From the logs of The Whalesong Project, located in Kihei on Maui:
We witnessed a beautiful and unusual, from a modern western perspective, event this week. Raina Ferris visited us from Aotearoa, New Zealand, and we took her out on the ocean to support her cultural interest and connection to the whales. Raina is a Maori kai-karanga tahuna (spiritual chanter) and professor of Maori studies at Te Wanganga O Raukawa in Otaki. She came to Maui to share Maori tradition, and to further research on ancient ties between Maui and Aotearoa – alluded to in the ancestral chants of her clan. Those of us who saw the movie Whalerider witnessed Maori chanting and belief systems that connect the Maori to Hawai’i, and to the whales. Paikea, the young woman who inherited the name of the Maori ‘prophet’ who came to Aotearoa on the back of a whale, from Hawai’i, chanted – and the whales came. We witnessed this in real life when Raina performed her Haka – prayers in a chanting format. We cut the engines and drifted in the wind and waves as Raina chanted from the bow and we were followed by a mother and calf on the surface. And a male with a powerful voice stayed below the boat and sang a beautiful, powerful, soulful song. Those of us who have been listening closely to the songs of these whales for over five years now were surprised to hear the characteristics of the song change rapidly and dramatically. There was a strong impression that there was an unexplainable interaction between Raina and the whales…
I think this is not a haka, but a powhiri, if I’m not mistaken. Hakas are war chants, and this sounds like a powhiri, the kind of song sung on the marae to welcome vistors. Please correct me if I’m wrong. The song is haunting, and especially the way the humpback seems to respond. While I was in Maui last month, we went whalewatching and saw 20 humpbacks and sat transfixed listening to them sing as well. You can find more about Maori whale songs at folksong.org.nz
By the way, the Parking Lot soundtrack, a list of all the mp3’s I have been collecting here over the past year is hosted at Webjay. You can go visit and stream the whole thing. It’s a pretty good listen, if I do say so myself.
Here’s an mp3 post for a rainy Friday afternoon, another contemplative moment.
This is Allegri’s Miserere, a stunning piece of choral music composed in the 1630s. It is so sublime that for a long time it was only performed once a year and anyone who wrote it down would be excommunicated for doing so. The story goes that Mozart (whose 250th birthday is today) broke the ban by hearing the piece, transcribing it from memory and then giving it away. In this respect Wolfgang may have preceeded Napster by a couple hundred years. Thanks to Wolfgang’s transgressions, this Miserere is now open source and able to be performed by any choir with a soprano that can hit that high C. For me, as one who is not a great fan of Mozart’s music in general, I consider this one act to be his greatest acheivement.
The piece is ten minutes long, so sit back, close your eyes and enfold yourself in the textures of it as it moves between plainsong and polyphony and as that soprano descends from heaven with the most heartstopping phrase in choral music.
It’s been an age since I posted, mostly because I was on Maui over New Years, unplugged for the most part and not at all inclined to blog.
So I’ll ease back into it, with some music to start of your new year. While on Maui I bought a bunch of slack key guitar records by the likes of Sonny Lim and George Kahumoku Jr. Slack key guitar is a Hawai’ian style that originated with the Mexican paniolo cowboys that helped establish ranching in the early 20th century across the Hawai’ian islands. These dudes brought their Mexican cowboy guitar styles, and left them in the hands of Hawai’ians who started messing with the tuning by slacking keys and playing in open tunings. After that, stylistic innovations followed with a rhythm line kept on the lower three strings and the melody plucked out of the high strings.
As I was travelling with family, I didn’t get to hear much of this music live, but we did catch one performance at a hula in Ka’anapali with a great young slack key player whose name escapes me. To give you a sense of this laid back and lovely style of music, here’s an mp3 by slack key masters George Kuo and Barney Isaacs (who is playing slide) from their album Hawaiian Touch.
Aloha!
PS…for more great streaming island sounds, with a preponderance of “Jawaiian” reggae sounds combined with some hula, slack key and traditional stuff, tune into the Maui’s local radio station now online at KPOA.com. Make sure you tune in on Fridays especially to hear the repeated playings of “Aloha Friday (full mp3)” and dig the other novelty numbers such as Kupa’Aina’s “Overload on Automation (m3u clip)” and High Risk Factor’s too-serious-it’s-funny “Chillaxin’ (mp3 clip)” song.
Getting near Christmas, and I love the sacred music that gets sung at this time of year. Although this track isn’t Christmas music, it is from the Ukranian Orthodox Christian tradition, and is a haunting and meditative chant. This is from a fine site of russian orthodox music and information.
This is an Antiphon, chanted text that is sung in a servics, often in a planisong setting.
Friday, and time for another mp3 posting. This one is in honour of the fact that yesterday I was promoted to brown belt, which in my tae kwon do training is two belts below black.
So to celebrate, here is a solo track played on a Korean flute called a Dae Geum. I love the way this instrument cracks like a trumpet or a sax. I don’t know if there is a reed involved or how the mechanics of it work, but it adds to the despairing feel of the piece. It reminds me of how much martial arts there is to learn.
This is from a site of Korean meditation music.