El Charanguero is a documentary about Argentine musician Jamie Torres , the world's foremost performer on the charango (a small stringed Andean instrument) and a national treasure of Argentina. The intimate friendship between the producer and the artist offers a privileged and authentic inside view of the culture and music never before available on video. Viewers from all walks of life will appreciate and be enriched by this timeless and universal program.
The hour-long documentary features a never-before recorded ritual to Pachamama (Mother Earth) by the indigenous people of the Quebrada (a mountainous region of northern Argentina), dances and music performed on traditional instruments, and the history of the charango, as well as dramatic concert footage.
The evergreen Chinese bamboo survives even the bitterest of winters. Symbolizing integrity and epitomizing elegance, it plays a part in many ancient tales. Lin Hwai-min's inspired choreography does not narrate a single bamboo story but draws on many to create an abstract and lyrical piece of dance theatre. Performed by Cloudgate Dance Theatre of Taiwan to melodies improvised by Chinese flute player Huang Sheng-kai and music by Arvo Part , the cycle of the seasons unfolds in a series of sections featuring solos, duets, trios and stunning examples of the ensemble-work in which the company excels.
Chinese Opera opens in the make-up room of the People's Theatre in Canton, where the cost is preparing for a 300-year-old Cantonese opera called Niu Yi Chuan Su, a romance, and then moves on to an acrobatic training school for future opera stars. The video concludes with a performance by the Northern Opera Group in Beijing. The viewer is given an in-depth, first-hand experience of this fascinating ancient art form.
Panoramic views of the high snow ranges provide the backdrop for the austere and rugged village of life of Tibetans and Ladakhis, high in the western Himalayas. Echoes from Tibet examines their shared social habits, Buddhist religion and customs. Tibetan script Harvesting and threshing; work songs; the vigorous yok dance - all these are explored in the first half of the film.
Next, we are taken to a Tibetan refugee settlement for a look at daily life and work. Men and women work at typical handicrafts while singling work songs, Tibetan women make carpet trimmings with accompanying songs. They collect their children from a day nursery, going home and working at their spinning wheels.
A huge incense burner with rising smoke welcomes a visit from his holines, the Dalai Lama to the Tibetan Children's Village at the Dharamsala to the Western foothills of the Himalayas. The film ends with an extract from a ritual dance-drama staged for the occasion of the Dalai Lama's visit, followed by a dance of the Black Hal Sect. A wonderful and intimate look at there fascinating people.
Chinese Instruments and Music explores the ancient, delicate integration of music and art with other aspects of Chinese daily life. The history of China is interwoven with the development of music. As far back as the Chou dynasty (1122 to 256 B.C.) there was an Imperial Minister of Music. This film begins with Chinese of all ages at the Great Wall practicing Tai Chi at sunrise. As daylight grows we see people in a park at Hangchow communing with nature as they study birds in cages.
Almost as old as the Great Wall is the Gu-Qin, a box zither which we see being played by an elderly master. The video then takes us to musical instrument factories: master musicians play examples of instrumental music, some on steel wires, some on silk strings, and some on reed instruments. The traditional techniques of silk and wire manufacture are examined. The film ends with lyrical nature scenes to the accompaniment of Two Springs Reflect the Moon, a tranquil composition for stringed instruments.
These films include some fascinating general footage, always with traditional music as background, as well as some valuable and sometimes extended scenes of genuine ceremonies and events.
This video depicts one facet of the life of modern Egyptian tribal Bedouins by presenting the music and dance of their wedding celebrations. The energetic dance music is driven by the joy of living with nature, arranged with the dancers in mind, and played on traditional instruments.
Visual Melodies begins a new era in Egyptian dance entertainment and educational videos. As the world's leading name in Egyptian dance, Hossam, together with Serena, help teach you the authentic moves that comprise the wonderful art of Egyptian bellydance.
In 2005, Iranian composer Nader Mashayekhi was asked to lead the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. He knew the weak position of Western classical and contemporary music in Iran would make this a difficult task. But he took on the challenge, and after having spent several years in Vienna studying, living and working, he returned to his country. As he puts it, "with only one suitcase containing only one thing: my dream to make music in my hometown." Less than two years later he returned to Austria, his suitcase filled with the pieces of his broken dream.
Filmmaker Frank Scheffer captures the passionate composer during rehearsals with young musicians in Tehram, wandering through a desolate desert landscape and a deserted village, looking for inspiration for new compositions and challenging performances, and the back in Vienna as he reflects upon his time in Iran. Political entanglements are only implicit in the film. The director uses beautiful shots in a contemplating setting, in which Mashayekhi's voice sounds like an internal monologue. He reflects on his life and debates the meaning of music and poetry, and his impossible yet unscathed love for his country.
The great classical violinist, Yehudi Menuhin , introduces Raga with an explanation of the Morning rage, Ahira Bhairava. This is followed by footage of that same raga being played by musicians in Jaipur in Rajasthan, still one of the most traditional states in India.
The program includes the complex process of making of the various stringed instruments (sitar, sarod, tanpur, etc.) for the playing of the Raga. Menuhin explains the masculine or feminine character and emotional content of each Raga and its appropriate time of day for playing.
Filmed entirely in Bali - the famed Hindu island in the archipelago of Indonesia. The historical video shows the day-to day life of the islanders, their folk songs, gamelan orchestras and dance dramas. The temple is the focal point of each village where the villagers gather for religious ceremonies as well as for music and dance. The film features stunning, rarely captured footage of two religious dance/dramas named Barong, and Ketchak, the legendary monkey chant.
The film include some fascinating general footage, always with traditional music as background, as well as some valuable and sometimes extended scenes of genuine ceremonies and events. - Dr. Terry Miller, Department of Ethnomusicology, Hugh A. Glauser School of Music, Kent State University
A feature documentary about female singers living inside Iran and their daily life and the deepest wish: "I want my voice to be heard".
Dealing with cultural censorship in Iran, women singers started using also digital media more. Invited by Negar, a magical entity, female voices from all over this vast country come out of isolation, gather in a garden in the very middle of Iran to make their dream come true. Nobody has tried this before, so Negar seeks the help of two travelers to connect. Along the way they meet surprisingly strong female personalities of diverse cultural backgrounds and come closer to understanding the orient...
The mighty thunder of giant Japanese drums makes for an exhilarating, high-energy live show of powerful and driving music that is fascinating and intricate, multi-layered and kaleidoscopic.
Bonus feature:
-Behind the Scenes
Born in New York City, Soh Daiko has taken taiko from its Japanese homeland and drawn inspiration from the living world culture surrounding it. This is the story of a collective drumming community and an empowering Asian American art form, from its beginnings in the basement of the New York Buddhist Church in 1979, as told bu its founders and its former and present members.
These films, including 18 separate events, made at the beginning of the Super 8 era with a silent camera and separate tape recorder, and at the end, with a sound-sync camera, feature performances by some of The Gambia's legendary Mandinka musicians. With a single roving camera, ethnomusicologist Roderic Knight captures the enthusiasm and artistry of jaliyaa, one of Africa's classic genres, and several other genres, including tantango drumming, a style that is today being eclipsed by the djembe.
This is a collection of films made with a Super 8 movie camera. The Gambian scenes were made in 1970 with a silent camera, the sound recorded on a Nagra III tape recorder. The scenes from Guinea and Mali (nos. 5 and 6), were made with a sound-sync Super 8 camera. Digital technology, expertly implemented by Elio Trabal, Oberlin College class of 2004, has enabled the release of these glimpses of late twentieth-century musical activities. There are ten scenes, two contributed by renowned Gambian expert David Gamble.
Each scene focuses on a specific event or musical group. Five are devoted to regional sub-groups of the broad Mande culture. The Mandinka of the Gambia, the Karanko of Guinea, and the Serahuli of Mali. The other five scenes feature the Fula, Balanta, and Jola people. Also included are glimpses of the Super Eagles, a popular Gambian band, and the first Gambian president, Sir Dawda Jawara, speaking at a political rally.
This film takes the viewer to a kingdom in the Himalayas, where tribal animism, Buddhism, and Hinduism live in harmony. In the folklore of Nepal, religious mask-dances with the sound of large barrel drums illustrate the age-old battle between good and evil. We also hear a gayen, the itinerant singer of the Nepalese folk tradition, side-by-side with temple songs.
Rastafarian religion has been much misunderstood and rarely celebrated with force and abandon. In these three documentary films, the late Jah Bones sets out the Rasta agenda and illustrates it with drums, music, poems and praises from dedicated Rasta interpreters like Jah Shepherd, Ras Anum Iyapo and Cosmo Ben Imhotep. Shot in London and Nottingham in the early 90s, the three films from a unique document of Rasha history, beliefs and artistic creation.
All three parts feature Rasta poets performing set pieces, including Song of the Motherland by Ras Anum Iyapo, and the nyabinghi drums RUZ.
People throughout Madagascar maintain a strong reverential connection to their ancestors, whose spirits may be called upon to enter into the present to resolve problems and to heal illness. Music performance provides a vital means of communicating with these ancestral spirits, thus of evoking the past and the power emergent in it. This project results from intensive ethnographic research that Ron Emoff performed on the east coast of Madagascar from 1993 through 1995. Dr. Emoff's fieldwork focused upon connections between musical performance, spirit possession, ways of recollecting the past, constructions of power, and perceptions of the colonial era in Madagascar.
Urumchi - capital city of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China and home to the Turkic people, the Uyghurs, is the departure point for this film. The city, which is marked by the ambivalence between its Uyghur tradition and global modernity, is home to the musician Perhat, who like many other musicians from the region had no ideas about ever leaving the city.
A film about music that, just like the city, is caught up in the tension between tradition and modernity, about friendship that needs no words and about boundless optimism, which made not just one dream come true.
Thai folk songs and dances - such as the beautiful fingernail dance and the precision bamboo dance - are filmed in performance, as is a segment from the classical the epic poem/dance, the Ramayana. The program also looks at Thailand's rural cottage industries and river trade, explores temple ceremonies, architecture, and religious art as well as the Buddhist way of life in the monasteries and villages.
The Mevlevi Dervish Order was founded in the 13th century by Mevlana Jeladed-din Rumi, a poet and mystic who rebelled against orthodox Islamic beliefs by replacing formal prayers with songs and dances. The Dervish order was banned in Turkey in the early 20th century, but once a year the government allows the Whirling Dervish ceremony to take place at Konya in Anatolia where the religion was founded. This extraordinary occasion is shown as a sequenced presentation with more than sixty-five devotees spinning like tops in a ritualized pattern, ultimately achieving an experience leading to religious ecstasy.
Contains 18 scenes filmed originally on Super 8 movie film in 1970 and 1982. They were released on VHS in the 1990s by Original Music as Music of the Mande, Parts I, II, and III.
For this edition the accompanying booklet has been rewritten and expanded to include all song texts and translations in PDF format on a separate disc. All of the scenes from Music of the Mande videotapes Parts I, II, and III are included and have been carefully re-edited and brought into sync wherever possible.
