Category: Arts and Music

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T is for Tone

Lute, oud what’s in a name?

The oud, the chant, the guzheng, and the morin khuur. There aren’t many stories of medieval bards out on the Silk Road, but there must have been. Even the conquerors appreciated art and music. The cities of Baghdad, Samarkand, Constantinople, and Hangzhou were considered the happening places to be back in the day. Marco Polo weaves music in and out of his stories of Cathay and of Alaoudin.

When any one of them opened his eyes, saw this delightful spot, and heard the delicious music and songs, he really believed himself in the state of blessedness.

Marco Polo, “On the Old Man of the Mountain”
Wikipedia shows range of medieval lute players.

Here’s a quick spin through some medieval instruments, with their links (sorry in advance if you run into a Youtube ad, but wait for the music!)

The Oud

The lute came out of Persia, an instrument with a neck, strings, and a rounded bowl for good sound. The Arabs called their version the oud. Apparently, it belongs to a class of instruments called chordophones, whose sound comes from vibrating strings. The singer Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–1040) was known for his expertise.

Here is Naochika Sogabe, showing you what an oud sounded like:

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E is for East

Yuan dynasty artist Zhao Mengfu, Autumn Colors on the Que and Hua Mountains,
1295, National Museum of Taipei

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet…

Rudyard Kipling

East is a matter of perspective. East is a direction on a two-dimensional map, assuming north is up. To San Francisco, China is to the west and New York is to the east. For New Yorkers, San Francisco is west and China is east. But directions are also concepts, so San Francisco is the Wild West and China is the Far East. China is never the Far West, even though its longitude is exactly opposite that of New York.

Merchants on the Silk Road, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific, met their trading partners among dozens of rendezvous cities along the route. At any point, east and west perspectives might have shifted. Constantinople was to the west of India and China. The Yangtze delta, home of the silkworm industry, was east of Xi’an, capital city of the Tang dynasty during the Early Middle Ages, a heyday for the travelers.

But the “East” is itself an idea to European (and American) scholars that has become linked with views about parts of Asia. It can be hard to separate the simple idea of a compass direction across that vast continent from ideas attached to the cultures on the continent. There have been assumptions made and conclusions drawn that reflect biases we might not even notice unless we think about it.

“Snake Charmer” by Gerome, 1879, Clark Art Institute, photo at Khan Academy.
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Just Dance

Children do it instinctively. Babies do it, even in the womb. Young lovers look into each other’s eyes and already know how to move together, while septuagenarians will shed arthritic knees and aching backs to glide out on the floor without thinking. But it’s hard for a lot of the rest of us Grownups to just get out there and dance. It’s been a part of every culture around the world forever; maybe we’re just out of practice.

Me, age 4. Took 50+ years to learn moves again. Photo by my dad.

I have just finished floating about the Caribbean on a giant ship,  with no Internet, so no travel blogs until now. Besides which I have been too busy dancing, sometimes to a DJ in a club, occasionally with a group or at a lesson, and the rest of the time just in my head.

This is a revelation to me because from the time I was an adolescent to just a few years ago, I gave up dancing. Like many people, I was just too self-conscious that even having taken lessons, I couldn’t “do it” right. Then I took up Zumba after I stopped working full-time: problem solved.

Regular readers and friends know that I play a bit of pickleball, which is a cult, as we are well aware. Pickleball players talk about it all the time, but the folks in my Zumba classes do it just as often and enthusiastically. We have our favorite teachers and get there early for their sessions; we miss them when we’re on vacation. And once you start, you don’t want to stop.

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