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| Duo a'reng 14 x 12 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2018 |
The paintings represent the 1 & 2 listed below: The A'bel and A'reng - Co Tu and Ta Oi Pako peoples of Hue Province, Vietnam. Both tracks are from a video uploaded to YouTube in 2013 by angklung eds, using footage from The Vietnamese Institute of Musicology, Hanoi, Vietnam. One man sings into a reed the other end of which ends in a woman's mouth that functions as a resonance chamber. The A'reng is a simple reed instrument with one hole that is traditionally performed by a mixed couple but the traditions is now extinct. The second tune shows a man playing a one string instrument, a dan k'ni, with a bow and uses his mouth as a resonance chamber. Information found on Rare and Strange Instruments by Nicolas Bras.
Strange instruments from Vietnam:
1. The Dan k'ni; The players mouth is the resonance chamber of this
string instrument. 2. A'reng is a simple reed instrument by two players,
one blows into the mouth of the second (who features as the resonace
chamber. 3. The dan-bau is a one-string instrument (like a diidley bo).
4. Dan-da is lithophone, like a xylophone but made fro stones. 5. Dan
klongput is a giant panflute.
The history of instruments
The oldest instruments ever found were two flutes made of mammoth bone and tusk. They're about 42,000 years old, slightly older than another flute also found in Southern Germany next to the oldest figurative sculpture known. We know humans decorated themselves and the world around them long before that time and they made music as well. Before there were instruments humans used their voices and bodies to create music. Like the origin of art, the origin of music is to be found on a different plane from the everyday experience. Music (and dance too) are an excellent means to escape that everyday consciousness and enter a plane of altered consciousness that would provide a reality more real than empiric reality. A reality of timelessness and placelessness, in other words "the sacred." The voice of music is distinctly different than the voice of language. It appears music came before language, which is utilitarian. To become sacred the voice must be distorted, one must become someone or something else. Instruments were initially created as an extension of the body or voice. The first instruments were likely found in nature, a conch shell, hollow wood, or stones that would provide a range of different sounds. Reeds could mimic, like the later trumpet and wind instruments, the sound of animals by blowing on them between your thumbs. Your hands are the resonating chamber. Try it! Later instruments were man-made either to perfect the nature found materials or to substitute the body. A drum sounds better and doesn't hurt as much as pounding on your own body. A resonance chamber, like the bag of a bagpipe, substitutes for vocal chambers as it is much easier to store air in than in your own body using the strenuous techniques involved in circular breathing. String instruments at first, obviously, consisted of one string only. The mouth was used as the resonance chamber. Only later the chambers were built outside the body and more strings were added.
There are no cultures without music, music is universal, but there are cultures without instruments.
The oldest instruments ever found were two flutes made of mammoth bone and tusk. They're about 42,000 years old, slightly older than another flute also found in Southern Germany next to the oldest figurative sculpture known. We know humans decorated themselves and the world around them long before that time and they made music as well. Before there were instruments humans used their voices and bodies to create music. Like the origin of art, the origin of music is to be found on a different plane from the everyday experience. Music (and dance too) are an excellent means to escape that everyday consciousness and enter a plane of altered consciousness that would provide a reality more real than empiric reality. A reality of timelessness and placelessness, in other words "the sacred." The voice of music is distinctly different than the voice of language. It appears music came before language, which is utilitarian. To become sacred the voice must be distorted, one must become someone or something else. Instruments were initially created as an extension of the body or voice. The first instruments were likely found in nature, a conch shell, hollow wood, or stones that would provide a range of different sounds. Reeds could mimic, like the later trumpet and wind instruments, the sound of animals by blowing on them between your thumbs. Your hands are the resonating chamber. Try it! Later instruments were man-made either to perfect the nature found materials or to substitute the body. A drum sounds better and doesn't hurt as much as pounding on your own body. A resonance chamber, like the bag of a bagpipe, substitutes for vocal chambers as it is much easier to store air in than in your own body using the strenuous techniques involved in circular breathing. String instruments at first, obviously, consisted of one string only. The mouth was used as the resonance chamber. Only later the chambers were built outside the body and more strings were added.
There are no cultures without music, music is universal, but there are cultures without instruments.
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| Duo a'reng 14 x 12 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2018 |
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