Orientalism: Desert Level Music vs Actual Middle-Eastern Music
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 มิ.ย. 2024
- Human talks at camera then video ends.avi
00:00 Iranians react to Orientalist music
03:45 Defining Orientalist music
11:44 Disclaimers
17:44 "Indian, Arab, same thing"
37:50 How to write orientalist music
43:28 The OBSESSION with the Double Harmonic Major
54:52 Why the Double Harmonic Major?
1:00:42 The limitation of digital instruments
1:08:33 The vicious circle of Orientalism
1:12:24 Westerners CAN write Eastern music
1:21:00 How Orientalism sucks for Easterners
1:26:34 How Orientalism sucks for Westerners - เพลง
![Fc ครับ ขอแนะนำให้รู้จักกับ "น้องเปียโน" l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HQU6Q_IYTLo/mqdefault.jpg)
CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS:
• For those wanting examples of authentic Iranian, Turkish etc music, you're on the right channel. That's my specialisation. Browse my channel and you'll find plenty of authentically arranged/composed music of the region, all the videos accompanied with descriptions that'll give you a good base with which to do your own searches afterwards. Check out playlists dedicated to the specific cultures.
• Check out my Epic Talking playlist for more videos like this.
• "What about Occidentalism? How about the view of non-Westerners towards the West?"
So there is such a thing as Occidentalism but it's not the yin to the yang of Orientalism as some may think. Most often, it takes the form of irrational hostility towards the West. Things like rejecting well researched truths presented by Western academia solely on the basis that it's Western. I've been highly critical of this in my videos, as it obfuscates "anti-colonialism," with anti-Western bigotry in order to get away with it. Occidentalism as a stereotypical view of the West, however, doesn't really exist as a perfectly symettrical counterpart to Orientalism.
The reason why it's mostly a one way street, and non-Westerners are generally better at representing the West than the other way around is because the West is currently the hegemon of this planet, in terms of cultural soft power. Therefore everyone around the world is intimately familiar with the generalities of Western culture because everyone is exposed to it.
The average Iranian who lived in Tehran all their life can tell a British accent is distinct from Scottish, and we do associate Received Pronunciation British with "posh." They do know the organ is a church instrument. Typical Western associations are well known to the average Iranian in Tehran.
At the beginning of the video, my uncle and I mention Mozart and Ketèlbey, Western Classical composers, and the musical form of "alla turcas," and "Baroque music". That's because every musician in the world knows Western music and its genres, styles, composers, etc. But it may take you months to find a single Classical Western musician who knows the names of Sheydā, Dimitrie Cantemir, or who know what the terms "peşrev" or "kalofonía" mean, and what musical forms they refer to.
All musicians around the world know thr basics of Western music. We all do chords, harmony, play the piano and guitar. Only a tiny fraction of Western musicians learn any music theory outside of their own. There's a reason why Western musicians are the only ones who call their form of ethnic music "Music Theory," whilst everywhere else, even between them, people preface their music theory with the cultural specifier like "Iranian music theory," "Japanese music theory," etc.
I'm aware that this presents a rather unflattering picture of the West, but please understand that this is not a consequence of us non-Westerners being oh so wiser. Not trying to portray Westerners as inherently bad or evil. If we were the current cultural hegemons of the planet, we'd be just like that. In 500 years, if China or Brazil become the next superpower, they'll be the ones generally ignorant about other cultures whilst everyone else knows about them. Average Westerners aren't ignorant by default, they simply naturally embody the traits of a region with hegemonic global cultural influence, and we non-Westerners are simply luckier than them because unlike them, we all grow up listening to both our music, and Western music.
TLDR: everyone in the world knows that Madonna exists. Most Westerners have no idea who Fairuz or Shajarian are. That's just how it is due to the current geopolitical context. But that's just this context. In 500 years, if Central Asia becomes the next cultural hegemon, they'll be the exact same.
• I mistakenly use the term "Southeast Asia" in the video, but what I mean is "South Asia." Southeast Asia is countries like Laos, Cambodia, and I'm talking about the Desi cultures like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, hence South Asia.
00:00 Iranians react to Orientalist music
03:45 Defining Orientalist music
11:44 Disclaimers
17:44 "Indian, Arab, same thing"
37:50 How to write orientalist music
43:28 The OBSESSION with the Double Harmonic Major
54:52 Why the Double Harmonic Major?
1:00:42 The limitation of digital instruments
1:08:33 The vicious circle of Orientalism
1:12:24 Westerners CAN write Eastern music
1:21:00 How Orientalism sucks for Easterners
1:26:34 How Orientalism sucks for Westerners
Release William Wallace - Scottish Music now! XD
But seriously, as a Filipino music student, I love this video essay. I've been listening to your music since around 2022, and it's been great. Thanks for your content, both the really good music and the fun video essays. I look forward to more of it. :D
My Kurdish father Loves you and your music I am also half Assyrian
As someone with middle eastern background I am glad you are talking about this
" I mistakenly use the term "Southeast Asia" in the video, but what I mean is "South Asia." Southeast Asia is countries like Laos, Cambodia, and I'm talking about the Desi cultures like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, hence South Asia."
Thanks for saying this--I was wondering if you'd meant it as Southeast of MENA/MENAT countries which would be South Asia, but glad you clarify!
- makes video called “epic Arabian Persian desert music”
- solely uses traditional Cambodian instruments
conspiracy theory: there's one Armenian duduk player in hollywood with HELLA connections
Yes it is true, all of Hollywood is in fact controlled by the Armenians. Some people thought it was those other guys!
duduk monopolist :D
I mean Glendale isn't that far
Pfahahaha, that's a funny one! Sorry, I just have a very vivid imagination, and I burst out laughing imagining that one Armenian bloke peeking out of the corners of the recording booths with his duduk. Just to put his duduk where it does not belong, if you catch my drift.
Maybe Djivan Gasparyan. Oh, I just learned he died in 2021. Apparently, he does have a credit on the Gladiator movie soundtrack. Also, I was about to write, he even appeared on a metal album, but I double-checked it to be sure, and now I learned, that was his grandson, Jivan Gasparyan, Jr. (and the album was "Enki" by Melechesh).
I'm pretty sure the basic conception of "Persian" among a lot of westerners is just "Luxury Arabic"
This is so accurate wth
If only they had the arabic part right lol
Tied closely to Persian rugs and Persian cats.
Ironically the caricature of the diaspora Iranian Faraji showed in his Greek Music video is a good representation of how Westerners hold contradictory views.
Persia = luxury, always set in an interior or a colorful bazaar
Iran = enemy!! Must be desert or some other bad place to live, buildings are run down
Kinda like how my one coworker (from Afghanistan) told me once that Farsi is luxury Dari.
Because of the carpets and cats
As a westerner, its so JARRING how the further the video goes the worse the orientalist music starts to sound because i get to hear actual middle eastern music and it's like.... trying the actual food you only had as an artificial flavoring before. Mind blowing experience, like I unlocked the shrimp vision or something
The shrimp vision.
@@wooblydooblygod3857 it's as shrimple as that
I wouldn't even say it's bad or unenjoyable music, it's just not at all representative of the music it's pretending to represent, which is problematic in an entirely different way from sheer enjoyability
@@sahitdodda5046 that woman singing like that to the turban bro 😂just sounds sooooo bad. It really is like opera combined with baroque music. or hillbilly music. 😂like wtf. the real music examples he showed were SO much better and COOLER!
😂😂😂 I came for the crab, but shrimp will certainly do
As a Celt, I feel your pain. I like the "Celtic" music on TH-cam but by God is it so far detached from actual Celtic music it blows my mind. No drums, no harps, just bagpipes. Bagpipes, bagpipes and bagpipe which aren't even a traditional Celtic instrument. I do appreciate that bagpipes do have a long tradition in Celtic nations but drums, horns and harps are our real traditional instruments.
Is there a celtic band or something on yt to know how it actually is?
@@fa-q-6226 You can check out the Eisteddfod which is a celebration of Welsh music and cultures for Welsh Celtic music. It's held annually and although it does also showcase modern music in Welsh, there's always a section for traditional (usually harp) music. I'm not really sure of Irish/Scottish music but I'm sure there must be equivalents. Calan are the most famous modern Welsh group that play traditional music, there's also the harpist Catrin Finch or Nansi Richards. My family like Ar Log (they're a bit old school but chatty.)
Youd hate braveheart
@@fa-q-6226 I’m not celtic myself but I really enjoy Altan, Capercaillie (scottish), Flook (they are Irish)
@@MesserMusicI'm Welsh not Scottish but I felt Scotland's pain from that film. Wallace transformed into a kilt wearing, bagpipe playing highlander was really beyond silly.
"My music is authentic enough that it's played for actual cultural events" is a flex and you should be proud of yourself
The biggest flex imho- that type of accuracy and collaboration should be the standard for “historical” musical recreation and composition.
Yeah, "my music got played in front of the Roman coliseum" is a way bigger flex than I think he made it out to be.
Indeed
@@aubreejobizzarro1208 I think you are hitting an excellent nail on the head here! This video and it’s discourse underpin a much larger concept and actually make good and meaningful insights on the idea of culture, cultural appropriation, and just inspiration.
This speaks to how too often a big name media productions and the like will be directly connecting to a culture and be presenting as a representation of said culture…. And then do no leg work to actually represent that fucking culture! Not only is this just cultural appropriation, but it will now be disseminated amongst an audience in the west who will unknowingly walk away with that thing becoming a representation of that culture in their minds, which will then continue an unfortunate cycle of cultural misrepresentation.
You denote how this is the best, and imo only good, way to create music that claims a connection to a culture or a history, and I fully agree and love this and the specificity of the idea. Because there is also the issue of people trying to claim large concepts as part of a cultural identity and it’s very use or application in something else as being cultural appropriation, and they will bully and pick on artists, for example, using an instrument in a way or style that isn’t identical to how they would use it culturally, and it’s like “dude I never claimed I was making authentic Egyptian or Jordanian music, I just think the Simsimiyaa sounds and looks dope”
Right, like, how do you just causally drop off such an insane feat on us like it's just another monday.
"Scimitars of the turban hummus of the desert allahu akbar shawarma oasis" if released would no doubt be a total success
There's a restaurant called Shawarma Oasis around the block from my house. Good to hear they're getting press
Release it Farya!
I bet Farya almost had a heart-attack when ubisoft released that prince os persia new game with a hip hop track as its theme.
Shit......you just gave me an idea for a comedy/satire film that makes fun of orientalism.
😂😹
I love how he just casually started grilling kebabs and never even mentioned it.
Fr like drop a recipe at least those look TASTY
I'm french child of Algerian immigrants and I found the passage 21:02 hilarious 😭😆! This "vague east vibe" representation that affects musical representation extends also to social representations as well. For example when I was in 6th grade I made a friend and when she invited me her mom said that her daughter told her I'm armenian. And I turned to my friend and said "Algerian not Armenian", and she shrugged and said "that's almost the same thing". Like, this girl just Duduk-ed me.
oh my god that really sucks but its also incredibly funny 😭
reminds me of when my sister was asked to translate for an elderly arabic lady at work, and she had to explain that sorry she can't, she speaks persian and thats not anywhere close to arabic lmao
Was recommended a barber by a friend once, he assured me that the guy spoke Arabic and we would really get along.
Turns out the barber was Turkish and we didn’t have a single language in common 😂
The cut still turned out fire tho.
She "duduk-ed" you!! 😅🤣🤣 How freakin rude of the mom though, I'm so sorry that happened to you, it sucks. When someone doesn't know any better, yet is so attached to the belief that they do 🙄
It's even funnier if you read this as a Turkish person, because the term "duduk-ed" (düdükledi) exists in your language and means totally different, but fits in with the situation. 😂 (an old slang word which has the exact same slang meaning of "scr*wed")
I was learning japanese in 4th grade and i spoke a bit with my japanese classmate, and another girl came up and said "oh you know chinese? Thats so cool!" When i explained to her that they're two different languages and cultures, she shrugged and said "oh well its the same thing basically." It pisses me off how much the west is conditioned not to care about other cultures.
Farya needs to make a song called “authentic Dutch music” and use a Balalaika and Bagpipes
I think we all need to start doing stuff like that. Even the playing field a little.
As long as he rhymes "blauw" with "ik hou van jou" it will be fine. 😂
I know you're joking but Dutch people did and do use bagpipes, bagpipes are a pan-european instrument much like lutes were, misattributed as being specifically Scottish in popular imagination
@@fartz3808 Indeed. If only people knew how many different types of bagpipes there are. For example, the Central European variant: th-cam.com/video/VvuXs2xvsPQ/w-d-xo.html
@@fartz3808 he knows, he even mentioned Greek bagpipes. But I don't know of any Dutch music from the last 300 years that uses the bagpipes so it would be really weird. But the "foekepot" is a funny instrument to use for this.
As a Chinese person I'm reminded of the ways western music creators represent "east asia" as a mysterious land of ninjas, yin yang, and dragons. In a single software-generated piece I might hear the Chinese erhu, the Japanese shamisen, a gong in the background, and Mongolian throat singing but the piece would be titled "dark ninja battle music" or something dumb like that. And just like westerners are obsessed with the duduk and the double harmonic minor scale for desert orientalist music, they're obsessed with the gong and the pentatonic scale for orientalist music pertaining to Eastern countries. It's a form of confirmation bias on the part of the composers who only want to sell to their viewers something they think their viewers are familiar with which is more orientalism
We should include the real deal. I think people can handle it. I get bored of our music after a while. :-) I still enjoy it, I just like hearing other elements.
This is not at all confined to western music creators. Plenty of Japanese created games also do this.
@@Mechanomics most non-westerners are just as ignorant if not more ignorant of other non-Western cultures as the average Westerner
Please, the people want what they expect. People do not pay money to be educated on these things. When a random american says “play something arabic” he expects somethint fake arabic. And since he’s your customer, why give him something he does not want? It is foolish to condemn anyone for giving ignorant folks what they ask for.
@@Tecmaster96 I specifically looked on TH-cam and Spotify for Middle Eastern/Asian music mixes and found the Orientalist garbage and was pretty pissed about it. I’m not musician but even I could tell it was fake. Maybe some ppl like the fake stuff and that’s fine but I wouldn’t say all ppl do. Especially if they are specifically looking for something authentic and it’s hard af to find. Hopefully it will get easier in time, but not with the attitude that westerners are all dumb yokels who don’t care about music. That’s a backwards attitude in itself if you ask me. From my perspective I don’t pay money to have some lazy work of art that’s inauthentic, especially if it’s advertised as being a specific genre.
Man now I really wanna hear European music made with the Orientalist mindset. That fusion goes way too hard.
I like how you took the generalizations made about Middle-Eastern music/culture and applied it to European music. It's a really effective way of pointing out how absurd those kind of generalizations are.
This was a really fascinating and enlightening video. I knew on some level that Western portrayals of Middle-Eastern music wasn't accurate but I didn't truly appreciate how inaccurate it was. I wish more care was taken in media to portray things more accurately. We're not only learning incorrect things from bad portrayals, we're missing out on some really good stuff.
yeah this part is so funny and eye opening
Yeah it reminded of an essay I read in college called “the nacirema” that describes an exotic tribe of people and their daily lives the way anthropologists usually do, only to find out by the end that they’re just describing Americans Lololol
The thing I really hate about this is people think nobody in Hollywood does the research. What I'm really, really sick of is them doing the research, and then disregarding everything interesting because it's different, defeating the purpose of doing the research. In Ridley Scott's Gladiator they knew gladiators had business sponsorships and flyers, but excluded them, because audiences "would think that was silly" - I saw a whole video about how James Cameron had a small team of people working years to create unique ethnic music for Avatar's Na'avi aliens, based on tribal peoples from around the world, only to disregard it entirely for being too weird... The alien music.
You know during the second world war there were battleships painted with diagonal purple and pink stripes, like some kind of fruit-flavored candy cane? How is this not in a movie already?
We keep telling people to expand their minds, and pereceptions but consider the smallest of steps to be a bridge too far. And I'm sick of it. So many Hollywood movies want to humanize the middle east, but they don't want to show any of them living like the humans they personally know. Just sand and clay. Not one tree unless it's dead. Ridiculous
The question is who's doing the disregarding? I'm willing to bet a that a lot of the time the soundtrack composers might be a lot more open minded than whoever they're working for, and/or that other things such as budget/time constraints do not allow them to immerse themselves completely into the actual theory and deliver what they'd want to
@@OpticIlluzhion I'm surprised Farya doesn't recognize this, as his experience is that a project lead hires him, a Middle Eastern man, requests an authentically Middle Eastern soundtrack, and then discards what he delivers on the basis that it's not true to the "Middle Eastern sound" _they're looking for,_ and he even insinuated on some primary level that he _might_ be willing to produce that sound, so long as they aren't ignorant of what they ask. While it is probably true that most Hollywood composers are ignorant of foreign music, it's also true that they're not really in a position to put their foot down about any of it anyway
I think it's really telling how in the Hans Zimmer clip, Zimmer indicates that he is fully aware the duduk has nothing to do with Morocco. He straight up says it's Armenian. This knowledge evidently didn't make him rethink using it to represent Morocco.
@@Krixwell He is also one person
Well, if you were top Hollywood executive, you would probably do the same thing as they do.
Why? Because for every executive, the main purpose of their business model is to make money.
Therefore, executives are utterly scared of anything truly innovative and too much different, in any way, be it from storytelling, camera angles, music...
And the fact is that they are mostly right, and they are not idiots. They are constantly checking the pulse of the public, and feeding them with what they want.
So in a way, that's a kind of loop that's not so easy to break.
Only when critical mass of people starts noticing that they are constantly fed with same type of content and simply refuse to consume it, there will be chance for alternative to arise.
15:22
-Who are you to critique them?
*Starts grilling kebabs*
-Understandable, proceed with your critique, sir
The guy also speaks Farsi. What more do you need?]
Saw the kabobs, thought the same thing. I really just want his hair though.
Watching this at 4am and I want them so bad!
Nice Ermine pfp
@@KasumiRINA Шашлик, кебаб, сельвакі, якіторі. Смажене м'ясо на шампурі, чи паличці в тому, чи іншому вигляді існує у всіх народів світу, на середньому сході називається кебаб, кабаб, кабоб.
В Україні назва йде з Татарської мови.
being an Appalachian traditional musician, the juxtaposition of Cumberland Gap over a picture of soviet Russia has me in tears! lol! The level at which orientalist composers have lost the plot is so absurd!
The fact that the ‘Epic Scottish Battle Music - William Wallace’ actually went kinda hard when I stopped understanding it as totally incorrect really outlines how Orientalist music works, meaning its music that theoretically is good, just isn’t anywhere near what it is labeled as.
So to me, that begs the question: since this music is clearly enjoyed, and we can’t just snap our fingers and destroy it because we like it, is the solution simply renaming the genre to ‘Orientalist’ music? ‘Euro-Oriental Bastardization’?
@@cheezitboi4202 "Bastardization" is a loaded word, but yeah I think that's one valid solution. Just have the orientalist sound be separate from the actual Middle Eastern variety of sounds
@@Anton15243 Bastardization is a loaded I understand, however it really gets across the point that it’s a not so nice ‘interpretation’ or even recreation of music that exists. It’s just the word I could think of when writing the post, I apologize
@@cheezitboi4202 i think the thing to do would be to normalize using stylistic traits typically associated with orientalist music in other kinds of music with the hope of eventually breaking the association. though i say that mainly because i want to play guitar solos in double harmonic major cause it sounds pretty
As a Scottish person, I am amazed how well you nailed our william wallace grouse-pop bonjour hasta la morgen dziękuję style
Ahaha! Sei un genio comico, je suis mort de rire! Ты молодец! Das ist so gut gefunden. Köszönöm! Και καλή ημέρα!
😂😂😂
Also a Scottish person, I totally agree!
I might only be Scottish descended, but I can still feel myself transported back to the land of my ancestors. I can almost perfectly imagine the smell of some famous Scottish pierogi alfredo being cooked up in the kouzína my great great abuela. ❤
@@robertgibb6990 Prost! pierogi alfredo pesto beans😋😋 just like abuela von Trapp used to make.
As an American, this makes me mad - why does Hollywood insist on treating us all like idiots?
because the people in charge of the entertainment business ARE idiots
Well, if Americans are watching every single Marvel movie while gorging on copious amount of popcorn at cinema, I guess the bills checks out and brings out profit
there's more idiots than smart people. If you want quality, you gotta spend some effort to find it. It's a shame how real quality *isn't* mainstream, but that's how it is.
Well we keep paying money to see slop like the 20th fast and furious movie. Maybe we should raise our standards and vote with our wallets
Imagine how much depth and color the world building for movies would be with real culture... We could actually learn to appreciate other cultures without even knowing it.
Because all in all as a society we are idiots. Just look what composes the top music charts across America and other western countries. To listen to good music, we need to look underground, or at least outside the mainstream culture
I was just talking to my wife about how one of the hardest things about getting older is learning all the "History" and "Culture" we were taught in school, games, films, and documentaries was 99% B.S. When I choose to really study a culture I find music and food to be invaluable tools to really get a feeling for the heart of a culture. I've recently discovered that there has been a HUGE gap in my historical knowledge of the Middle East, and this video has been one of the best videos for (apologies for the term) "mythbusting" one of the biggest myths we've been told to just accept as fact as a westerner. Thank you!
Definitely not to the same scale, but I find this relatable being from Arizona in the USA. We're famous for being a hot desert, but we also have the largest ponderosa pine forest in the world cutting through the state. And we have snowy mountains too. The city of Flagstaff is higher in elevation situated between snowy, volcanic mountains at a higher elevation than Denver, Colorado. Our ski season just ended a few days ago on June 1st. Not too many people realize you can regularly ski and snowboard in Arizona in May because when they think Arizona they imagine dry dirt, 110+ºF (~43.3ºC) temperatures and saguaro cactus.
Even then, we have the desert of the Colorado plateau in the North/Northeast, the Mojave desert in the Northwest, and the Sonoran desert in the south... and They're all pretty different from each other in terms of landscape, plants, animals, etc.
Almost inversely to this, people also think saguaro cactus as just being a plant you find in deserts. It's the stereotypical cartoon cactus. It's the emoji. 🌵But it only actually grows in the Sonoran desert. So they pretty much ONLY be found in the Mexican state of Sonora and the southern half of Arizona.
Similarly Ohio is often thought of as just corn fields
BUT
They also grow soy in them for crop rotation
Song name?
Hollywood: Duduk - Sandstorm
Reminds me of "Tiki" culture. A strange american imagined "polynesian" aesthetic, consisting of a hodgepodge of cultural products of various different peoples, totally unrelated to eachother, and with nothing in common, other than there shared exoticism in the western mind. There was also a musical component of this, with entire records of "sounds of Polynesia" type stuff, that is in no way actually representative of that peoples music.
I feel like tiki is less aggressively racist and more ignorantly nostalgic.
Actually, the term "tiki" comes from the Maori mythology of New Zealand, where it refers to the first men created by the gods. Tiki sculptures, which are usually modified representations of men, originated in the Marquesas Islands and are a significant part of French Polynesian culture. Tiki figures are often carved from wood and have spiritual and symbolic significance.
Tiki culture is an American art, music, and entertainment movement that began in 1933 with the opening of Don's Beachcomber, a Polynesian-themed restaurant and bar in Hollywood, California. The restaurant is considered the first tiki bar and is credited with inspiring tiki culture, which is a mix of elements from different Polynesian, Melanesian, and Micronesian cultures. Tiki culture is known for its elaborate cocktails, mugs, and clothing.
Tiki culture has spread beyond the United States, with tiki restaurants and cocktail bars opening in Europe, including Kanaloa in London and Palm Beach in Berlin
@prime-viscosity absolutely!! I have studied Maori and Polynesian carving techniques extensively and I utilize them in my artwork. All I was saying is I feel like oriantalism comes from a more ignorant and racist viewpoint rather than for admiration and nostalgia. US servicemen were just trying to emulate their experiences they had in the south pacific whereas oriantalism is totally divorced from lived experience. Oriantalism exists purely in the imagination of the western composer it is not trying to capture the experience of travel to Iran or Turkey or wherever.
It’s appropriation. Flattening a whole bunch of different cultures into a cardboard cutout so that outsiders of those cultures can make money. They are completely inaccurate often times disrespectful and always dehumanizing. It is the same as orientalism in many ways, including the history context of war and colonization of the exotified group. It removes and destroys pacific cultures reducing them to easy to consume stereotypes, not harmless, not trivial, and definitely not innocent in any way.
@@jimbocowman511 Apologies, my comment was directed towards the OP. You confused me though, in your initial comment you said you feel that tiki stuff is not aggressively racist, but rather ignorantly nostalgic; and then your second comment kinda switches on that point- was that a typo or am I being a big dunce?
This topic reminds me so much of the USA and Canada's strange fixation and utter ignorance of Indigenous tribes and languages that live on the same soil that they're on. Every single nuance and beauty across the span of hundreds of groups is entirely boiled down to "shamanism" and "spirit animals"; when the vast diversity of culture from one geographical area to another have a totally different language, set of customs, and history. I find it strange that we now see items like "home decor" pipes, sacred items, and sage smudging kits being sold on websites like Amazon to market on this weird obsession that a large amount of people have with the "mysticism" of Indigenous culture. I'm Ojibwe, and I've seen my fair share of caricatures of "the Indian culture" throughout my life, which typically boils down to the most "aesthetically pleasing" parts of our culture being taken and paraded around by uninformed people, while they ignore all of the reasons why these things exist. It's infuriating to always see the caricature, and the mass population believing the caricature is how it really is. A lot of modern Americans and Canadians really only see two major demographics in pop-culture based on location. Anything south of Hudson's Bay lived in tiipiis, and anything north of Hudson's Bay lived in igloos.
It's infuriating, but I think Hollywood made it this way because the big suits in entertainment refuse to believe that their audience is smart enough to understand that multiple Indigenous cultures even exist.
By Hudson are you referring to the one in America or the one in Canada?
@@somethingcraft3148 The absolutely massive body of water in Canada that slices off a huge chunk of Ontario, Manitoba, Nunavut, and Quebec.
Oh, don't forget about how once you cross the border into Mexico, you aren't seen as indigenous, you're just vaguely Brown
oh wow, just from the examples you have of actual middle-eastern music, there's so much complexity on the melodies and how the instruments are played that it's like an instrument is a whole band on its own!
As a person who is only half Scottish, has never been to Scotland, and knows nothing about Scottish culture, your William Wallace Epic Scottish Battle Music changed my perception of my ancestry and rekindled the flame of my heart, causing me to rush directly out of my door playing the bagpipes in order to procure a plaid kilt. Thank you.
I don't about you but I'm going to watch Braveheart with this soundtrack playing. After he screams "THEY'LL NEVER TAKE OUR FRRREEEDOM!!" and this rises with the cheers of the raging Scotsmen? Yes. It is as literally accurate as that movie.
@@lucinda3964 pirating braveheart as we speak (ive never watched it)
A bheil fèileadh mhòr agad a-nis?
@@ChrisPorterMusic it's in the video at 42:02
You couldn't be a more stereotypical picture of someone who thinks they're Scottish but isn't even if you tried
I remember going to a Persian store out of curiosity when I was about 12. I asked for traditional music, thinking that I would like it based on my exposure to the "World music" genre of the 90s an early 2000s. The woman at the counter explained to me that since I can't understand the poetry, Persian classical music wouldn't be very interesting for me. I thought, "she doesn't understand the authenticity of my fascination and affinity for other cultures". Then I listened to it... I was UTTERLY bewildered. I kept waiting for the music to start only to find that the entire thing felt endless and like I had nothing to grasp onto besides brief periods when slow percussion appeared. It didn't fit my naive idea of 'Middle Eastern', it just sounded.... foreign in a way that I had never been exposed to and couldn't anticipate.
That same year I ended up studying the Baha'i religion and sought out the local community of mostly Iranian practitioners. I noticed that when I heard Persians chant Baha'i prayers, it was similar to the classical Persian cassette I bought, and gave a tiny bit of context to it. I realized the music was intended to be contemplative and to convey some deeper poetic meaning. So, I began exploring a lot of different genres of Iranian music more and more, still kind of trying to find what I thought it should be, only to fall in love with this revelation of sounds I'd NEVER heard before and didn't know I'd find. I realized that Iranian music isn't really part of the Western imagination, even as a trope, and what we think of as Middle Eastern is typically a Disney Aladdin mish-mash of South-East Asian and Arabic stereotypes.
Bahai is a interesting religion, you don't hear about it very often. I first heard of it in a Onion skit 😂.
Thanks for sharing your experience, that sounds neat.
"I realized the music was intended to be contemplative and to convey some deeper poetic meaning"
My exact epiphany I had when I was 16 and listened to progressive death metal for the first time xD. It was fun to see you had a similar reaction to something else. Have a nice day ♥
@@RadenWA Persian classical music is usually in service to poetry, which is not religious in nature. The majority of a suite consists of ‘avaz’, which is non-metered vocal pieces with usually one instrumental accompaniment. This has nothing to do with Islam. Regional/folk music and everyday music can often be rhythmic and danceable.
@@RadenWAYou have no understanding of islam at all it's actually bewildering
Islam doesn't forbid music you
It forbids it being played over prayer and wake up calls for prayer
I hope you fed your camel today brother. As everyone knows the Dasht-e Kavir covers the whole of Iran and without a well fed camel we cannot travel. 🐪
I died of laughter at the "How to write orientalist music" segment.
I'm a young composer who is deeply interested in historically informed practice and faithful representation. Thank you so much for your work making this info accessible!
Alternative title: Farya Vs the Duduk
Farya Vs Italian Americans
The Duduks of Hazzard?
Farya vs Scimitars
As an Armenian, even when totally misplaced, I’m glad the duduk is at least recognized as an Armenian sound/instrument. I have very low standards. 😁
@@parap7697 And that's the problem. Nobody's recognising it as Armenian. Most think it's Arabic.
I'm not Indian, but I grew up listening to a lot of Indian classical music because my parents enjoyed it. The closest I came to the painful cringe you describe feeling from nonsense Orientalist music is a vague sense of unease when I heard Southeast Asian percussion used in 'Ancient Arabic Persian Desert Market' songs in Western movie soundtracks. Your beautiful composition, "William Wallace Epic Scottish Battle Music," has changed me: I get it now. I've experienced true pain. Also it was hilarious, please make more Occidentalist music.
I second the need for more Occidentalist music. I want to hear Banjos in Roman Army music alongside that Harpsichord. Throw in some non-historical throat singing, and we can call it "Battle of the Teutoberg Forest Epic Battle Music"
most japanese RPGs are full of occidentialism!
It's a hilarious and ironic example because we already have our own "William Wallace" movie full of wildly inaccurate music. It's called Braveheart. The entire soundtrack is played on Irish uilleann pipes. There's even an iconic scene where a scottish bagpiper is seen standing on a hill holding a set of highland pipes, playing "outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes." But instead of highland pipes he's playing... soft, friendly, lilting irish music on irish pipes. Real highland pipes sound harsh as hell and burst eardrums. It's comically well-known among westerners that scottish bagpipes sound like a cross between a screaming pterodactyl and a fire alarm. The tone is not friendly and calming at all. It's also worth mentioning that Uilleann pipes wouldn't even be invented for another five hundred years. _In Ireland!_
If they wanted the soundtrack to be soft and friendly then they should have used harp music. Harp players were EVERYWHERE. They were the storytellers and the lore keepers of their day--extremely important people. This fact is not generally known now because England went about systematically killing off all the harpists in the 17th century. You'd think a movie like Braveheart would've embraced this history to show the audience how badly the English destroyed celtic culture, but this was left out as an oversight because the composers and directors are just that lazy about this stuff. Even on a big budget western soundtrack written by a western composer, they're still just chucking darts at a board and calling it a day.
@@pirojfmifhghek566 I mean we are talking about a movie that featured 14th century Scottish people dressed as 2nd century Picts (wearing kilts that wouldn't be invented for another 300 years), shipped William Wallace with a woman who would have been 13 and living in France at the time, depicted everyone involved as downtrodden peasants rather than privileged nobles, and began with a title card setting the plot ten years too early. Even the name of the film is wrong, as it steals the moniker of "Braveheart" from Robert the Bruce, who it wrongfully portrays as a traitor. The entire film is an affront to history.
@@CodyosVladimiros ok but real talk? the "make all kinds of wild and disconnected instruments fit together" is absolutely my jam aha. Put bagpipes and synths with some sitar and a harpsichord and then an electric guitar aha. Plus a pan pipes solo and some Bulgarian choirs. I am all for that shit.
Thanks sm for this, bro. As a half-Persian person raised in the US all my life, I have always felt really disconnected to my dad's culture. I still always felt something off about this pseudo-Persian/Arabic/Egyptian music and I appreciate you for hashing out why in this video. big props to you and thanks for making this! definitely an insta-subscribe here!
I am about 48 minutes in and so far I want to say that I love your video’s pace, and balance of info/comedy. I’ve been watching TH-cam video essays for over a decade and I just really appreciate how you use the skits/comedic bits to highlight the info that you deliver. Hard to articulate, but I think you are doing a great job.
Before your video I had an awareness of orientalism (an intro anthropology class from college gave a brief introduction of Edward Said) where we talked about Dune and orientalism in movies, but I never made the connection to desert level music.
Thank you for your effort
One thing I really dislike about orientalist music (and orientalism in general tbh) is that it makes it harder to find music that's actually from "those" regions of the world or representative of "those" cultures, from my westerner position at least
The most popular sources I can access in the languages that I can speak so far are oversaturated with these generic, orientalist "oasis shawarma vibes" music
I like to play instrumental music when I'm doing work. I choose my videos based on vibe (do i want 80s vaporwave? Do i want folksy hippie? Etc). I do have some "arabian oud" music that was recommended and it's basically the same digital tune looping over again. Now that this video has opened my eyes, I'm going to delete them from my playlist. If i want Saudi instrumentals or Persian instrumentals, i want the real thing, not an orientalist interpretation which is basically a stereotype
yeahh i looked up persian music on youtube, and i had to dig rreally far into the search results to find any real iranian music
Agree. And some of that music is beautiful. But I would like to find lists of great music that is original. I found some, but it"s hard to get.
Exactly! There used to be a Spotify bot account I think or something similar to an algorithm based spotify playlist creator called "The sound [country + genre] and it was really great!
As a kurd, who lives in the middle east, even I have been westernised and my tastes white washed, so finding music through Spotify playlists really helped a lot.
That said, those tools are mostly exclusive to modern music, "ancient" folk and instrumental music are still underrepresented in our digital age. It's so hard to find something like that if you don't speak the language of the culture ur looking for :(
Start with Layth Sidiq, possibly the world's best violinist in the Arab music tradition (and also an excellent Western classical and jazz violinist), and then let the TH-cam algorithm take you from there. Also see videos of the Arab National Orchestra. Key search words would include "maqam," "microtones," and traditional Arab instruments such as the oud, qanun, and ney.
th-cam.com/video/LB6qWnqiDYU/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/vABZdfnqqqM/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/H-CxR5X94iQ/w-d-xo.html
"Prisencolinensinainciusol" is a song by Italian artist Adriano Celentano, and I think he encapsulates exactly what you're talking about. He made a song that the lyrics were complete gibberish, but they sounded "American" so the Italian youth who loved rock music but didn't speak English thought it was great. It kinda proved that as long as you have the right "vibe," people will dig it.
Personally, I think it's an awesome song and, in some ways, very ahead of it's time with they way they looped the beat and horns.
@@KasumiRINA I had no idea Celentano was so popular over there! I've always loved "Il Ragazzo Della via Gluck".
in his defense, if there were actual words, then I'd say it would be authentic. If he wanted Americana, he nailed it.
That song is awesome and catchy as fuck
@@KasumiRINAno one here called him "some italian artist" my guy
I just listened to this song for the first time, it's hilarious:)
Firstly, I thank you deeply for this video. My mother used to dance to Turkish belly dance when she was younger. She danced to "George Abdo and His Flames of Araby." As an 8-year-old kid, I became quite overwhelmed by the sounds I was hearing off her old cassette tapes as she would go into her next move. I couldn't get enough of it. When I grew older, all I could find were these "sound tracky" things in video games and films throughout my young life, leaving my mom's tapes as something to relish over. Not hearing it any place else. My fascination grew over the course of my life. I searched the ends of every record store out there. George Abdo is a very incredible man and I have all his albums as of yet! As a 38-year-old painter and sculptor, I also spread the awareness of the art of listening rather than consuming music as many do today. This creates a vicious cycle between the creators of today's music and how the public interacts with it. Listening is much an art as well as creating it. The greatest things in life are not handed to us, we must seek them out and make new discoveries! Your music is everything I crave as a westerner. This was a much-needed video!!
I recommend a piece called "Ruh Tum bi Salama " by George Abdo and His Flames of Araby.
Orientalism is a symptom of greater problems within western media - that being the laziness, lack of passion, lack of creativity, and/or lack of faith in their audience that leads to heavy use stereotypes and misconceptions regarding history, culture, architecture, climate, politics, clothing, you name it.
Inaccuracy in art can be good when it's *intentional*, but that's the crux of the matter. Most of the time it's inaccurate because people think it isn't.
And racism
@@yasmataz616 kinda? The thing is this happens all the time in things like european historical media - white people also fuck over white people, so the racism isn't applicable in all cases.
Orientalism in particular has roots in racism, though.
More than Western media I would say American media, they are the only ones who made movies and TV series watched all around the world and they stereotype Europeans too, for example I'm Italian and I heard that in other countries around the world, especially outside of Europe, they link us with the mafia because they heard talking of Italians only in American movies about the mafia
@@yasmataz616Ah yes, “I think you are inferior to me in every way as a human being, but let me totally copy your aesthetics and music.” Totally checks out.
I think the only reason The Vikings wasn't cancelled for the way they portrayed the sami people was that the sami people aren't better known. Had they done the same to native Americans... They used a stereotype of the sami people being overly sexual, and made them look like "innocent natives" who for some reason only fight using slingshots and Southern American blowpipes with poison darts. Also the sami man was played by an English actor, if I remember correctly.
Though TBH my pet peeve with that series was how they made Uppsala (a famous, ancient *coastal* Swedish *city* ) into a temple in the mountains - assumed still in Norway, as the characters never referred to anything Swedish.
As a Finnish person I tried to watch an old Hollywood movie about our winter war, but it was such crap that I didn't get much past the Alps and the lederhosen.
I’m from ruralish America and have almost entirely European ancestry. I remember distinctly the first time I heard the term orientalism in a sociology class in college. I remember asking more and more questions because I just could not grasp the concept. They kept showing visual examples or trying to to describe it and I felt dumb, but I just had no idea what it was referring to. I understood theoretically what they meant, but I just couldn’t aesthetically process it…..it took a long time before I realized every. Single. Concept I had access to of the Middle East was orientalist. Every piece of art or music or imagery that came to mind. Even whatever accurate, reflective piece of culture I’d experienced from any part of the Middle East had been flattened by my internal concept into an orientalist mishmash. Jesus Christ. What a surreal realization
How enlightened of you to think so. I’m sure they try just as hard, using ridiculous academic concepts that are impossible to apply pragmatically, to understand our culture and history. Most people are aware of the lens of internal bias and prejudice through which they view the world, yet they simply do not care. How it took you so long to realize, I do not know, as your country has demonized via the media machine, and invaded the orient under the guise of the ‘Global War on Terror’. You probably learned of the concept of an ‘other’ in sociology class, where were you the last 30 years when it was being created by your country? What did this ‘surreal realization’ even grant you?
This is one we keep in the personal growth diary
@@jhd303 okay, but it's good to share real experiences of growth like this one, because they can be the most helpful to people who are still at that stage. It gives them a direct example of behavior that they can relate to, and it shows that change is possible. It's a form of showing hope and positive change.
@@jhd303 I'm not sure what your problem is here because there is nothing wrong with this comment.
Good way to understand orientalism is to recognise it as a depiction of the Middle East and North Africa that is designed in a way to justify the West's personal colonialist aspirations and politics towards Arabs
I had this EXACT problem as a Westerner. At one point years ago I started wondering if "oriental" music was made in any key other than double harmonic minor, and for the life of me couldn't figure out how to find anything authentic. Like, as an utter layman, any search words I could think of kept taking me back to the same nonsense no matter how hard I tried.
breaking out of TH-cam algorhytm is a chore. Start liking small, very small videos with very few views, watch them without skipping. The smaller the video, the better. If algorhytm puts you into a basket "this dude is watching REALLY niche stuff" then be ready to see completely different, shadow TH-cam you couldn't see before. Yes, it's THAT crazy.
Man I love dungeon synthwave
@@exquisitecanineaficionado
What you need to do is to translate what you want to search to the native language.
Then you escape algorithm by logging out your account or you can use VPN too.
@@exquisitecanineaficionadoThe flip side of this is that TH-cam tends to convince itself that you only want at most one or two specific niches at a time... TH-cam seems designed to discourage watching a variety of content.
Well if you count East Asia as oriental, Japan has its own scale or two.
I was under the impression that "traditionnal" middle eastern music was scarce because non-alcoholic music has widely been considered haram and against Islam since it's beginning over a thousand years ago, which is longer ago than most music we have
*Edit, non-a cappella music
Btw guys, totally relate to this TH-cam algo stuff, great advice
Love hopping into a video essay on a topic I know nothing about and realizing just how wrong my preconceptions were. Keep up the good work, I hope to learn more from you in the future.
Orientalism seems mostly like a strawmen argument for western superiority. In order to make the western culture superior, they reduced the other cultures as a simplified caricature. Originally it was done very purposefully, in order to justify colonialism. Now I think most of it is just adhering to the status quo without questioning it.
(Loved this video, it was really great)
As a half Balkan Turk, half Pakistani who plays the baglama, I cannot count the amount of times someone told me to play "arabic music"
What music do you play to them?
@@kito9694 Pashto 💀
@@kito9694 Turkish
Mr.Worldwide ahh background
@@ayyylmao101 LMAO
I remember the Arabic Nokia ringtone that became viral, and someone turned it into an “epic”, orchestral piece… And its microtonality was changed into the most cliched “Eastern”-sounding progression 😭
They made a phase two as well, and it’s just as generic and flat 😭
Isn't the original piece the ringtone was modelled after way better anyway? Like, I listened to all these videos and the "epic orchestral" piece just... sounded boring af
@@DarthLenaPlant The original song is called "يا طرشي" by the way
that song goes so hard (the nokia version)
@@porcupinepunch6893 uh I can't copypaste this on mobile yt, how do you spell it in Latin script
WOAH the violin part. I had no idea it was so versatile that's awesome
A rare TH-cam algorithm W
I've been looking EVERYWHERE for good middle eastern music, and most of it are these pseudo-arabic songs. They can be good, but not what I was looking for. Hopefully your channel can help me find some real classics :)
Honestly, Orientalist music reminds me of this brand of chips in America called "Veggie Straws." They have a picture of vegetables on the bag and say things like "Enjoy a healthy snack made with real vegetables" but then you look at the ingredients and it's literally just potato chips with less salt. You can certainly enjoy them, I love them, but at the end of the day it is just potato chips with a bunch of vegetables on the bag
Great video!
Damn. I really thought those were healthy as a kid lol
@@isaiahromero9861 Lol, I mean, it has less sodium technically and potatoes are a vegetable but it is basically just potato chips
@@babula1965 I didn't even think about the fact that potato chips are ALREADY technically made with real vegetables lmao that's honestly genius marketing if you think about it
You can't forget the green and orange food colouring, that's pretty key xD
@@KoruGo part of a complete breakfast
Hollywood has done the same thing with our own Native American culture. Only recently has Hollywood begun to use Native American actors to portray Native Americans in movies.
What do you mean?
Blue eyed people that Nazis would consider to be ubermench and Native Americans look so alike!
(sarcasm)
@@danubeisreallypeculiarrive7944 lol this reminds me of a time in one of my college classes, when my professor asked if there were any any Native American students in the class and a very white European American boy raised his hand and I was just looking at him utterly confused lol.
What about Dances with Wolves?
@@MesserMusic dances with wolves plays into nearly every stereotype of the noble savage and the dead indian. hell, the lead actress is an irish catholic white woman, but at least they filled out most of the rest of the indians with, you know, actual indians
@@MesserMusicDances With Wolves IS a very recent movie, when considering the ~80 years of hollywood history that preceded it
When i was in music school, I Was told that middle eastern musical tradition was generally just minor or augmented. That was the most i got out of being told about Middle eastern music traditions, with only some clarification provided for traditional jewish musics on a case-by-case basis. But even those arrangements were done in a Phrygian. I Remember when i tried to bring my ethnic background into my studies people told me it just sounded like Gypsy music. I Wish in conservatories and other contemporary music schools we got a more interesting exploration of cultural music that i've spent the last 4 years since leaving school to try and find. Happy i found this channel, thank you for giving me a window into microtones, and also, incredible balkan compositions! I Had actually heard one of your arrangements in a festival before and would have never thought it from outside of that background.
I was preparing food with this video playing on my iPad . I had to stop when I heard your mother singing. Got goosebumps. Had to stop , wash my hands and pause the video to read who is singing. Such a beautiful voice
So if eastern music's strength is the variety of mods, does it mean it's a Bethesda game?
Todd Howard invented the Middle-East
"All of it just works"
@@MarvinT0606 lol
@@faryafaraji Hammerfell just might be the most immersive Elder Scrolls region since they had so much practice with the Middle East.
With your "European William Wallace epic Scottish western music" example I nearly fell out of my chair😂😂😂
Same, I just keep replaying it and I die laughing every time. I think especially because of how the opera vocals are on the off-beat of the instrumentals.
*Add Bulgarian chants and an aulos for the hell of it, because hey, vibes.
Also because I like the aulos.
It's almost good in a kitbash sort of way.
As a European I really felt I was supposed to be offended, which really makes the point even clearer but in a funny way. Love it
It was high key a bop imo
This video makes my mindset feel very validated. Especially as diversity has become a rising factor in our media I’ve been very mindful of the “status quo” we attribute to a lot of these exquisitely rich cultures and it breaks my heart because I’ll attempt to search deeper but a lot of the time for many reasons it’s just entirely inaccessible. So thank you so much for what you’re doing with this channel, the world needs more people doing what you’re doing.
this the first 1.5h explanatory video that I didn't skip a word of. Well done 👏
To defend western composers for games and movies a little bit is that they're usually not the creative be all end all for the projects they're working on and have to navigate around temp music and project lead expections. Which means that even if they go out and do their research and put a lot of effort into creating authentic music their demos might just get shut down and they're told to do what's familiar.
While not specific to Orientalist music, one of the biggest examples to me is the Soundtrack of Avatar. Composer James Homer worked with ethnomusicologist Wanda Bryant for like two years to create a unique sound for the Na'vi and virtually none of their work made it into the final movie and what did make it in was extremely watered down because everything they came up with was shut down for being too alien.
In general the amount of work and effort that went into the world building of Avatar is absolutely unhinged. A fully developed Na'vi language, various scientists hired to make sure that the world was as plausible as it could be. Every plant, every animal, every piece of tech has detailed background information. And it was all wasted on a movie that boils down to "Pocahontas but blue".
Imagine shutting down demos for being "too alien" when we're dealing with a culture of actual aliens. I wish it was possible to re-discover some of those.
There is some dramatic irony in the making of the movie, how it ended up reinforcing the "noble savage" and orientalist/exoticising myth it originally tried to deconstruct
@@aimee9478 happened with the avatar soundtrack, they told horner to do something different so he did research in unknown music traditions and used those and almost all of it got thrown except one little vocal thingie going on in the background
@@tj-co9goI’m unconvinced they were committed to that.
@@tj-co9go
What the guy above said. I like Avatar, but the Na'vi were definitely the 'noble savage living one with nature and everything's perfect' and the humans were 'the evil, exploiting conquerors who only cares about money and other stuff the audience doesn't care about'.
I'm American Pakistani. when I was a kid I used to play a game called Medieval 2 total war. Being Muslim, I liked playing as the Muslim factions, especially since the overall vibe of literally anyone I knew who played it was "deus vult" and the Muslim factions were pretty much the underdogs (also horse archers). Being of a Pakistani background and speaking Urdu (a language that is almost completely intelligible with Hindi) I listened to a lot of Bollywood music and watched a lot of Bollywood movies. Playing the game I was genuinely shocked by how Desi it sounded. Some of the vocals were straight up Urdu-Hindi words. I'm not well versed in explaining musical compositions and patterns, but being of the culture, I know what cultures we're similar to, and we're not very similar to people from Morocco or Egypt. I brought it up with some people I played the game with and their reaction was literally 20:36. It annoyed the living shit out of me because it wasn't somewhat wrong, it was completely wrong.
@@dwarasamudra8889he meant more like using Indian instruments and composition style, but it is not pure Indian music it's more like a fusion style
Glad I took a chance on this video, it's definitely opened my eyes into a reality that I was unaware of before.
Man! I am not even Eastern, I am Mexican, and I totally understand!
(Sorry in advance about the massive wall of text)
Mexican music is so misrepresented all the time with maracas and tropical music not original to Mexico played over Mexican scenery or supposed Mexican scenery (sometimes filmed in the USA by the way and even in the same state, California, as Hollywood), sometimes the music is entirely foreign to Mexico with Cuban Guaguancó, Cuban Guajira, Guaracha, Antillean and Caribbean Rumba, Salsa, Merengue, Cha-Cha-Chá, Mambo, Bachata, Reggae, Calypso, Tumba, Soca, Zouk, and a large list of etceteras. Sure, Mexico has adopted, adapted and mixed many of these musical cultures into its own cultures over the decades but still, much of the music from these other regions still have their very own distinct styles, sounds and characteristics that sets them apart, and of course instruments, instrumentations and rhythms not used in Mexican styles and genres, which people from the USA don't seem to get at all, or don't seem to care enough to investigate about them.
A lot of times media represents Mexico with music taken straight out of Cuban music catalogues, Dominican, Puerto Rican or any other Spanish-speaking country, even Spanish music, like from Spain, a country in literally a different continent: Europe, it's not even funny anymore, (let me remind you that Spain is 9,000 kilometers from Mexico, across the Atlantic Ocean) or music played by any Latin group like New York-based, Miami-based and Florida-based artists like, I don't know, Gloria Stefan or Marc Anthony, with no ties to Mexico. I am referring to their music, not versions covered by Mexican artist or similar renditions; I mean they use music from those countries and artist literally. All of this is somewhat understandable even, with how many similarities our musical traditions and cultures have between them, but USA media gets it so wrong that they sometimes use music so dissimilar and from so far away that one starts to wonder if they even go out of their way to specifically get the wrong kind of music, like with Colombian cumbia, Venezuelan music or even in some cases I've come across, Chilean folk music and Argentinian gaucho music used in scenes with "Mexico", let me remind you that Argentina and Chile are so far away from us, here in the Northern hemisphere, that they are literally the closest countries to Antarctica. It's mindblowing how wrong they can get it sometimes, I wonder if tv show and movie producers just turn on their computers and search for "Spanish music" and take a few of the first searches and just slap them over whatever project they're working on, no second thought given.
There's so much beautiful traditional and native music to Mexico, starting with all the native indigenous musical expressions like all the Pápago, Yaqui, Mayo, Cora, Huasteca, Otomí, Mixteca, Zapoteca, Tarahumara, Rarámuri, Maya Music, among hundreds of others, as well as criolla and mestiza music, traditional popular music like Ranchero, Caporal, Mariachi, Son Huasteco, Son Jarocho, Jarana, Tambotra, the orchestral music of Moncada, Moncayo, Revueltas, Chávez, Huízar, Rolón, Julián Carrillo, the great Vernacular, Folk and Popular artists and artists-composers like Juan Gabriel, José Alfredo Jiménez, Javier Solís, Miguel Aceves Mejía, Luis Aguilar, Antonio Aguilar, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Vargas, Pedro Infante, José José, Lola Beltrán, Chavela Vargas, Matilde Sánchez, Amalia Mendoza, and this is just mentioning a handful of notable musicians, artists, genres and styles; Mexican musical tradition and cultures is very rich and has so much history, and it just seems like people can't get to know all these rich tarditions and styles of music, but it doesn't stop with music, of course.
I live in the same region of the planet as USA and Hollywood: North America, so I also have the same regional, geographic and cultural features as many locations in the USA and Canada and still Hollywood portrays Mexico as a huge desert, when its as diverse if not more diverse ecologically and environmentally as the USA, with many rich ecosystems biomes and cultural areas, and with all types of urban and rural imagery, with huge cities with skyscrapers, bursting with life, movement, transport and large parks, trains, subways, like my hometown of Guadalajara or Monterrey or Mexico City, which by the way Mexico city is at a high altitude, surrounded by a pine tree forest and snowy mountains, you would have to drive for hours and hours to get anywhere near a desert, and my hometown is sort of embraced by a pine tree forest, framed by forests, waterfalls and a ravine/canyon, and less than an hour away I can go mountain climbing and go to the Colima volcano and get to spend time in the snow and permafrost.
Not all Mexico is jungles and desserts, if you were here in my hometown you would have to actually drive about 15 hours across the country to get to an actual jungle, for example, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not a real portrayal of the country in a way which makes it realistic, interesting and lived in, on the contrary, media representation makes the country feel flat, one-dimensional and empty, boring, with the typical yellow tint and dirty gritty dessert aesthetic.
Sure, there's a very gritty and unkempt, wild, desolate and isolated side to Mexico, like any other country in the world, of course, but there's more to Mexico, its people and its culture than what people are lead to believe through modern Western media. There's a lot that people miss from Mexico because of the disingenuous and misleading portrayal of Mexico as a crime-filled wasteland or a torn down urbanized dessert area with scattered villages and half-demolished houses around or a jungle filled with uneducated and primitve people, while in reality you can find beautiful forests, snowy mountains, countryside vineyards and villas, 5 star hotels by the seaside, cities that may remind you of Los Angeles or New York or any other major city and even national parks to go camping and hiking, where you could walk and walk for days between the meddows, forest, rivers and mountains, not unlike many hot spots for camping, trail hiking and siteseeing in the US. On top of that Mexico has some of the biggest, densest tropical jungles, tropical forests and jungles in all of the world with some of the most beautiful and diverse flora and fauna as well as some of the most biodiverse and beatiful deserts too.
Even living in North America, not even outside the same continent and region as the US, with Hollywood being not even 150 miles from Mexico, literally, they get it wrong, so, we understand and I dare even say it's more frustrating with the USA being the country next door, which many of us have been to. I have been to the USA and Canada and I can tell you that many of these places, natural areas as well as cities, and are not that dissimilar from what you could find in Mexico and I have experienced first hand the unawareness, ignorance and missunderstanding about my country coming from USA people who sometimes live a few miles from Mexico. I have to say this is more of a cultural thing, of people from places like the USA, (I only speak out of personal experience about the USA and I don't know much about the general knowledge of other peoples) who don't know, are uninformed and/or don't care about learning from other places and cultures, even right next to them, so yeah, no surprise there, unfortunately.
Wow, that is a massive amount of googling for me, ¡muchísimas gracias!
Funnily enough, this even applies to traditional Western\European music, in the imagination of the 'average' Western\European consumer\music producer. The "Medieval" music, as it is often rendered in modern media, usually bears little resemblance to the actual European Medieval music, whether folk or institutional
itual.
Because the average consumer\music producer just couldn't care less..
And even more, the common medieval clichés, from society to material culture, are often just that, deeply ingrained clichés, and not really medieval at all. And if they are medieval, they freely mix a thousand years of history and various regions together in a big stew.
I lose my shit every time I look for medieval music and find dungeon synth instead
That's one thing I like about the bardcore genre, since it has an actual genre name and usually just parodies existing pop music, more people seem to be aware that it's not historically accurate. On the other hand the orientalist music issue is just as rampant as Farya stated
Hey I happen to like oldschool rpg style fakedieval music. It has a charm of it's own.
@@LaurianeG.I found a 'bard style ' music mix on TH-cam once. Must confess I found it quite nice.
What's so frustrating about the excessive usage of the Duduk is that we have wind instruments that sounds just as mystic, raspy and eerie!!
The Gasba, The Zoukra and The Mezoued exists and they're played by actual tribesmen and Amazighi people! and they're VERY omnipresent in north african folk music and have an immense potential to be utilized.
FR
I'm not gonna lie I'm not interested in seeing/hearing myself through the lens or someone who thinks of us as "tribal, dirty and gritty"
@@Jolly_Jelly_ that just shows how much research and respect he shows toward anything that is not eurocentric, and the prejudice that comes with it.
I was so disappointed when i heard that he was the one in charge for the Dune soundtrack, and my concern can be heard through it
@@MarkHogan994 and the duduk is a fremen instrument.. like cmon lets stay in good faith and not pretending that Dune universe was created in a vaccum and doesnt wear its arabic influences on its sleeve. Even frank herbert admits it, and the books are pretty well researched and respectful of the cultures that served as the blueprint of Dune. I cant say that about the films im afraid as much as i liked them, they’re a neutered and diluted story of what Herbert was trying to tell, in fear of not being too gratting to western audiences
I’m not even middle-eastern, just a regular American, and I even find the duduk over used to the point that it’s grating. I am a composer, so maybe I’m more sensitive to these over use of the instruments and scales, but yes I found it just as grating way before I even saw this video. Just do something different Hollywood, it can’t be that hard!
this was so tremendously informative and interesting, i really appreciate the time and passion you’ve put into this
Iran has even more complex mythology then what even so many peesians know. The things you mentioned were from shahname, while if you go a bit back there is a complex polythiestic mythology that was practiced as mainstream up till sasanians. It's not just zoroastianism, there are polythiestic beliefs that are from before that. It's such a shame that it's nit recognize by more people, especially that it effected and infulenced/by so many other mythologies, we have mithra, originally from india but became a main diety in iran and went to rome to create the mysterious cult of mitra, we have anahita, originally from indian saraswati, that was influnced and influnced so many dieties, like venus and aphrodite to ishtar, we have the whole ahore mazda and angere manyu (ahriman), there's a sets of divs and ahuras fighting, similarily to diva and ashuras but like the good guys bad guys reversed, and finally zarvaniasm or zarvaniasm and how it was like a supressed cult for the most of anciet persian history, till sasanians, and these are all pre islamic. Sorry for yapping
Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit texts describe the same deities so it makes complete sense. But things have changed when the gods from India went to Iran. Asuras and devas are the classic examples as you mentioned where they have interchanged the meaning.
This reminds me so much of a short but very good talk by Rami Ismail. He spends just 20 minutes teaching the audience the basics of how to read Arabic script, then he shows some screenshots of popular games (like, military shooters and stuff), and even with only 20 minutes of learning, the audience can see immediately that the "Arabic script" in the screenshots are completely garbled and nonsense. It takes *so little* learning to do miles better than we have so far. It doesn't take long to show a little respect.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Therapist: "The Orientalist Camel isn't real, it can't hurt you..."
40:00 is a cinematic masterpiece
Holy moly what a great way to start the weekend spending over an hour watching this amazing video! thank you! cheers from italy
My BF and I sometimes play these Orientalist tracks and play a game "Where is this instrument actually from". We are Mediterranean/central European with no musical training whatsoever and even we figured out that these soundtracks are just a jumbled-up mish-mash of exotic-sounding instruments cramped together into a tune. Thanks for this video. I think I'll win the next round.
Have you heard the OST for Prince of Persia 2 on DOS? The adlib ost is very surprising because the composer did their best to try and replicate the articulations and sounds of actual Persian music, despite falling into some common pitfalls (it still uses that one scale a lot). I was reading the comments on a youtube upload of it and saw some people from Persia saying its far more accurate to actual Persian music than any other game music they had ever heard! You might find it intriguing, especially since it was all done with FM and rudimentary music software. I can't speak for it's accuracy because I know nothing about Persian music, but it sounds like its worth looking into.
Well I'll be damned, just listened to it and the composer even included microtonality. Had I known, I would've definitely included this in the positive examples
@@faryafaraji Also the new Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown worked with Iranian artist Mentrix for its soundtrack, with a core plot revolving around Simurgh and its feathers (which I assumed was inspired by the legend of Rostam's father?). There was a mini-doc called "Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown - A Musical Odyssey" detailing their composing process. That game actually brought me to your extremely educational and insightful channel. I'm deeply appreciative of this introduction to authentic oriental musical traditions and wish I could give your video multiple thumbups.
@@faryafarajion the topic of Prince of Persia the 2008 game did include Ahura Mazda and Ahriman as major parts of the plot. No idea how much cultural basis there is to the depiction though
I have been bellydancing for about 20 years, and early on, I began to notice there was *something* about the different types of music I was being exposed to in various classes. Sometimes the songs felt "real" and sometimes they felt "fake." I wasn't sure how else to describe it, I was in high school and had no knowledge of music theory or ethnomusicology. As I got older, I read Edward Said's "Orientalism," I studied the history of all the dances that made up "belly dance," and came to learn and identify the instruments and rhythms unique to different regions of the MENAT. Often times I was on my own searching for this stuff. I was afraid to ask dumb questions that would betray my ignorance, but I was eager to learn.
I would have killed to have seen this documentary when I was 16. It would have allowed me to articulate my feelings so much better, and give more power to that little voice in my head that wanted to scream "this is cringe," "something is wrong," "this ain't it," whenever I heard a song called "Eternal Arabia"
Dancers are often visual symbols of a culture's musical heritage. Understanding the music you're dancing to isn't just important -- it's the damn point.
Thank you so, so much for making this doc and posting it free on TH-cam, so hopefully other young dancers can have an easier time learning about the music they are dancing to.
I'm also picking up bellydancing (which also has been a great hook into learning more about rich middle-eastern cultures
As a fellow bellydancer, I have seen the same bullshit in Western "belly dance". Faked costuming with no regard for areas of origin; bindis on the forehead, a mishmash of jewellery from different areas, weird music and bad attitudes toward the cultures of origin. 60's and 70's white feminism has a lot to answer for here.
The minimum that belly dancers should do is educate themselves with the cultures and musical traditions of the regions that this dance draws from. Orientalism was the draw for me, then when I realized what Orientalism was, it was an invitation to really come to know these cultures.
You are right in that we do have a responsibility to accurately portray the cultures we aim to depict, there's just no getting around it if you love the dance. You dignify them if you present them authentic dance and understanding. There was no greater compliment that I have received as a dancer than when I was told by an Iranian musician that I danced to his music like I understood it in my body.
That being said, I mainly dance fusion, but in the right settings. Honor the rich traditions, and celebrate the artistry and innovation when appropriate.
And for goddsakes, please stop dancing to Arabian Nights! I don't care how good the version of the song is! It's peak cringe.
Thanks for posting this! I have 'belly danced' in the past, and had similar feelings but couldn't articulate them. Watching this video really gave me some great insights and thoughts of 'oh dear, I have really fallen into that trap'. And then feeling a bit ashamed for not realising sooner. Fantastic, clearly articulated and expressed video and so happy to see other belly dancers on here expressing much more eloquently what I am trying to say than I can. Looking forward to doing some reading and growing my understanding. Starting with the Edward Said :)
If you're a westerner I will kindly request you to stop doing it as it is an affront to everyone's eyes
I'm watching this with my wife, who is a video game producer, and maybe it'll come in handy someday. She seemed upset at all the disclaimers you had to give, which I agree with. It's kind of a disgrace people are so sensitive to having their assumptions questioned. Thanks for this incredible work!
This is the most thought provoking video I have watched in a long time. Thank you!
How am I supposed to sleep when Farya dropped an hour and a half long video essay?
Ha-haha. Wrong side of the globe. I enjoy it for breakfast
Time zones. I saw it after waking up
I literally didn't sleep for watching this.
Move to a different time zone!
......oh i hadn't looked at the runtime until i saw this comment LOL. i. Will have to come back to this video later ynnnng
When you talk about how orientalism has done western audiences dirty, I would like to add something else, as a Brazilian person: I think it does even more harm for people like me, from non-middle eastern third world countries.
We also get our culture misrepresented all the time, but not only that, we only have access to misrepresented versions of all the other cultures in the world except for the western, european and american culture.
All of us, third world countries, live in a different bubble, where we have access only to our own cultures and to the dominant culture in the world, and that makes it much harder for us to realise how much we’re being robbed of. If the entire world had access to the entire world, culturally, the western hegemony could not be mantained, they would not be able to be the main characters in all of our perceptions of the world.
Videos like this are very important, not only for middle easterners, americans and europeans, but also for east asians, africans, latin americans and more. When we learn about the diversity of the world, we become more free ourselves.
I mean, even American/European cultures are rarely accurately represented by our own media. I have no doubt that it’s to a lesser degree than foreign cultures, but it’s not like the common tropes associated with Westerns or pirate movies or medieval flicks or Victorian novels are particularly accurate to the historical periods they’re set in. We don’t really even need to go historical to find huge discrepancies between fictional stereotypes and the real world - the stereotypical American high school setting bears little resemblance to what American high schools are actually like, outside of maybe the general aesthetic.
At the end of the day fiction is meant to entertain, not educate. Sometimes that means knowingly playing into inaccurate stereotypes simply because it’s what audiences expect.
very well said!!! as an arab i agree completely. when i started comparing notes with a mexican friend for example i started to realize how much we all had in common and how fascinating our differences were
Well said
Such a good point.
That is an extremly underrated comment. I am from Germany and you just gave me a completely new perspective, that I have totally missed so far. Thank you very much
I don't usually comment on videos, but when I do, it's because it's educational and awesome. Great job!
Your mom has a lovely voice, thank you for sharing those clips!
As a Brazilian I wanna share an experience in our history. Stan Getz, was a struggling Jazz Musician who was stationed in Brazil during the beginning of Bossa Nova. He decided to cling to the genre for a comeback and in America he made a record using Bossa Nova rhythms called Jazz Samba. It was good, but no Brazilian would call it Bossa Nova. It was only when he collaborated with actual Brazilian Bossa Nova Musicians like João Gilberto, Tom Jobim and Milton Banana. That he got Bossa nova. Not only did he get the sound, the record Getz/Gilberto is considered a stable on the Bossa Tradition. Image how much great music we could've had if Western Composers, choose to collaborate with Middle-Eastern Musicians. Instead of making general assumptions.
I'm not brazilian, but as someone who listens to a lot of music. This is so true! I would listen to real bossa nova and brazilian music and hear people credit Stan Getz. It always boggled my mind because it sounds nothing alike.
Do you have any other Bossa Nova jazz recommendations similar to Getz/Gilberto, particularly from Brazilian jazz musicians? Getz is one of my favorite jazz musicians.
I've been using Rate Your Music to find other Bossa nova, including the artists you list above, but I imagine the RYM list is made from the western viewpoint.
Mano eu acho um lixo esse disco do Stan Getz
@@Ryan-wr8fx Brazilian jazz musician is a strange way to call, but, this is not your fault
Go for, Luiz Gonzaga, Elis Regina, Pixinguinha, Dominguinhos, Elza Soares
I heard there was a lot of back and forth influence between NYC jazz and Rio jazz.
Just out of curiosity typed "Iranian music" in Russian on youtube and got a ton of Iranian singers and musicians. Found a lovely video from a Moscow conservatory - it's breathtakingly beautiful. Thank you for the video and an opportunity to enjoy something new.
As a Westerner, "William Wallace - Scottish Music" kind of slaps though. So it's a really good example of why someone might like orientalist music artistically even when they ARE familiar with how the instruments in it are actually supposed to be used and where they're from, so it's a really good example on many fronts!
Thank you for this very insightful video.
You have done so much background work to make it truly enlightening - even for a westerner who actually has heard live performances of actual Iranian, Egyptian, Turkish, & Balkan music as well as various types of Indian music.
I learnt a lot.
Thank you again 🙏
Thanks for making that William Wallace music, haha, I think it was extremely effective at proving the point for westerners!
Banger essay!
Eyyy it's the man himself. Thanks mate!
We need an orientalist version of the lick
@@Bryophyta the whole "Obsession with double-harmonic" part IS the orientalist lick, my dude.
Thank you for not being afraid to challenge the Western norms in your videos, thank you for spreading a sliver of our true cultures and thank you for being the person that you are, Adam.
yup, this is the comment I was looking for.
Seeing your arrangements being played at an event by the actual people of that culture must be the biggest compliment/flex ever. Thank you for talking at the camera for an hour thirty six (and discussing some really interesting themes).
This is truly one of the greatest videos I have ever watched. Thank you. As someone who has deeply studied western music theory, I truly enjoy learning about my blind spots.
Here I am, researching music for my D&D setting and finding this. I am always happy to learn.
So thank you and have a nice day ❤
I NEED, repeat, NEED the occidentalist composing as a short
I wanna hear an actual piece like that.
Meme value is valuable.
Basically hollywood and anything USA makes calling it western, celt, viking, roman you call it
@@KasumiRINA the only place Bri'ish Romans are good is Monty Python
Halfway through the video, but I got an idea. You know what you could do ? Perhaps for a 1st April joke. Making a composition which mixes douzens of european instruments from every country, and title it "The fields of the parisian queen" or "the knight of Helsinki", and say it's a classic "Catalan/Dutch mountain music"
EDIT : lmao you made it it's incredible
Lmao omg I would love this.
Please, compose the Knight of Helsinki piece, I am a Finn who lives in Helsinki, and would love to hear it.
(And make it traditional Scottish bagpipe music instead of Karelian singing 😂😂😂)
The word "Dutch" and "mountain" is so hilarious put together
Wait I have to hear it💀 where's the link
@@MM-vs2etThat's true xD
The Knight of Helsinki sounds fucking amazing, mostly because of the anachronism lol
Mr. Faraji I absolutely loved this video of yours... So many things were mentioned that even I as an Iranian was ignorant about, and had to realize. I'm illiterate in music but I really enjoy listening to your work. I wish health and happiness for you and your family.
this is absolutely brilliant! thanks for putting all that work into this. i have learned a lot 💚
as a japanese woman, i dunno what you're talking about. all we do is eat sushi and commit seppuku.
also i live in the part of town where all the middle eastern immigrants live so i actually do get to hear cool oriental music when they barbecue and stuff, its cool. we've also got a bazaar with cool music and tasty mangoes
Do you eat sushi as beautiful japanese.mp3 music plays as you walk out in robes and holding a fan?
You killed me at "commit seppuku" 😂
Seppuku part got me choking
@@johndoe70770 Not for long :)
As a japanese you aren't part of that Samurai caste so I doubt you were expected to do Seppuku. I guess they don't teach japanese caste system in Japanese school.
20:59 “For the scenes set in Paris, I’ve used the sound of a Cretan mandola” Don’t know why, but that cracked me up
Cretan... Croissant... They're basically the same thing, amiright? 🤌
Your disclaimers bit got you a subscriber, just from short clips of music. This is finally a worthwhile video for youtube to put on my feed.
Thank you for creating this video and giving us a glimpse into the vast and diverse world of Asian music. I think very often you here talk about Eurocentrism or Western bias in the media regarding our cultural products, but very rarely do they provide such clear forward examples or authentic alternatives.
Farya and his mom interacting is the best part of this channel
Can 100% confirm what you're saying about western music training and microtonality!
I started playing the violin when I was six years old. If you learn the violin, 99% of what you play is gonna be european classical.
When I was about 18, my teacher gave me a piece with some microtonal elements and it completely broke my brain. Like, on a conceptual level I knew what I was supposed to do, but at that point I had spent ca two thirds of my entire life training myself to play with 12 notes in an octave, I had trained my hearing to get those notes exactly right (because a violin doesn't have frets so you actually have to hit them properly like you do in singing). Trying to reliably hit a note that was right between the two notes that my brain would accept was insanely difficult because I didn't just have to hit that note, I had to hold it while fighting the visceral, instinctive reaction of my brain screaming at me that I was playing the wrong note
Great teaching moment, 10/10, would recommend!
(couple years later I got to try out a Cura in an improvised music session and experimenting with microtonality when I had frets to help me was actually a lot of fun!)
Yeah I’m a jazz/country guitarist and even though there are some microtonal elements for “bluesy” notes hearing real microtonal music is really harsh to my ears. I just want to reach out and tune the peg up a bit. For jazzy stuff the idea of microtonalilty is that you are approaching notes or getting that dissonance intentionally not for melodic but expressive purposes. Middle eastern music will straight up hit the in between note in a melody or chord and although I try to understand it I just have spent my life training my ear to hear it’s a flat note.
you would have to retune to strings. it's super weird, i believe,on the fingerings if you don't redo the strings. it will make more sense if you do the right tuning
on violin, i mean
@@PhaedraDarwish From what I can tell, middle eastern music uses various tunings, but the microtonality doesn't come from those, it's in the fingering.
Either way, the piece my teacher gave me to try was written with a standard european GDAE tuning in mind, so for that one, it was all down to fingering anyway
Yeah, I'm not nearly as trained as you, and every time he demonstrated microtones a little voice in my head said "Error! go double check your notes!" Western musical traditional really does hate microtones.
I am really so glad to have stumbled upon your channel when i did. Thank you so much for all the indepth explanations and documentaries, really top quality information and delivery. Your amazing compositions are another matter alltogether.
Χαιρετίσματα από Ελλάδα,
Γιώργος
PS(after finishing): Imagine what the west would have done to Iranian mythology if they knew.... The same they did to greek and i guess the norse one, butcher it for content when the real story is really more captivating than the alterations. Again, awesome video
im not a music theory person at all and i really enjoyed this video. your efforts are much appreciated and i have some musician friends i will share this with
As Malaysian, orientalist music for Malays are basically Chinese music mix with tribal drums and small gongs.
William Wallace - Scottish Music goes incredibly hard. Beautiful European temperate climate American vodka vibes.
Thank you for making such a great video. Truly. It's at the same time informative, enlightening, funny, fascinating, well researched and demonstrative of your point...
I can only dream more videos (and documentaries/TV shows) were created to such a high standard.
This is my first time watching one of your videos, but you truly are inspiring 🙏
Im not a regular viewer, sometimes when I'm not doing my stuff I end around here. But is undeniable the quality of this man stuff. Good music, great knowledge, great speeching skills.
Thankyou.
May your life be prosperous and long.
The architecture analogy makes a lot of sense, I could instantly recognize differences in Asian architecture, but I wouldn’t be able to tell European architecture apart, except for major landmarks. Pop culture plays a huge role in cultural understanding. A lot more people can recognize Korean architecture nowadays due to the rise of K-dramas/K-pop compared to the last decade, and the same applies to Japan for similar reasons. If media in general had more care instead of generalizing, many more people would be able to make distinctions.
Before watching this, I was only vaguely aware of the idea, “it’s kinda funny that every movie/game/etc in the middle east has that yellow filter, camels, street markets, women with face-covers, desert, that samey-sound” but I didn’t realize just how crazy stereotypes got. Great video.
I am a white Danish person and I can easily tell traditional Japanese and Chinese architecture styles apart but I have also studied art history including architectural history at university, and take an active interest in the topic way more than I imagine most people anywhere do - I don't expect the average person in China to even notice the cultural differences between the Scandinavian countries either
kpop is black american culture🤷♀️the language is korean hut that’s it
it's the same reason as how raya the last dragon made me wince so many times just from the trailer. i know they said they consulted southeast asians, but the thing is, they consulted young urban southeast asians (who are at least partly westernised), and southeast asians of migrant origin (e.g. from china). if you're heartland southeast asian, who still have some inherited familiarity with what things go together, and what things and worldviews just don't go together, doesn't exist or even antithetical to our worldviews, it feels jarring. but i was able to enjoy aladdin even though i knew intellectually that the design aesthetic is not actually arabic.
@@nurainiarsad7395 yeah, I felt the same way about Raya, it feels jarring seeing them mix different SEA cultures when they could have just focused on one.
@@nurainiarsad7395 I've never seen "Raya and the Last Dragon", I guess I am not missing much? I do remember reading a review of it on someone's blog and thinking the plot (as he described it) came across as a total ripoff of Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds" just transplanted into a heroic fantasy setting instead of a unique surrealistic post-apocalyptic world. (which for me was half the fun of "Nausicaä")
I think the final boss of orientalism would be the nation of Sumeru in Genshin Impact.
From Chinese developers, it doesn’t claim to be based on any particular culture, but is a hodgepodge of Indian, Persian, Arabic, Egyptian and Turkish cultural elements, mashed together with a soundtrack that tries to represent every single one of them in some way with varying levels of authenticity.
There’s the Indian sitar, bansuri, tabla; the Persian santur, daf, tombak; the Arabic oud, ney, qanun, darbuka; the Armenian duduk; the Turkish baglama, even the Greek bouzouki, the Italian mandolin and the Chinese erhu, with one track going out as far as the African udu.
And the insane thing is, it’s also one of the only games I’ve ever seen that does an actual decent attempt at representing Persian culture, from a character doing a pretty authentic looking Persian dance, to an entire area dedicated to Persian folklore reframed in the context of the game’s lore - Sorush, Mihir and Rashnu of the Pari race descended from the divine bird Simurgh whose home is the Vourukasha Oasis sets out to perform the rite of Chinvat to stop the Dev, extinguish the sign of Apaosha and restore the Harvisptokhm using the power of Khvarena, etc etc.
It’s obvious they’ve done a great amount of research, so it’s not like they don’t know about the cultures they’re representing, but they’ve still chosen to mix them in a way that's so strange it honestly has no precedent in Western media. To call it orientalism would be too reductive, but they’re also too double-harmonic-major-duduk brained to be accurate, so it exists in this purgatory of orientalism.
Also regions there are usually based on one country, meanwhile Sumeru is just... everywhere from the entire MENA region to Indian subcontinent squeezed into one region. I've seen an Iranian fan interpret it as the Chinese creators being inspired by the history of the Silk Road trade (same person also contrasted Sumeru characters that represent particular real life cultures well with an Aladdin-based orientalism personification of a character, lol). All in all, those circumstances surely create one hell of a case of "purgatory of orientalism" as you said
Didn't you basically answer yourself? It's not western media, they approach it in a different way and mix things differently than the usual western creator would. Same goes with depictions of middle eastern cultures by the Japanese (which incidentally Genshin developers borrow liberally form, to the point a lot of what you say isn't particularly unique). Equally stereotypical, but in generally different ways.
Play the Civilization games..they do a great job in nailing the authenticity of the cultures of the world. King Cyrus is depicted just how he should look in Civ 6
Post-Orientalist syncreticism
I was just thinking about where Genshin lays in this discussion and you're so correct. It's like Orientalism+
Incredible that this was recommended to me. Thank you so much for making this video and talking about this. I had absolutely no formal introduction to actual oriental music and only exposure to orientalist things. You've expanded a mind today, thank you!