|
Krar Players
The ''krar'' (Geʽez: ክራር) is a five-or-six stringed bowl-shaped lyre from Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is tuned to a pentatonic scale. A modern ''krar'' may be amplified, much in the same way as an electric guitar or violin. The ''krar'', along with the ''masenqo'' and the ''washint'', is one of the most widespread musical instruments in Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Role in society Historical In Amhara society, the ''krar'' was viewed as an instrument inspired by the Devil and was therefore inferior, whereas the ''Begena'' was for praising God and seen as sacred. The ''krar'' was used to adulate feminine beauty, create sexual arousal, and eulogize carnal love. The Derg regime banned playing the krar and imprisoned people who played it, especially in the big cities such as Asmara and Addis Ababa. The instrument has been associated with brigands, outlaws, and ''Wata'' or ''Azmari'' wanderers. Wanderers played the ''krar'' to solicit food, and outlaws played it to sing an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Masenqo
The masenqo (; Tigrinya: ጭራ-ዋጣ (ዋጣ), also known as masinko or mesenko, is a single-stringed bowed lute commonly found in the musical traditions of Eritrea and Ethiopia. As with the krar, this instrument is used by Ethiopian minstrels called '' azmaris'' ("singer" in Amharic) . Although it functions in a purely accompaniment capacity in songs, the masenqo requires considerable virtuosity, as azmaris accompany themselves while singing. Construction and design The square or diamond-shaped resonator is made of four small wooden boards glued together, then covered with a stretched parchment or rawhide. The single string is typically made of horse hair, and passes over a bridge. The instrument is tuned by means of a large tuning peg to fit the range of the singer's voice. It may be bowed by either the right or left hand, and the non-bow hand sits lightly on top of the upper part of the string. See also * Music of Eritrea * Music of Ethiopia * Rebab ''Rebab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Azmari
An Azmari (Amharic: አዝማሪ) is an entertainer who sings and plays traditional string instruments of the Ethiopian Highlands. They are comparable to medieval European minstrels, bards or West African griots. ''Azmari'', who may be either male or female, are skilled at singing extemporized verses, accompanying themselves on either a ''masenqo'' (one-stringed fiddle) or ''krar'' (lyre). Etymology Azmari means (''to sing'' or ''singer'') in Amharic. Amharas tend to call all musicians Azmari simply because there's no other word in the language denoting a person who plays a musical instrument. History The earliest documented mention of the ''Azmaris'' goes back to the mid-15th century, and they presumably go back much further. Role in society ''Azmaris'' once played an important role as social critics by improvising sophisticated texts of praise or criticism. ''Azmaris'' would mock people in high places, and even Emperors were not spared if they were found to be unpopu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eritrean Musical Instruments
Eritrean may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Eritrea * A person from Eritrea, or of Eritrean descent. For information about the Eritrean people, see Demographics of Eritrea and Culture of Eritrea. For specific persons, see List of Eritreans. * Languages of Eritrea, several, but none called "Eritrean" * Eritrean cuisine, a fusion of Eritrea's native culinary traditions and social interchanges with other regions * Eritrean coastal desert, ecoregion is a harsh sand and gravel strip along the southern part of the coast of Eritrea and the Red Sea coast of Djibouti * Eritrean literature, works in Tigrinya language See also * * Eritrea (other) Eritrea is a country in the Horn of Africa Eritrea may also refer to: * Eritrea (opera), by Francesco Cavalli * ''Eritrea'' (colonial ship), Italian warship * Eretria Eretria (; , , , , literally 'city of the rowers') is a town in Euboea ... {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambigua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asnaketch Worku
Asnaketch Worku () (born 1935 – 14 September 2011) was an Ethiopian singer who sang in the Amharic language and a ''krar'' instrumentalist, the instrument which symbolized her fame during the 1960s and 1970's. Asnaketch also had a long distinguished career as an actress. Biography Asnakech Worku was born in the Sidist Kilo neighborhood of Addis Ababa and was raised in the city. Asnakech hails from the Amhara people. Born in the Sidist Kilo, Worku She never met her father, and her parents split up soon after she was born. Worku was raised by her godmother, who she didn't particularly like, after her mother passed away when she was three. Later, Elfinesh Marefia, her older sister, moved in with her, and the two of them enjoyed attending plays and concerts. Buying her first krar for only 25 cents, Asnaketch taught herself how to play and began performing in small bars and cabarets. However, she quit her job at a bar on Churchill Road due to low pay and harassment. After a case ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulse (music)
In music theory, the pulse is a series of uniformly spaced beats—either audible or implied—that sets the tempo and is the scaffolding for the rhythm. By contrast, rhythm is always audible and can depart from the pulse. So while the rhythm may become too difficult for an untrained listener to fully match, nearly any listener instinctively matches the pulse by simply tapping uniformly, despite rhythmic variations in timing of sounds alongside the pulse.Fitch, W. Tecumseh and Rosenfeld, Andrew J. (2007). Definitions The tempo is the speed of the pulse. If a pulse becomes too fast it would become a drone; one that is too slow would be perceived as unconnected sounds.P. Fraisse, ''Les Structures Rhythmiques'', Erasme Paris 1956, H Woodrow ''Time Perception'' in "A Handbook of Experimental Psychology", ed. S.S. Stevens, Wiley, NY 1951, both quoted at http://www.zeuxilogy.home.ro/media/manifesto.pdf zeuxilogy.home.ro) When the period of any continuous beat is faster than 8–10 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harmony
In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harmonic objects such as chords, textures and tonalities are identified, defined, and categorized in the development of these theories. Harmony is broadly understood to involve both a "vertical" dimension (frequency-space) and a "horizontal" dimension (time-space), and often overlaps with related musical concepts such as melody, timbre, and form. A particular emphasis on harmony is one of the core concepts underlying the theory and practice of Western music. The study of harmony involves the juxtaposition of individual pitches to create chords, and in turn the juxtaposition of chords to create larger chord progressions. The principles of connection that govern these structures have been the subject of centuries worth of theoretical work ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strum
In music, strumming is a way of playing a stringed instrument such as a guitar, ukulele, or mandolin. A strum or stroke is a sweeping action where a finger or plectrum brushes over several strings to generate sound. On most stringed instruments, strums are typically executed by a musician's designated strum hand (typically the musician's dominant hand, which is often responsible for generating the majority of sound on a stringed instrument), while the remaining hand (referred to as the fret hand on most instruments with a fingerboard) often supports the strum hand by altering the tones and pitches of any given strum. Strums are often contrasted with plucking, as a means of vibrating an instrument's strings. In plucking, a specific string or designated set of strings are individually targeted to vibrate, whereas in strumming, a less precise targeting is usually used. Compared to other plucking techniques, any group of strings brushed in a single sweep by a plectrum could be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Timbre
In music, timbre (), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes sounds according to their source, such as choir voices and musical instruments. It also enables listeners to distinguish instruments in the same category (e.g., an oboe and a clarinet, both woodwinds). In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical instrument or human voice have a different sound from another, even when they play or sing the same note. For instance, it is the difference in sound between a guitar and a piano playing the same note at the same volume. Both instruments can sound equally tuned in relation to each other as they play the same note, and while playing at the same amplitude level each instrument will still sound distinctive with its own unique tone color. Musicians distinguish instruments based on their varied timbres, even instruments playing notes at the same pitch and volume ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pitch (music)
Pitch is a perception, perceptual property that allows sounds to be ordered on a frequency-related scale (music), scale, or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melody, melodies. Pitch is a major auditory system, auditory attribute of musical tones, along with duration (music), duration, loudness, and timbre. Pitch may be quantified as a frequency, but pitch is not a purely objective physical property; it is a subjective Psychoacoustics, psychoacoustical attribute of sound. Historically, the study of pitch and pitch perception has been a central problem in psychoacoustics, and has been instrumental in forming and testing theories of sound representation, processing, and perception in the auditory system. Perception Pitch and frequency Pitch is an auditory sensation in which a listener assigns musical tones to relative positions on a musical scale based primarily on their percep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bead
A bead is a small, decorative object that is formed in a variety of shapes and sizes of a material such as stone, bone, shell, glass, plastic, wood, or pearl and with a small hole for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under 1 mm to over 1 cm in diameter. Beads represent some of the earliest forms of jewellery, with a pair of beads made from ''Nassarius'' sea snail shells dating to approximately years ago thought to be the earliest known example. 2] Beadwork is the art or craft of making things with beads. Beads can be woven together with specialized thread, strung onto thread or soft, flexible wire, or adhered to a surface (e.g. fabric, clay). Etymology The word "bead" derives from Old English ''gebed'', originally meaning "prayer", until transferred to small globular objects. This refers to the use of beads for counting repetitions of prayers, as in Christian Pater Noster cords and rosaries. Types Beads can be divided into several types of overlap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chordophone
In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some string instruments, like Guitar, guitars, by plucking the String (music), strings with their fingers or a plectrum, plectrum (pick), and others by hitting the strings with a light wooden hammer or by rubbing the strings with a bow (music), bow, like Violin, violins. In some keyboard (music), keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord, the musician presses a key that plucks the string. Other musical instruments generate sound by striking the string. With bowed instruments, the player pulls a rosined horsehair bow across the strings, causing them to vibrate. With a hurdy-gurdy, the musician cranks a wheel whose rosined edge touches the strings. Bowed instruments include the string section instruments of the orchestra in Western classic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
