Music and film art

What kind of music do I like

Everybody likes music (except of some lower animals), the difference is only in the temper of the music (sometimes I should better speak about "sounds" generally) you like. Different music patterns speak to different people, like different words and different books or poems. I envy the people who have the sense for classical music - they have a wonderful possibility of choice. But today we all have a good choice. I like almost everything I have heard, except of some few extremes. But there are two main sorts of music I really use to listen to. The first is the modern instrumental music and film music, and the second is "folk music" (not only in the meaning of the traditional music). The concrete songs and interpreters change during the time, however. In the last few years, I have been prefering music which goes across music styles and genres very much. Especially I like combinations of traditional music with rock and jazz. It is not necessarily always what people would like to call "world music" - personally I do not really like this name, neither the most common music in this style.

The Landscape of the Music

I told you that I enjoy the landscape and thereby the feeling of a large space around me. But it isn't just the Mother Earth that can impress me with its landscape. The music offers a completely different sort of "landscape". And this one brings you even closer to the ideal world or "paradise" or to what some people may call "feeling of God" or "feeling of the universum". In the music you can "see" (at least for a while) the whole universe from "above", and you can understand much of what you hardly would understand as a human being in your everyday life. You can detach from your troubles, and you can sympathize with other people, you can feel the substance of this world, something that you hardly ever will understand by your reason.

What do I mean with the "landcape of the music"? You have probably noticed, that the music uses tones of different pitch - we say "height" in Czech. Like the melody, the tones change in time, they can draw a shape, a surface. But the music usually uses more dimensions. Different musical instruments have different timber - we say "colour" in Czech. So they can produce incredible many combinations of melodies and timbers. If you listen to a multi-instrumental music in stereo, you can easilly "hear a large landcape" - as if you were flying above it. You can really feel the large space around you! And as the music flowes, you fly and the landscape is changing. Of course this "lanscapes" has a completely different measures and natural laws. I think that I hardly would be happy with just three dimensions if I would like to "draw" it as a picture. But if I want to describe it as a "lanscape", I have to use the common names like "mountain", "valley", aso.

Of course, you can see any real landscape in the music as well. But not without an emotional potential - in real landscape you actually do not need to feel anything at all, you can just think about food, money…- but if you start thinking like that when listening to music, you will hardly see (hear) any landscape in it. Rich music will open a large landscape in front of you - and that's why I like multi-intrumental and film music. And you can see and hear and feel all what you can see, hear or feel in a real landscape - actually much more! You can for example start at the bottom of a deep valley, you can touch the grass and the flowers, you can stroke the trees, or you can join a gurgling stream and dance with the drops, and then you follow the steep uphill, full of many stones of different colors and shine. Shortly you achieve the mountain edge and you can bounce along until you reach the main top. There can be a dramatic break, a wonderful large scenery opens in front of you, full of mountains and valleys, with sunrays against you, which are filling the landcape with light and colours, and you can fly down through the air, through the mist, against the wind. Fly high above the ground, above the mountains, above the infinite plain, above forests and lakes, above thousands of streams and waterfalls, until you get to the sea. A large and infinite sea. Or you can fly above the sea, a peaceful sea or a roaring sea, you can take delight in many wonderful islands, you can cross high cliffs and rocks, or whatever you would like to! Of course it might be a kitch - exactly like in the real world which is full of kitch.

Each instrument, each tone forms something. Even a "missing tone" - a tone which you would expect, but which isn't there - forms something new. It can be a shadow or a yawn - like on our earth - a place where there is no light and you can just imagine what's down there. A flute can draw a stream, the violins can form a large plain, the guitar can form rocks or mountains, or just trees, a vioce can form a mist or a human being - a wonderful singing or dancing women, if you want. And you can marvel each straw of grass. But a rich music is as difficult to discover as a real landscape. You can walk thousand times through it and you always discover something new: a new valley, a new mountain, a new cave, stream, waterfall or a flower or just a special straw of grass that you haven't noticed before. An example of such wide landscape music is Mike Oldfield or Vangelis.

Because the landscape of the music has it's own natural laws, you can also fly many times across one (e.g.) mountain and see it from different points of view.

But it doesn't need to be only a romantic landscape. You can visit just a place in teh world. You can hear very sad or very funny stories and make journey through different places. The beginning part of Jarre's "Zoolookologie" reminds me of a walk through a "dungeon" (it reminds me of a dungeon since I played RPG games) and hear the different sounds - your own steps, drops of water falling from the ceiling, crying of unknown creatures and beasts from the side-corridors, a small goblin running across your way (if you have stereo sound, you can really hear him running from the corridor on the one side to the other one on the opposite side). On the other side if you listen to the music of Enio Morricone from the film Once Upon a Time in the West, you do not need to see the film - the music tells you all the story without pictures, a story about dreams and tears.

But the most wonderful thing is landing in the country of the music and moving through it "by foots" - also to dance! But I'll say more about this later. Now a short list of the most important musicians since my childhood until now:

Instrumental music and other "oldies"

Mike Oldfield

The famous musician and multiinstrumentalist. He can combine different melodies and colors into a wonderful stream of music. His music is really various - one composition can change its temper from classical, over country music to almost metal. He can draw really wonderful "landscapes" and lets you fly very high and see very large and wonderful sceneries. The music might sometimes seem too regular, childish or kitchy. I used to listen to Oldfield's music in the 1990's and from time to time I still enjoy it again.

Jean Michel Jarre

Jarre is sometimes called a "rock impressionist" and I think it's the best characteristics. His music might appear a bit extravagant, but it's full of fantastic colors and varied rhytm. He is a master of electronic music, of course, and in this domain he is a real magician. He could synthesize the sound of a train even before the samplers came. He helped to develop many famous synthesizers himself. But he also studied african (and other) traditional rhytm-music which affected his work very much. Besides of all the magic with synthesized and even natural sounds (many of his fantastic sounds are originally natural), he is a master of fantastic visual effects. His concerts look like a show from a sci-fi book - he makes large projections on the walls of high sky-scrapers or drawes with laser on the clouds.

I used to listen to his music mainly at the beginning of 1990's, but it still has something to tell me, I think. I've also been at his concert in Prague once. Unfortunately the hall and the sound engineer pulled it completely down - in the incredible volume of bass sounds anything else drowned. (Dear sound engineers, I know you have powerful technics, but if you are deaf as an adder, then go away and do something different!) Nevertheless, the light-show was worth to see.

Vangelis, Yanni etc.

Vangelis had lead me to the world of instrumental music. He is known as composer of the older instrumental (mainly electronic) music. But today he is very well known as a composer of film music: mainly "Blade Runner", "Chariots of Fire" and "1492 - Conquest of Paradise".

Yanni is another world-famous Greek composer. His music is very romantic, full of emotional but often sharp and sentimental melodies. Especailly nice to see is his concert "Yanni Live at the Acropolis" with The Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra (London). It is surely the most sentimental music I've heared, maybe too sentimental and sweet, I didn't listen to his music for a long time.

Abba and Beatles

Not really instrumental, but the nice old music from Abba can improve your mood almost anytime. It's pleasant also when you're doing something else - e.g. driving a car. I also like Beatles, but I don't use to listen to them very much.

Enya and other music from Ireland

The music from Enya uses also modern sounds, but it's so mild and mostly soft, that you think you are on an Irish plain listening to sounds of the mild blowing breeze coming somewhere from a far behind a thick veil of fog. It's a quiet sound of peace and clear nature.

The Irish folk music is very popular anywhere and it's also very various. My favorite CD is "The Long Black Veil" from Chieftains (with guests like Sting, Sinéad O'Connor, Van Morrison, Tom Jones or The Rolling Stones). But you can get lots of different CD's anywhere and the quality is different as well, of course.

Norwegian music

Norwegain music is not very popular in the world, I've heard. But in Norway you actually can find great and fantastic music. The most famous is the classical romantic music from Edvard Grieg, which has been misused to almost anything recently. Very famous is also the jazz music from Jan Garbarek and the ethnic music from Mari Boine. I really like to listen to Mari Boine almost anytime, as well as Annbjørg Lien, who is an extraordinar violin player mixing the traditional music with modern rhytms and sounds. Another great violin player is Susanne Lundeng, playing more or less traditional songs in jazz style - her music is both tender and full of joy and pure pleasure.

My favorite CD from Norway is the album "Haugtussa", a selection of Arne Garborgs poems set to music by Ketil Bjørnstad and performed by the singer Lynni Treekrem (see the Literature & Poetry haunt). The music and the voice of the singer follow the content of the anthology and intensify the great emotional effect of the poems.

Another Norwegian music I like very much is the music by Odd Børretzen and Lars Martin Myhre. The texts from Odd Børretzen are very wise and witty at once and supply more than enough the limited power of the old master's voice (so wonderful and kind to hear). The music by L.M. Myhre is also very dynamic but soft and kind and provides a perfect musical background to the text.

From the more popular norwegian music scene I can also reccomend Kari Bremnes and especially her album "Svartabjørn", telling a legend about a girl working as a cook at the construction of the northern railway from Kiruna to Narvik. Another good CD is "Kråkeviks Songbook" - the collection of the most typical (romantic) national songs every Norwegian must know.

A very special music is made by Gåte - a very young group from Trondheim. They sing old traditional folk ballads in their old dialect, but the music is rather modern (more or less hard) rock music. It's really wonderful how these young people manage to create such combination and take really the best of both genres without spoiling anything.

Czech music

Another kind of music I like is the Czech folk music. From the old and best known names I have to name at least: Jarek Nohavica (perfect texts), Karel Plíhal (unbelievable texts), and music bands like Spiritual kvintet (not just spirituals), Hana & Petr Ulrychovi (+Javory) (very live, nice and optimistic music), Klíč (pseudo-medieval music), Pavel Lohonka Žalman a spol. (songs about nature, love…), Vlasta Redl with different bands and people (A.G.Flek), Jura Pavlica + Hradišťan (both a traditional and very modestly modernized traditional Moravian music).

You might have heard about Karel Kryl, Jaroslav Hutka, Marta Kubišová and other singers who had to leave our country after 1968 - they fought for human rights in our country for a long time. So did almost all other folk singers and their friends (like our last president Václav Havel) before 1989.

Very near to them is also the musician and (in the last time) publicist and "cultural recoverer" Jan Burian, who wrote also a nice book about Iceland and some other interesting and witty travel-books.

I also like music from Petr Hapka and Michal Horáček. And I also shouldn't forget to remind you the wonderful old songs of Jiří Suchý and Jiří Šlitr.

The most popular and very good rock-style-traditional-music is probably interpreted by Čechomor. They are popular even outside of the country, because they really managed to transform the traditional Czech music to something more understandable outside and set it to more modern rythm. They had a common project with Jaz Coleman and even made a film mystification called "Rok Ďábla" (The Year of the Devil) together with him and the earlier mentioned singers Jarek Nohavica and Karel Plíhal - the film is quite funny and full of good music.

Tolkien music

Tolkiens stories and poems inspired many people to write songs. Some of them just named their band after some character from the books, and they play just normal music. Another people really set his poems to music or write their own music. The results are various - Tolkien drawes very different characters and you can hear his poems as classical music (Donald Swann), indefinite folk or pseudo-historic music (PS, Jan Hrubý), pub-sottish-music (Jim Čert ="Jim the Devil"!) or hard-rock/metal music (once I've heard a local band called Mandragora, ugh!).

Until now I got to know two sorts I like: our own "PS" or "Poetic Fellowship" (see Literature & Poetry room) and the professional music from the Danish music band "The Tolkien Ensemble" - album "An Evening in Rivendell". Their music is close to the classical music, but it varies (as the different Tolkiens poems come from different characters) quite a lot up to almost folk songs.

Film and film-music

Film music is a sort of very rich and (almost) instrumental music. It's also very various. I've already spoken about Oldfield and Vangelis and I must name also Ennio Morricone and Jan Hammer. A very special kind is the music by Philip Glass…

The most impressive films to me personally are the films by Geofrey Reggio. Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi is a trilogy of visual poems about our world. It is just a series of pictures with music by Philip Glass. Especially the first films are very nice. Not everybody will like these films, but I do very much. Probably because they show the world exactly as I do really perceive it. So, I see actually something I know, but for the first time visualised as a movie.

There are also other films which try to do similar things like Godfrey Reggio: Baraka and lately Dogora. But they are not really similar. They show different things. Baraka is very nice too, it is like a meditation on world's religions. Dogora is an wonderful impression from Cambodia with a very strong music (maybe too strong to me…).

It's hard to speak about film for me, because I like very different films for different reasons. I like films from David Lynch because of the mystery. I like Steven Spielberg's films because of the perfect visual effects. And I like many other doubtful films because of their fantastic or romantic story (Star Wars - nice fairy-tale, isn't it?; Star Trek - not really so much stupid at all).

But I like also other more serious films and (less or more) socalled "art-films". I must also name some of the more popular films, at least: Once Upon a Time in the West, Forrest Gump, Three seasons, Cold fever (an Icelandic film), Amelie from Montmartre, or films by Woody Allen (his characters are nearly so absent-minded like me, but they are at least more funny). Very nice is also f.e. "Breaking the Waves", but it's a bit hard. I do also like some musicals (Jesus Christ Superstar, Les Miserables).

I've said enough about my opinion about dividing any sort of art on "higher" and "lower" art in the Literature & Poetry room. And here I must say again, that there are always also "wise" things and ideas even in the most stupid films. Therefore it's hard to say which films I prefer. It depends.

Dance

I also have to admitt that I like dancing (or at least liked). I don't mean "disco", but the "classical", "standard" and latin dances, that people learn in the classical courses here. Well, actually I cannot control my body very well to move it always as I would like (which would need some more training), but I believe that I at least have some basic sense for rhytm.

What's so wonderful about dancing? I've already told you about the "landscape of the music" and its world. And I also told you that the most wonderful thing is to "land" in this country and move through it "by foots". You see, you are forced to dance, to move according to the music. However, this is often almost impossible for a human being to do it properly. I have to admitt that "disco" dancing is very close to this. But the usual disco music doesn't offer any really nice landscape, any really interesting place to dance :(! But the closer you really manage to move according to the music the better you enjoy the music. I think, it can fill you with its energy and with its ideals. I think that this is the meaning of the dancing rituals of the "primitive" medicine-men and old tribes generally. And this is really the best way to get something that could be called an "enlightenment" or an enlightenment. The fans of metal music break into the "music" best, as you can see on their concerts. But unfortunately, that music will hardly fill you with anything nice and "higher", it will probably rather fill you with aggression, insensibility and hate - that's at least what I've realized by myself when seeng the people. But the other music, which could fill you with something better, is seldom good to dance. So, there is the rest: the classical and the latin dance. Even these can give you a sort of "enlightenment", or at least a wonderful experience!