Singing songs
from different cultures

Linda Marr from Blindman's Holiday talks with Margaret Bradley about singing songs from different cultures. She gives tips on vocal technique and production.

Click here to go to Blindman's Holiday website.

Singing generally

It's to do with persisting and really pushing for what you want to do. I guess that there's a bit of talent in there as well but most people can sing if they practise it.

If you do sing from an early age and especially if you have examples of people singing around you, it's natural. People grow up in traditional communities with people singing and dancing around them. It seems natural and they start copying that from an early age. By the time they are adults, they've actually been practising it for quite a number of years without even realising it just by playing. That's the thing we miss in our western culture. We have to look for it, find it and practise it consciously.

Singing folk songs

Most folk songs have strong melodies, strong rhythms and are really singable songs.

The (folk) songs themselves are very strong melodically and rhythmically. They often have a dance that goes with them which makes a whole package. You can really get into it. You can feel the rhythm by moving your body as well. It's a whole experience rather than just singing the notes on a page. The style of singing, the accompaniment and harmony all gel together to create that sound. Whenever I'm singing songs from a certain culture, I'll try to maintain that authentic sound. That's what I enjoyed about it in the first place when I first heard that music or that song. Sometimes I might find a song in a book, so I listen to music from the same area to get an idea of what that song should sound like. You can't actually get that from just looking at the notes on a page.

Repertoire

Going back to the very early days of Blindman's Holiday and the other groups that I have been involved in like Nakisa, it was the Balkan repertoire that really got my interest because of the harmony, the tonal quality of the voice as well as the interesting rhythms. The style of voice was a very strident style of voice. It wasn't wishy washy at all.

At various stages there have been people who have come out from Macedonia and Bulgaria that I've been able to get together with and learn a bit more from.

Video clip 1 Bulgarian holler

Linda demonstrates a Bulgarian holler. (0:11)
Bulgarian holler Quicktime 403Kb
Bulgarian holler Windows Media Player 967Kb

Transcript: The full on sort of field holler sound, sort of outdoor Bulgarian, Macedonian sort of sound.

A lot goes into getting the Bulgarian strident voice. One thing is to get the vibrations forward by doing exercises like blowing raspberries.

Video clip 2 Balkan placement

Linda demonstrates where to place the tongue for the Balkan sound. (0:13)
Balkan placement Quicktime 467Kb
Balkan placement Windows Media Player 868Kb

Transcript: By keeping your tongue high can help, in the "eee" position, so the back of your tongue rather than "oe" where your tongue goes down. Try and keep your tongue up in that "eee" position.

Video clip 3 Broad mouth

Linda shows what she means by singing with a broad mouth. (0:58)
Broad mouth Quicktime 1.1MB
Broad mouth Windows Media Player 950Kb

Transcript: If you look at singers who are getting that edgy sound, they often have a broad mouth. It's not an open mouth with a dropped jaw. It's a wide feeling. It's not just the mouth that's doing that. It actually means that you are using the muscles across your cheeKbones as well and that all helps to create the resonance to get that sound. But the other difference that you have to work on is actually down in the larynx, in the voice box and that's to get a clear sound rather than a breathy sound. So if you're singing in a breathy voice, which I call falsetto, it's basically what position you're in with your throat. Then it's very hard to get that bright edgy sound. You need to get rid of the air and get a sharper "eh", more like a speech sound really.

Your instrument

Singing is about getting to know your instrument and because your instrument is inside your body, you can't get it out and examine it. It's not like learning guitar where someone can show you, "put your finger here and you bend the string like this". You've got to get to know your own voice. So I suggest being gentle with your voice and gentle with your students' voices as well. Just try another note at a time rather than suddenly do something you've never done before, because belting, the correct word for it technically, is singing high in a really strident voice, singing higher than usual. Some people might find that it's a strain. So by being gentle, I don't mean not using energy because you need to use energy to get those kind of sounds but you need to be careful not to tighten up, not to restrict the larynx. A wide feeling's what you're after. So think about laughing. That widens inside the larynx. Use that. Keep that happy feeling.

Video clip 4 Smile

Linda describes why you should smile while singing. (0:11)
Smile Quicktime 398Kb
Smile Windows Media Player 967Kb

Transcript: "Smile while you're singing" is actually good advice because it helps you retract inside your larynx which means that you're not going to put as much pressure on your vocal chords or your vocal folds.

Video clip 5 Belting

Linda demonstrates how to prepare for belting. (0:24)
Belting Quicktime 834Kb
Belting Windows Media Player 951Mb

Transcript: Start off to get into that sound by just going "Yay, Yay". That kind of thing is a really natural thing that we do and that is belting. Then you refine that into "eh", into holding it, extending it into a singing note. So that's one way to get into belting.

Balkan harmony

The harmony style of the Balkans is interesting from the point of view of singing together in Blindman's Holiday. We're all women getting the voices to blend in an exciting way. Balkan harmonies are very close dense arrangements so you end up with lots of discords where your voices are only a tone or a semitone apart. You get this buzzing sound and then you move apart again to resolve it. The overall sound is really exciting because of the strident voice and those harmonies together. Those arrangements are also done these days for bigger choirs, but for me, the small ensemble sound, just those three or four voices in very close harmony is a really exciting sound.

Often you have drone based harmony in Balkan music. It might not necessarily be a complete drone around the tonic but another harmony based around the drone a fourth below the tonic. Particularly in Bulgarian music that tends to move around a bit, so you get these climbing bass lines that contrast or work against the drone on the tonic and the melody above that.

Video clip 6 Drone

Linda and Margaret demonstrate the drone harmony. (0:10)
Drone Quicktime 353Kb
Drone Windows Media Player 784Kb

Transcript: It's hard to hold a drone. People think that it's just one note. What's hard about that? Often there are words to be sung as well as the sound. It can be incredibly difficult to sing a drone against a strongly sung melody and other parts coming really close to it. You're tempted to go up and meet the melody, or come together with another harmony when it comes close to you. There's this vibration happening that gives you that buzzing sound.

Bulgarian rhythms

Sometimes called uneven or broken rhythms, they're generally not even. They have seven beats to the bar or nine beats to the bar or eleven. Those three rhythms are really common. I do know one song in 22/8. That's a little less common but those rhythms give you a different swing. You're normally tapping your foot along to 4/4 or 2/4 or in the case of something like a waltz, to a three.

Video clip 7 Uneven rhythms

Linda shows an example of uneven rhythms. (0:11)
Uneven rhythms Quicktime 392Kb
Uneven rhythms Windows Media Player 936Kb

"With seven, generally you'd accent the one, four and six. So it would be 123 12 12 123 12 12"

Transcript: That gives a song a completely different feel because it's not even. It's got this lilt and that once again ties into the dancing. When you see people dancing to that music, they're not just stepping in an even pattern. They're stepping, then maybe hopping. You've got this lifting as well as sideways or forward movement.

Video clip 8 Uneven singing

Linda sings a melody using the uneven rhythm demonstrated earlier. (0:08)
Uneven singing Quicktime 287 Kb
Uneven singing Windows Media Player 636Kb

Turkish singing

The next area that I was interested in was the area slightly further east, the Turkish, Middle Eastern area. Once again I had the chance to work with some musicians from that area and learn from them, particularly a singer called Sabahattin Akdagcik, a Turkish singer. I realized that the style was very different. The technique was quite different. Rather than the higher larynx, strident style of singing, they prefer a rounder more mellow sound with ornamentation, still in a Balkan style but a very different sound.

Video clip 9 Turkish sound

Linda demonstrates the Turkish sound. (0:11)
Turkish sound Quicktime 382Kb
Turkish sound Windows Media Player 775Kb

Transcript: So it's a rounder sound and uses a lower larynx. Both kinds don't use much vibrato which is something that distinguishes it from the Western aesthetic. They do use vibrato in some instances but it's more as an ornament rather than something that you use all the way through.

It's quite a different style because it's using a much lower resonating area. You get a very different sound. It's a much more rounded sound and the way that the face is used is different as well. I noticed, watching Sabahattin's face, he would do something quite different. He didn't do this wide mouthed, high cheeKbone type face. He used a much more forward lips pointing face. It's interesting just watching traditional singers and the way that they actually look when they're singing. In some cases you can pick up techniques just by looking at them and listening at the same time. I recommend lots of listening. If you can tape people singing and listen to it afterwards, you might even pick up more things. Try and mimic the sound.

Video clip 10 Maori song

Linda sings the chorus of a Maori song. (0:22)
Maori song Quicktime 771Kb
Maori song Windows Media Player 1003Kb

Transcript: It is actually about fishing. It says, "with respect to the land and to my ancestors, I take from the sea". "Karu" means "look" and also means "eye". So you ‘re looking at the fish and maybe their eyes are staring back at you.

It's a wonderful thing to hear a full Maori choir singing with these strong voices. They've also generally got a great sense of pitch and timing.

A lot of Maori traditional song is chant and goes back a long way tracing genealogical trees. The rhythm was allied to the words. There were no uneven rhythms in that sense. It was a continuous rhythm based on the words.

There is variation within cultures, quite wide variation. I've found a lot of those Polynesian cultures sing with strong full on voices. In Micronesia particularly, they tend to use a bit more twang. The first time I heard singing from Palau or Yap, (I can't remember which one) I was reminded of Bulgarian choirs because they also seem to use drone harmonies.

We had a funny experience with that Maori fishing song when Blindman's Holiday was on tour once. We went to Nauru in the middle of the Pacific for the South Pacific Forum where the leaders from Pacific countries come together and Paul Keating was there. We were singing this song on the bus with some of the other performers going to one of the events. The Tahitian group knew the song. There's a Pan Pacific thing happening too. Some songs are known in varying parts of the Pacific because Tahiti and New Zealand are quite a distance apart. For them to know that same song is quite incredible.