihai formula by allowing repetitions to be harmonised and/or rise in pitch, while remaining rhythmically identical;
2. the harmony is always diatonic within the root key of the section, ie minor scale with a raised 6^th (‘Dorian mode’), based largely on open 4^ths and 5^ths;
3. the rhythm of the tihai phrase is often diminished, and forms a triple tihai, as it launches the next alto section.

The end of this section (02’ 22”) illustrates both these features:

The alto comes back in in half-time (02’ 30”), then the trumpet returns, again in fast 4/4, now in F# minor (03’ 35”) against this riff:

Again this is played three times, rising each time (in unison), and then in diminution three times (with thickening harmony); then this diminished phrase is turned into a triple tihai, harmonised and rising (04’ 00”):

The alto now has two choruses in fast time, first with rhythm section only (04’ 05”), then with brass/sax backings (05’ 05”). The trumpet returns back in Eb minor – only 16 bars this time – and the section finishes with another variant of a triple tihai (05’ 42”):

The alto solo this time is backed by fragments of its own original ‘ballad’ melody (05’ 50”) before the trumpet solo returns for another 16 bars. Triplets dominate the backing figures from this point onwards, and the first of these is a complex (and hard to play!) triple tihai across 12 bars (06’ 25”). For clarity, I have omitted the harmony, which ‘thickens’ as before. Note how the extra crotchet rest between each set of three phrases gradually forces the last note of each tihai towards the first beat of the next section:

After another alto incursion (06’ 35”) based on the first 16 bars of the ‘ballad’ material, an 8-bar trumpet section finishes with this tihai (06’ 55”)…

…and the final tihai (07’ 10”), linking both trumpet and alto soloists harmonically and rhythmically, deliberately suggests West African drum patterns:

Why West African? Strictly speaking, A Country Conscript (and this analysis) finishes at 07’ 20”, but the drama needed some kind of resolution. What follows is The Song of Reconciliation, featuring Mozambican guitarist Mingo Rangel, kora-player Sadjo Djolô from Guiné-Bissau and his nephew Uïé on djembe, and all the wind and brass figures are derived from West African drum rhythms and chant – but that is a story for another time…

Notes

‘A country conscript’ ambiguously refers to the fact the individual soldier was conscripted, but also that the country itself (ie Portugal) was forced to defend a colonial past (these were the last days of the dictatorship) to which it felt no commitment and for which it had no stomach.

The CD The Rhythm of Tides (Por Mares do Imaginário) was compiled from a BBC Radio 3 broadcast and recording from the Queen Elizabeth Hall onLondon’s South Bank in October 1997. It features all the Grand Union Orchestra’s core players – including Baluji Shrivastav (sitar, tabla) and Miao Xiao Yung (pipa, ruan) – together with six remarkable Lisbon-based musicians. It is available from the Grand Union shop; details and extracts appear on the Music Page of the GUO website.

I also arranged this score for standard big band, for a project with the Guildhall School of Music Big Band. This too is available from Grand Union, and like most of my music for the GUO is playable by more experienced student ensembles with an adventurous spirit.

7: The voice of Anatolia

Yemen – abridged version

One of the very special moments in 11.11.11 at the Hackney Empire last November – itself one of the most successful and unusual shows Grand Union has ever produced – was the performance of Yemen by singer/baglama player Günes Cerit from the Grand Union Youth Orchestra and ‘Second Generation’ group.

The song was absolutely appropriate to the theme of the evening, celebrating the spirit of Armistice Day. It’s a stirring indictment of conscription, in this case of Turkish men being sent to fight a bloody war in which they had no direct concern – in Yemen, which gives it a further spine-tingling resonance in this year of the Arab Spring.

However, the song was not new to us – it was one of the pieces I arranged for a project with the well-known Anatolian singer Sabahat Akkiraz about 15 years ago and which was subsequently recorded; the story of this collaboration is told below, and this analysis is built around a shortened version of that recording. (The full version, about half as long again, appears on the Grand Union CD Around the World in 80 Minutes, together with other pieces from this collaboration.)

The tonal centre of the piece is B, based on a B minor scale with a sharpened 6^th (‘Dorian mode’), but with the half-flattened 2^nd degree of the scale, somewhere between C sharp and C natural, which is very characteristic of Turkish music; and it has a typical 5-beat rhythm. The excerpt starts with a statement of the ‘verse’ by the baglama (saz), played twice:

This is accompanied by a military-sounding snare drum tattoo, which features more prominently in the fuller versions of this piece, breaking the rigid pattern up a little:

Another characteristic of Anatolian melodies is the repetition of sequentially-descending phrases. In this song the structure is unusual, in that the voice only enters with the highest phrase – a kind of ‘chorus’ – after the saz has played the ‘verse’ part of the melody twice:

The pedal B comes in here (with the rhythm section) for the first time, but then – for dramatic and musical reasons, and to underline this structure – I shift the bass to E (suggesting a kind of E minor 9^th harmony) for the ‘verse’ melody (which is again repeated). This time around, the instruments (flugelhorn and flute) take over the ‘chorus’, but against a half-time feel, 5/4 rather than 5/8:

…and in later performances, including the Hackney Empire 11.11.11 show, I added a women’s chorus here, singing an English translation of the Turkish lyrics:

As you can see in Example 4, the rhythm now has an unusual kind of 5-beat Latin feel  (not unlike the ‘Killer Joe’ keyboard rhythm in example 6/1 below!) – already suggested in some of the baglama rhythms, in fact – which can be notated like this:

This becomes the backing for the flugelhorn solo, which for contrast and variety dips down to B flat minor before coming back to B minor. Then the instruments play the original ‘verse’ melody in 5/8 against this 5/4 feel – again over an E rather than a B root – before the voice comes in as before with the ‘chorus’ section in the original 5/8 time over a B. The snare drum is reintroduced, and under the original ‘verse’ theme it takes the song out, with a free flute obbligato and gradual fade.

 

The back-story

Our first big participatory show in north/east Londonwas If Music Could… in 1992, and it involved performers and groups from many different local communities –Caribbean and African, Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi, Somali and of course Turkish and Kurdish. Our main contact with the Turkish community was through a group of exiled intellectuals, academics and artists based in a cultural centre on the Islington/Hackney borders, who met regularly to sing and play traditional Turkish music.

The most accomplished musician was Cemal Akkiraz, who had come to London many years before, persona non grata in his native Turkey. He also established the Anatolian Music Centre in north London, taught saz and ran ensembles at different levels of ability. Many of his students and groups – the saz, or more correctly ‘baglama’, comes in different sizes, like Western European string instruments – took part in If Music Could… and subsequent big Grand Union participatory shows like Dancing in the Flames (Union Chapel, Hackney Empire 1995) and Where the Rivers Meet (Sadler’s Wells Theatre 2000).

Cemal is a great saz player, and member of a family of some of Turkey’s best-known musicians. His sister is Sabahat Akkiraz, who tours all over the world, renowned as perhaps the leading exponent of Anatolian music and a best-selling recording artist. Knowing the work of Grand Union through Cemal, she suggested we work together to create, perform and record versions of her material outside the strict conventions of traditional Anatolian music. The first fruits of this collaboration were heard at the Union Chapel in the London Jazz Festival of 1997, recorded and performed a year later under the title Echoes from Anatolia, and Sabahat herself took part in Where the Rivers Meet.

Working with Sabahat’s repertoire posed significant challenges, as my notes on Yemen above suggest. Metres and phrase lengths irregular by Western standards were relatively easy to negotiate; besides Yemen, there are two other examples on the Around the World… CD – Halay, which takes on a kind of West African rhythm; and Yagmar Yagar, set to a reggae-type bass line. (There is also an improvising tradition in Anatolian music, and Halay notably pits Sabahat’s voice against that of South African drummer Brian Abrahams.)

Harmony, however – entirely absent from the tradition – is a different matter, especially deciding how to handle the ‘out-of-tune’ 2^nd, but that must wait for another day…

6: More on scales and improvisation

The ideas explored here come straight out of a workshop with the Grand Union Youth Orchestra I was doing recently with two other Grand Union Orchestra core musicians – Australian Louise Elliott (tenor saxophone and flute), who is expert on Latin-American music as well as being a great jazz player; and Yousuf Ali Khan (tabla and voice), whose internationally-acclaimed expertise extends from Bengali folk song to North Indian classical music.

When I came in, Louise was running over Benny Golson’s Killer Joe – with a salsa feel rather than mid-tempo swing, as it’s more straightforward for young players, a bit less intimidating when it comes to improvisation. Here are the bones of the piece in this form:

For the purposes of improvisation practice (including the invention of backing figures and riffs), you can ignore the middle eight and cycle just the first two bars, two 7^th chords a tone apart, and play from the component notes of these chords. However, there is another approach…

After the break, Yousuf introduced one of his rag-based compositions, Rag Charukeshi:

To get into these pieces, we go over the scale a few times that the Rag is based on; in this case it starts as a major scale, but has a flattened 6^th and 7^th (there’s also a useful Indian way of practising scales in groups of mixed ability, which is demonstrated here too):

Louise then pointed out that the way she gained fluency as a young musician was to devise patterns that grouped notes together ascending or descending; this is the example she gave (top line), but of course the variations are limitless:

Yousuf then pointed out that this corresponds exactly with the way South Asian musicians gain fluency in certain rags – a technique known as ‘vakra’ – and the patterns can be applied to any raga, where there are infinitely more varieties than the European major or minor scales and modes; the bottom line is an example he gave, but of course again the variations are limitless.

At this point, I realised that the tonality of Killer Joe and Rag Charukeshi were related, and that the same scale could actually be fitted to both chords:

Using this technique, it is possible to improvise melodically over the two-bar sequence without having to think ‘vertically’ of each change from C7 to Bb7 – a tremendous liberation for less experienced players! – and in fact it’s a great way to explore the effect of ‘extensions’ (the 9ths, 11ths, 13ths etc) that are implied in the basic harmony.

Then by a reverse process, Killer Joe-type harmonies suggested themselves for Yousuf’s theme, and finally of course it adopted a kind of Latin rhythm:

This is not necessarily how Yousuf would like his composition performed, of course, and it’s quite likely we shall not do it again! However, it’s a great example of how several radically different approaches to music-making – particularly when they come from different musical cultures – can spark off each other to great creative effect.

Postscript

Yousuf suggested some very ingenious possible tihais for his composition, which explore the same basic idea, but get progressively longer:

You can see the principle – a three-times related phrase which goes across the four-square basic pulse, but miraculously resolves on the first beat of the bar!

These devices pepper South Asian music, especially the improvisations of classical Indian musicians, and serve as very effective structural signposts. I shall explore this technique further future blogs; in the meantime, as a taster, try Collateral Damage from If Paradise (track 21 on the Music page of the Grand Union Orchestra website) – but listen not to the jazz soloists but the ‘big band’ backing figures.

5: 11.11.11 – a sample Blues

Some ideas in response to the challenge to create an 11-bar blues theme for the Grand Union Orchestra’s show 11.11.11 at the Hackney Empire Theatre on November 11th 2011.

I’ve always been fascinated by the 12-bar blues form, and how far you can go changing elements within it while still preserving its essential character. If you are immersed in the spirit of the blues, some of its features are likely to crop up – often unconsciously – in any of your compositions, and this is certainly the case with a lot of my music for the Grand Union Orchestra (see previous posts below!).

In this case we had the opportunity to create a show which was an unrepeatable one-off: November 11^th 2011 is Armistice Day, and it also happened to be the first night of the London Jazz Festival. How these ideas are related is described on our website in information about the show, performed by the Grand Union Orchestra and many different guest musicians and groups, mostly from East London. To give these performers opportunities to participate creatively – since improvisation is a key theme! – we came up with the idea of devising a collectively-composed piece for the event.

The basic idea – to explore as many aspects as possible of the number 11.

The challenge - to write an 11-bar blues theme to be combined with 10 others into a coherent piece, following these criteria:

• it must be 11 (rather than 12) bars long;
• it must be in 11/8 time;
• the tempo should be no slower than 111 quavers per minute;
• you should supply a chord sequence if possible;
• you may use 11^th chords, but this is not essential;
• you may add a bass line if you wish;
• you may write in any key;
• any other exploration of the number 11 is welcome.

What follows is just an example of what can be done: they are simply my ideas – which can be completely ignored! – and many other approaches are possible.

Click here to listen to the extract.

Here are eleven ideas about the blues, referring to the piece above, which may be helpful:

1: Dropping a whole bar to produce an 11-bar sequence is not unusual – if you listen to the early 20^th century country blues singers like Big Bill Broonzy you will hear any number of irregular variations of this sort; the strict 12-bar blues was formulated later.

2: I love the 12/8 blues above all, with its infectious triplet metre, so the obvious parallel is to think in 11/8. In this piece, the dropped quaver at the end of each bar is likely to be almost imperceptible to many listeners: they may be aware of a slight ‘limp’ in the music, but the practice of tying over the 12^th quaver to the first beat of the next bar is a syncopation that is so common in blues, gospel and big band writing that that is what they will imagine is happening!

3: A strong conventional feature is the AAB form – a phrase in the first four bars which is repeated (with a small variations) in the second four, and a third phrase that extends and rounds it off. (In sung blues, the lyrics articulate this form even more clearly.)

4: There is sometimes an answering or linking phrase in the 3^rd and 4^th (and hence 7^th and 8^th) bars, so I have sketched one in here; this too may be modified when repeated.

5: Underlying this form is the harmonic convention of moving to the subdominant (chord IV) in bars 5 and 6 (and sometimes also in bar 2). Other chords can substitute for chord IV however – here I have used the chord on the flattened 3^rd (a note that itself is a feature of what is sometimes called the ‘blues scale’) – without losing the blues ‘identity’. Furthermore, the subdominant chord IV may be more complex – generally a 7^th or 9^th – so here I’ve used 9^th and 13^th chords quite freely.

6: For the ‘clinching’ phrase (bars 9/10) the harmony naturally tends towards the dominant (chord V), but often followed (echoing bars 2 and 5/6) by chord IV. These closing bars are sometimes prepared for in bar 7 by a harmony outside the ‘primary’ sequence, often VI⁷ progressing to II⁷/V⁷, or a chromatic descent of minor 7^ths to chord ii⁷/V⁷ (see note below for clarification); again, I have preserved the principle here, but with different actual chords.

7: The movement and voicing of these chords (middle line), which would be effective on strings or saxes for example, is designed to further underline this form.

8: The so-called ‘blues scale’ is simply a convenient academic rationalisation of some of the melodic elements that characterise the traditional sung blues – a flattened 7^th, natural and flattened 5^th and alternate natural and flattened 3^rd – which also fit against all the simple basic chords (I, IV, V, even VI and II) of the conventional 12-bar sequence.

9: Changing these harmonies, however, leads to other melodic possibilities without weakening the sense of it still being a blues. So here I’ve used the flattened 2^nd, for example; but the shape of the phrases is completely orthodox – albeit perhaps big band rather than vocal phrasing.

10: Finally, it’s often very useful to write a bass line, which serves to delineate the harmonic movement and the rhythm or feel of the piece – although in performance I would expect the bass-player to interpret this line quite freely. Here it’s very simple – either outlining the contour of the chords of the tonic, or firmly emphasising the roots of the chords which deviate chromatically from the tonic key.

11: As an example of a different approach altogether, this version uses similar melodic phrases, but harmonised entirely with 11th chords:

Note: a reminder of how to interpret those generic chord symbols (in C):

Now the challenge is up to you! Click here for full details.

 

4: If Paradise

The Perfumes of Paradise Blues

The key to If Paradise lies in a scale or Indian raga, which dominates much of the work – especially the material of the Bengali singers Lucy Rahman and Akash Sultan and Indian sitar-player Baluji Shrivastav (see notes and previous posts below) – and which is finally and fully explored in the closing number The Perfumes of Paradise Blues.

This time I invented the scale I wanted to use first; only afterwards did Baluji point out that it corresponded with the North Indian rags Aheer Bhairav and Ahiri Todi. The 2^nd is always flattened, which makes it a key feature, but the 3^rd can be either flattened or natural, which provides a greater range of harmonic possibilities:

[click on image to enlarge]

I love the figure that falls from the 7^th before rising to the tonic, and variations on this phrase occur throughout the number.

If Paradise opens with an invocation of the names of perfumes, short melodic phrases sung unaccompanied at this point; then at the very end (about 4½ minutes into this extract) they are strung together to create a melody that takes on the characteristics of a blues, effectively one line repeated completed by a third line (see also example 7 below):

The notes of the scale are used to create different riffs, accompanying for example the opening guitar solo:
or underneath the vocal ensemble (example 2) in the fifth chorus (about 4½ minutes in):

The scale also provides some rich harmonies, most obviously in the parallel triads and sevenths, the augmented sub-dominant chord being a striking feature:

but of course any combination of notes is possible, for example the parallel chords in the trombones in the first chorus, or the trumpets and trombones under the vocals later:

The most dense and complex voicings occur in the third chorus, in full throated big band scoring:

and following the vocals towards the end of the fifth chorus already referred to, creating the climax of the number:

(The number actually ends with a two-chorus sitar solo over the earlier riffs, which is not on this recording, but can be heard on the complete CD version of If Paradise, RedGold Records RGR316D, available via the Grand Union Orchestra website.)

I produced a conventionally-scored version of this piece for a project with the Guildhall School of Music big band in autumn 2010. This is available from Grand Union as a score and set of parts, suitable for adventurous student big bands and youth jazz orchestras.

Footnote

Lucy Rahman and Akash Sultan have been key members of the Grand Union Orchestra for over 10 years, Lucy first touring in Now Comes the Dragon’s Hour (another BBC Radio 3 broadcast, recording and successful CD) and joined by Sultan in Where the Rivers Meet at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in 2000. Other tracks and clips featuring them can be found on the Music and Video pages of the GUO website www.grandunion.org.uk – including Rimjhimamim, Nodir Srote Ektaratir and The Flame of Love.

If Paradise is rooted in events at the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st, particularly in the Middle East and its relationship with the West; and it reflects on relations between Muslims, Christians and Jews. It goes back in time to the common root their religions all share; but – although there is no formal narrative – running through it is the story of an Asian couple caught up in events in the volatile world of today. The music therefore likewise bridges the traditions of East and West, and Lucy and Sultan are central to its musical and dramatic purpose.

For more information on If Paradise, go to http://www.grandunion.org.uk/if-paradise.html ; the full version of If Paradise runs about an hour, and a new CD is available via the Grand Union website www.grandunion.org.uk

3: In praise of Eleggua

Eleggua Kó, Eleggua Ra

 

Another thread that runs through my music for the Grand Union Orchestra is a fascination with traditional West African drum rhythms, and using them to create brass and sax ensembles with lots of cross-rhythms (examples: Freedom Calls, Song of Reconciliation); the background to this is given in the note below. However, writing Can’t Chain Up me Mind, a show we produced to commemorate the bicentenary of the Slave Trade, I took a slightly different tack – I began it with an instrumental piece based on a Yoruba chant that itself had been transported, from Nigeria to Cuba.

You will have to do your own research to find sung versions of this chant, which is still heard in Cuba today; the orisha Eleggua is guardian of the cross-roads and said to bless journeys – often invoked by musicians therefore at the beginning of their gigs!

In one version I have heard, the lower voices sing a harmony a 6th below the upper voices: I liked this effect, so I incorporated it into my composition. The GUO arrangement is for a mini-big band – two trumpets, three saxophones, two trombones and tuba. The bass and drums are free (mostly rooted on F, but varying a little to follow the harmonic implications of the brass writing); the African 12/8 feel as ever provides a glorious flow to the music. The MP3 recording, just over 4 minutes long, is an edited version of the complete performance on the video clip, about 9 minutes.

The introduction is based on the first bar of the chant, a ‘call’ echoed by a ‘response’ which recurs throughout the number:

                                                            [Click images for full-size view]

The complete chant, followed by the standard response, is brought in by the saxes under the trumpet solo:

This is expanded in two ways – first by being played in parallel 4ths and 5ths:

and then in triadic harmony that reflects the 6ths referred to earlier:

Then it is played in canon, together with the response, first in the short ‘call’version:

and then at full length:

Finally it is played by the full ensemble as a 3-part canon:

The next section is based on an idea of my own, inspired by another part of the vocal chant:

Drums dominate the rest of the piece, so it seemed an appropriate moment to give the highly rhythmic response its own work-out! It has basically two versions: the first one starts on a pickup beat (on 4, if you are counting the 12/8 in 4 beats to the bar); the second one starts after the downbeat, and corresponds to the common West African bell pattern agbekor or ewe. They have crossed over to interesting rhythmic effect in the earlier canonic sections; here the upper instruments kick off with version one, while the lower instruments answer with version 2, the agbekor rhythm (NB: this section is in the video recording, but omitted in the audio track):

Finally the response figure is chained in a way that crosses the beat, but respects the even-quaver African 12/8:

I produced a fully-scored version of this piece for a project with the Guildhall School of Music big band in autumn 2010. This is available from Grand Union as a score and set of parts, suitable for adventurous student big bands and youth jazz orchestras.

Footnote

Grand Union’s third touring show, Strange Migration, explored migration and exile, so I set about recruiting performers who themselves had this experience. Among them was Sarah Laryea, who had come to England from Ghana a few years before to join the pioneering ensemble Steel An’ Skin, which memorably combined Caribbean and West African music and dance. A charismatic drummer, singer and dancer – born into a family of a long-line of master-drummers – she brought to Grand Union a wealth of Ghanaian songs and a
knowledge of West African drum rhythms that formed the bedrock of much of our early repertoire and workshop practice; this in turn spurred to me to work more with African musicians and ultimately to write a whole range of African-inspired pieces.

It turned out later that Sarah had never played drums in public before she joined Grand Union, as this is regarded as the men’s prerogative in Ghana! Everything she knew, and performed with supreme confidence and aplomb, she reproduced from what she had heard for years and years as a dancer, from the rhythms of the drum ensemble accompanying her. This inspired in me a huge respect for the aural tradition, and none of the wonderful songs Sarah brought to the company were written down, although you hear around the UK today inaccurate and distorted versions of some of the songs she sang with Grand Union. This is why I have not notated the original Eleggua chant: it is important that you hear these sung by, and learn from, authentic artists from the traditions from which they come.

2: A Rag is not a scale

The Radiance of a Thousand Suns

Baluji Shrivastav has been a regular and highly valued member of the Grand Union Orchestra since 1986, when he joined the company for A Book of Numbers, commissioned by and performed at the Commonwealth Institute in London. (An early version of this piece actually appeared in this show – see also item 1 in this blog.)

Baluji is a multi-instrumentalist – principally a sitar virtuoso, but also an accomplished dilruba and surbahar player and more than competent on tabla and naal – expert particularly in the North Indian classical tradition, and a composer as well as brilliant improviser. He has an uncanny instinct also for what appeals to my musical imagination, and over the years has offered me valuable advice in developing Indian-based material; at the same time – with Yousuf Ali Khan – he has provided myself and all Grand Union musicians with an insight into the technical workings of Indian music.

Rag Marva is one of the more ‘extreme’ classical North Indian Ragas, but one of the most beautiful and fruitful for more general musical exploration. This is an example of how I find Indian music so inspirational, but remember this is a very personal approach.

Start with a conventional major scale (my composition is in fact in C major anyway):

…then raise the 4th degree of the scale (this is a common feature in much Indian music, and lies behind Rag Yaman for instance):

…now drop the 2nd degree by a semitone:

Two notes are now omitted, the 7th and most significantly the 5th to create a kind of pentatonic scale:

…but to add some character, include the 7th as the scale descends:

The flavour is enhanced further if we start from under the ‘tonic’ (or ‘Sa’) and also finish on this note (the 6th degree of the scale):

…and add an extra turn-around note at the top (at this point, for reasons that will appear, I have ‘respelled’ the scale, substituting C# for Db):

You now have an approximation to the bare bones of the classic Rag Marva.

The tanpura drone for this raga is unusual (h). It omits the 5th, much more commonly used for most ragas (i):

…emphasising instead the notes that give the Rag Marva its melodic character; the tension between the drone C and the melodic anchor note A (and the clash with C#/Db) is crucial.

In my composition, I resolve this tension at times by making A rather than C the harmonic centre, which creates a bluesy feeling, and this can be heard in the recorded track. I’ve used a certain amount of compositional licence here, freely using the 5th of the scale (G) so that I can contrast the chords of A and C more clearly (and an occasional D in the bass), but the harmony, like the riffs, is entirely derived from the scale or raga.

Here are some of the riffs that also derive from the scale:

However, in the fast section the root returns to C, and Paul Jayasinha’s trumpet improvisation towards the end is based on this tonal centre and entirely on the notes of the Rag. (The tanpura drone (h) appears in this section as a brass backing figure).

I shall return to other examples of how the techniques and spirit of Indian music are woven into my compositions – not just ragas, but taals (time-cycles) and structural features like tihais (thrice-repeated phrases that litter improvisation in all Indian music!). I’m not sure why Baluji steered me towards Rag Marva on this occasion, but I do remember why he suggested Ektal (a 12-beat time-cycle) to go with it, and how it might be used. However, that is a story for another time – although there is a clue in the riffs illustrated above…

1: Complexity from simplicity

If Music Could…

If you are creating a choral piece – a chorus for a musical, say – it’s sensible to write all the harmony lines in a logical way, so that they are easy to sing (and learn, in the case of a theatre piece). This is even more important if you  writing for actors or performers who can’t read music and learn by ear; and in any case it’s also good classical practice. In other words, each harmony line needs to be a melody in its own right.

It’s a small step from this to writing individual melodies first, for each voice or actor to sing, and then combining them so that they make a powerful, sonorous harmony. This also gives you two musical pieces for the price of one – a series of attractive solos, and a strong chorus! This is not unlike what happens in rounds and canons, where the simplest musical material accumulates to impressive effect.

At a crucial stage in my professional life, for many years I wrote and directed music for regional theatres across the whole UK, at a time (the 1970s) when they were really flourishing, and this is a technique I used frequently. It came in even more handy when there was little money to hire musicians (at the Liverpool Everyman or some of the smaller touring companies I worked for), and much of the music had to be a capella and performed by the actors alone.

In the Grand Union Orchestra, conditions were similar – a range of singers from different (mainly oral) traditions; and in any case I like the effect, so there are a lot of pieces like this in the shows! If Music Could… is an excellent example, and the live recording features five very different voices – from Ghana, Chile, Spain, the USA and finally a Scottish opera/folk singer!

 [Click image for full-size view]

So how is it done? And how is it made easy?

One of the simplest techniques is to start with a chord progression – it is likely (as here) to be 8 or 4 bars long – but of course a drone or an open (suspended 4th or 11th) chord, or indeed an irregular sequence, is equally usable as a basis. The advantage of setting different melodies to the same chord sequence is that (a) they have different points of tension in relation to the harmony, and (b) they are almost bound to fit together harmonically.

(If the sequence is irregular, like the 5-bar ground bass Purcell uses for Dido’s lament, but the melody remains in 4-bar phrases, the harmonic tension and resolution is even more spine-tingling.)

The progression needs to have some harmonic interest, but not be too eccentric; If Music Could… is a kind of jazz ballad which flows naturally across the whole 8 bars and only cadences when it returns to the beginning.

However – for musical reasons and to make the melodies simpler to learn – bars 5 and 6 in each voice are the same as, or only marginally varying from, bars 1 and 2, albeit against completely different harmony, which gives them a different emotional feel. All the voices complete their first phrase together on the first beat of bars 2 and 6 respectively. Their second phrase ‘we would do that’, however, is differently placed in each voice in such a way that the accent falls deliberately on a different word (‘would’, ‘that’ etc) in each part.

In the final line, ‘if music could we would’, all the voices move more or less together; and in each case the melodic line is simply a half-speed version of their opening melody. Furthermore, for added security and to get every line started confidently, all the voices start on an A flat on the word ‘if’; A flat is again the pickup note into the melodic repetition at bar 5; and A flat unites all the voices once more as they lead into their final line in bar 8.

What sounds like a fairly complex texture is thus quite simply constructed, and designed to be relatively easy to sing.

A similar technique is used for the instrumental parts to begin with. Each of the voices has a single instrument obbligato accompanying it; when the voices are combined, the obbligatos are combined also; and finally the obbligato instruments play the original vocal parts, to launch an improvised saxophone solo. The backing brass for the second solo chorus then becomes the backing for the reprise of the vocal chorus. The coda is free, but obviously based on the melodic figures and harmonic ‘feel’ of the main song.

Finally, If Music Could… comes originally from a show called A Book of Numbers (don’t even ask!), and this was number five, hence: 5 lines of verse, 5 verses, 5 voices, 5 obbligato instruments, 5 counter-melodies, 5 flats, 5 beats to the bar…

Because it can be rehearsed so easily, If Music Could… is suitable for – and very effective when sung by - amateur choirs. Copies of the music (including the more complex coda) and relevant permissions can be obtained from the Grand Union Orchestra direct (see website www.grandunion.org.uk for contact details). Enquire also about other choral pieces I have written for choirs.