As a singer-songwriter, people often ask me about my influences or, as I like to call them, my sonic lineages. And I could easily tell you that I was shaped by the jazz and hip hop that I grew up with, by the Ethiopian heritage of my ancestors, or by the 1980s pop on my childhood radio stations. But beyond genre, there is another question: how do the sounds we hear every day influence the music that we make? I believe that everyday soundscape can be the most unexpected inspiration for songwriting, and to look at this idea a little bit more closely, I'm going to talk today about three things: nature, language and silence -- or rather, the impossibility of true silence. And through this I hope to give you a sense of a world already alive with musical expression, with each of us serving as active participants, whether we know it or not.
Kao pjevačicu-kompozitoricu, ljudi me često pitaju o utjecajima, ili kako ih ja volim zvati, moja sonična podrijetla. Mogu vam lako reći da sam oblikovana jazzom i hip hopom uz koji sam odrasla, etiopskom baštinom mojih predaka, ili pop glazbom 1980-tih godina na radio stanicama mog djetinjstva. No, uz žanr, postoji još jedno pitanje: kako zvukovi koje čujemo svaki dan utječu na glazbu koju pravimo? Vjerujem da svakodnevno zvukovlje može biti najneočekivanije nadahnuće za skladanje, a da bi vidjeli ovu ideju pobliže, danas ću pričati o tri stvari: prirodi, jeziku i tišini -- ili zapravo, nemogućnosti prave tišine. Kroz to se nadam da ću vam približiti svijest o svijetu već oživljenim pomoću glazbenog izražaja, gdje svatko od nas služi kao aktivni sudionik, znali mi to ili ne.
I'm going to start today with nature, but before we do that, let's quickly listen to this snippet of an opera singer warming up. Here it is.
Počet ću sa prirodom, no prije toga, poslušajmo kratko ovaj isječak gdje se operni pjevač zagrijava. Evo ga.
(Singing)
(A cappella pjevanje)
(Singing ends)
(Pjevanje završava)
It's beautiful, isn't it? Gotcha! That is actually not the sound of an opera singer warming up. That is the sound of a bird slowed down to a pace that the human ear mistakenly recognizes as its own. It was released as part of Peter Szöke's 1987 Hungarian recording "The Unknown Music of Birds," where he records many birds and slows down their pitches to reveal what's underneath. Let's listen to the full-speed recording.
Predivno, zar ne? Jesam vas! To zapravo nije zvuk zagrijavanja opernog pjevača. To je zvuk ptice, usporen do brzine koju ljudsko uho zabunom prepoznaje kao svoju. Objavljena je kao dio Mađarske snimke Petera Szöke iz 1987. godine "Nepoznata glazba ptica," gdje snima mnoštvo ptica i usporava njihov visok ton da pokaže što je ispod. Poslušajmo snimku u punoj brzini.
(Bird singing)
(Ptica pjeva)
Now, let's hear the two of them together so your brain can juxtapose them.
Sada, poslušajmo obje zajedno da ih vaš mozak postavi jedno uz drugo.
(Bird singing at slow then full speed)
(Ptica pjeva sporo pa pri punoj brzini)
(Singing ends)
(Pjevanje završava)
It's incredible. Perhaps the techniques of opera singing were inspired by birdsong. As humans, we intuitively understand birds to be our musical teachers.
Nevjerojatno. Možda su tehnike opernih pjevača inspirirane ptičjim pjevom. Kao ljudi, intuitivno razumijemo ptice kao naše glazbene učitelje.
In Ethiopia, birds are considered an integral part of the origin of music itself. The story goes like this: 1,500 years ago, a young man was born in the Empire of Aksum, a major trading center of the ancient world. His name was Yared. When Yared was seven years old his father died, and his mother sent him to go live with an uncle, who was a priest of the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, one of the oldest churches in the world. Now, this tradition has an enormous amount of scholarship and learning, and Yared had to study and study and study and study, and one day he was studying under a tree, when three birds came to him. One by one, these birds became his teachers. They taught him music -- scales, in fact. And Yared, eventually recognized as Saint Yared, used these scales to compose five volumes of chants and hymns for worship and celebration. And he used these scales to compose and to create an indigenous musical notation system. And these scales evolved into what is known as kiñit, the unique, pentatonic, five-note, modal system that is very much alive and thriving and still evolving in Ethiopia today.
U Etiopiji, ptice se smatraju sastavnim dijelom porijekla same glazbe. Priča ide ovako: Prije 1500 godina je rođen mladi čovjek, u Carstvu Aksum velikom trgovačkom središtu antičkog svijeta. Njegovo ime je bilo Yared. Kad je Yared bio sedam godina, otac mu je umro, a majka ga je poslala da živi sa ujakom, koji je bio svećenik Etiopljanske ortodoksne tradicije, jedne od najstarijih crkvi na svijetu. Ova tradicija ima ogromnu količinu učenosti i učenja, Yared je morao učiti i učiti i učiti i učiti, jednog dana je učio ispod drveta, kad su mu tri ptice prišle. Jedna po jedna, ove ptice su mu postale učitelji. Naučile su ga glazbi -- ljestvici, zapravo. A Yared, naposljetku priznat kao Sv. Yared; je iskoristio ove ljestvice za skladanje pet volumena napjeva i himni za bogoslužje i slavlje. Iskoristio je ove ljestvice za skladanje i stvaranje autohtonog sustava glazbenog bilježenja. Ove ljestive su se razvile u ono što je poznato kao kiñit, jedinstven, pentatonični, petonotni, modalni sustav koji je živ i napreduje i razvija se u Etiopiji i danas.
Now, I love this story because it's true at multiple levels. Saint Yared was a real, historical figure, and the natural world can be our musical teacher. And we have so many examples of this: the Pygmies of the Congo tune their instruments to the pitches of the birds in the forest around them. Musician and natural soundscape expert Bernie Krause describes how a healthy environment has animals and insects taking up low, medium and high-frequency bands, in exactly the same way as a symphony does. And countless works of music were inspired by bird and forest song. Yes, the natural world can be our cultural teacher.
Volim ovu priču jer je istinita na više razina. Sv. Yared je bio stvarna, povjesna ličnost, a prirodni svijet može biti naš glazbeni učitelj. Imamo toliko mnogo primjera za ovo: Pigmeji u Kongu ugađaju svoje instrumente prema visini tona ptica u šumi u okolini. Glazbenik i stručnjak za zvučnu pozadinu Bernie Krause opisuje kako zdravo okružje ima životinje i kukce koji imaju nisko, srednje i visoko frekventni raspon, na isti način kao što to čini simfonija. Nebrojena glazbena djela su nadahnuta pticama i pjesmom šume. Da, prirodni svijet može biti naš kulturni učitelj.
So let's go now to the uniquely human world of language. Every language communicates with pitch to varying degrees, whether it's Mandarin Chinese, where a shift in melodic inflection gives the same phonetic syllable an entirely different meaning, to a language like English, where a raised pitch at the end of a sentence ... (Going up in pitch) implies a question?
Pogledajmo sad jedinstveni ljudski svijet jezika. Svaki jezik komunicira pomoću visine tona različitih stupnjeva, bio to mandarinski kineski, gdje pomak u melodijskoj infleksiji daje istom fonetskom slogu potpuno drugačije značenje, do jezika kao što je engleski, gdje povišen ton na kraju rečenice... (Povisuje ton) predstavlja pitanje?
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
As an Ethiopian-American woman, I grew up around the language of Amharic, Amhariña. It was my first language, the language of my parents, one of the main languages of Ethiopia. And there are a million reasons to fall in love with this language: its depth of poetics, its double entendres, its wax and gold, its humor, its proverbs that illuminate the wisdom and follies of life. But there's also this melodicism, a musicality built right in. And I find this distilled most clearly in what I like to call emphatic language -- language that's meant to highlight or underline or that springs from surprise. Take, for example, the word: "indey." Now, if there are Ethiopians in the audience, they're probably chuckling to themselves, because the word means something like "No!" or "How could he?" or "No, he didn't." It kind of depends on the situation. But when I was a kid, this was my very favorite word, and I think it's because it has a pitch. It has a melody. You can almost see the shape as it springs from someone's mouth. "Indey" -- it dips, and then raises again. And as a musician and composer, when I hear that word, something like this is floating through my mind.
Kao Etiopljanka-Amerikanka, odrasla sam okružena amharskim jezikom, Amhariña. To je bio moj prvi jezik, jezik mojih roditelja, jedan od glavnih jezika Etiopije. Postoji milijun razloga za zaljubiti se u ovaj jezik: njegova poetska dubina, dvostruko značenje, njegovo skriveno značenje, njegov humor, njegove izreke koje osvjetljavaju mudrost i glupost života. Ali i njegova melodičnost i ugrađena muzikalnost. I nalazim to pročišćeno najviše u onom što ja volim zvati izražajni jezik -- jezik čija je svrha istaknuti ili naglasiti ili koja izvire iz iznenađenja. Uzmite, na primjer, riječ: "indey." Ako ima Etiopljana u publici, vjerojatno se smijulje za sebe, jer riječ znači neško kao: "Ne!" ili "Kako je mogao?" ili "Ne, nije valjda." Zavisi o situaciji. No, kad sam bila dijete, to mi je bila najdraža riječ, mislim da je razlog tome, to što ima visok ton. Ima melodiju. Skoro možete vidjeti oblik dok se stvara na nečijim ustima. "Indey" -- pada, pa se diže opet. Kao glazbenica i skladatelj, kad čujem tu riječ, nešto kao ovo prolazi mojim umom.
(Music and singing "Indey")
(Glazba i pjevanje "Indey")
(Music ends)
(Glazba završava)
Or take, for example, the phrase for "It is right" or "It is correct" -- "Lickih nehu ... Lickih nehu." It's an affirmation, an agreement. "Lickih nehu." When I hear that phrase, something like this starts rolling through my mind.
Ili uzmite, na primjer, izraz za "Ispravno je" ili "Točno je" -- "Lickih nehu ... Lickih nehu." To je potvrda, slaganje. "Lickih nehu." Kad čujem taj izraz, nešto slično ovome se pojavi u mom umu.
(Music and singing "Lickih nehu")
(Glazba i pjevanje "Lickih nehu")
(Music ends)
(Glazba završava)
And in both of those cases, what I did was I took the melody and the phrasing of those words and phrases and I turned them into musical parts to use in these short compositions. And I like to write bass lines, so they both ended up kind of as bass lines.
U oba slučaja sam uzela melodiju i izričaj tih riječi i izraza i pretvorila ih u glazbene djelove u ovim kratkim skladbama. Ja volim pisati linije za bas, tako da su obje završile kao linije za bas.
Now, this is based on the work of Jason Moran and others who work intimately with music and language, but it's also something I've had in my head since I was a kid, how musical my parents sounded when they were speaking to each other and to us. It was from them and from Amhariña that I learned that we are awash in musical expression with every word, every sentence that we speak, every word, every sentence that we receive. Perhaps you can hear it in the words I'm speaking even now.
Ovo je temeljeno na radu Jasona Morana i ostalih koji intimno rade sa glazbom i jezikom, no ovo je nešto što sam imala u glavi otkad sam bila dijete, kako su mi roditelji zvučali glazbeno dok su razgovarali jedno s drugim i s nama. Od njih tada i od Amhariñe sam naučila da smo u razini glazbenog izražaja sa svakom rječju, svakom rečenicom koju kažemo, svakom rječju, svakom rečenicom koju čujemo. Možda ovo možete čuti u riječima koje vam govorim upravo sada.
Finally, we go to the 1950s United States and the most seminal work of 20th century avant-garde composition: John Cage's "4:33," written for any instrument or combination of instruments. The musician or musicians are invited to walk onto the stage with a stopwatch and open the score, which was actually purchased by the Museum of Modern Art -- the score, that is. And this score has not a single note written and there is not a single note played for four minutes and 33 seconds. And, at once enraging and enrapturing, Cage shows us that even when there are no strings being plucked by fingers or hands hammering piano keys, still there is music, still there is music, still there is music. And what is this music? It was that sneeze in the back.
Konačno, idemo u 1950-te godine u SAD-u i iskonskom djelu 20. stoljeća avangardnog skladanja: John Cageov "4:33" napisan za bilo koji instrument ili kombinaciju instrumenata. Glazbenik i glazbenici su pozvani na pozornicu sa štopericom i da otvore note, koji je Muzej moderne umjetnosti zapravo kupio -- note, to jest. A ova skladba nema niti jednu notu zapisanu i nije niti jedna nota odsvirana cijele četiri minute i 33 sekunde. I, nekad razjaren i razdražen Cage nam pokazuje da iako nema žica po kojima prebiru prsti ili ruku koje kuckaju po tipkama glasovira, još uvijek postoji glazba, još uvijek postoji glazba, još uvijek postoji glazba. A što je ta glazba? Bilo je to kihanje u pozadini.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
It is the everyday soundscape that arises from the audience themselves: their coughs, their sighs, their rustles, their whispers, their sneezes, the room, the wood of the floors and the walls expanding and contracting, creaking and groaning with the heat and the cold, the pipes clanking and contributing. And controversial though it was, and even controversial though it remains, Cage's point is that there is no such thing as true silence. Even in the most silent environments, we still hear and feel the sound of our own heartbeats. The world is alive with musical expression. We are already immersed.
Svakodnevna zvučna pozadina koja dolazi od samih slušatelja: njihovo kašljanje, uzdasi, šuškanje, šaptanje, kihanje, prostorija, drvo na podu i zidovima koje se širi i skuplja, škripi i stenje sa vrućinom i hladnoćom, zveket cijeci i njihov doprinos. Kontroverzna misao je bila, i kontroverzna misao ostaje, Cageva poanta je da ne postoji istinska tišina. Čak i u najmirnijoj okolini, još uvijek čujemo i osjećamo zvukove vlastitih otkucaja srca. Svijet je živ uz glazbeni izražaj. Već smo uronjeni.
Now, I had my own moment of, let's say, remixing John Cage a couple of months ago when I was standing in front of the stove cooking lentils. And it was late one night and it was time to stir, so I lifted the lid off the cooking pot, and I placed it onto the kitchen counter next to me, and it started to roll back and forth making this sound.
Sad, imala sam vlastiti trenutak, recimo, remiksa John Cagea prije nekoliko mjeseci dok sam stajala ispred peći i kuhala leću. Bilo je kasno i bilo je vrijeme za promiješati, pa sam podigla poklopac lonca za kuhanje, i spustila ga na kuhinjski stol pored, a on se počeo vrtjeti naprijed i natrag proizvodeći ovaj zvuk.
(Sound of metal lid clanking against a counter)
(Zvuk metalnog poklopca na kuhinjskom stolu)
(Clanking ends)
(Zveket završava)
And it stopped me cold. I thought, "What a weird, cool swing that cooking pan lid has." So when the lentils were ready and eaten, I hightailed it to my backyard studio, and I made this.
To me zaustavilo. Mislila sam, "Kako čudan, cool ritam ima taj poklopac." Tako da kad je leća skuhana i pojedena, odjurila sam u studio u dvorištu, i snimila ovo.
(Music, including the sound of the lid, and singing)
(Glazba)
(Music ends)
(Glazba završava)
Now, John Cage wasn't instructing musicians to mine the soundscape for sonic textures to turn into music. He was saying that on its own, the environment is musically generative, that it is generous, that it is fertile, that we are already immersed.
John Cage nije učio glazbenike da izvuku iz zvučne pozadine sonične teksture koje bi pretvorili u glazbu. Govorio je da je sam po sebi, okoliš glazbeno generativan, velikodušan, plodan, da smo već uronjeni.
Musician, music researcher, surgeon and human hearing expert Charles Limb is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and he studies music and the brain. And he has a theory that it is possible -- it is possible -- that the human auditory system actually evolved to hear music, because it is so much more complex than it needs to be for language alone. And if that's true, it means that we're hard-wired for music, that we can find it anywhere, that there is no such thing as a musical desert, that we are permanently hanging out at the oasis, and that is marvelous. We can add to the soundtrack, but it's already playing.
Glazbenik, glazbeni istraživač, kirurg i stručnjak za ljudski sluh Charles Limb je profesor na Sveučilištu Johns Hopkins i proučava glazbu i mozak. I ima teoriju da je moguće -- moguće je -- da je ljudski auditorni sustav zapravo evoluirao da čuje glazbu, jer je toliko kompleksnija od potrebe za sam jezik. Ako je to istina, znači da smo predodređeni za glazbu, da ju možemo naći svugdje, i da ne postoji nešto kao glazbena pustinja, da smo stalno u oazi i da je veličanstveno. Možemo doprinijeti zvučnoj traci, ali ona već svira.
And it doesn't mean don't study music. Study music, trace your sonic lineages and enjoy that exploration. But there is a kind of sonic lineage to which we all belong. So the next time you are seeking percussion inspiration, look no further than your tires, as they roll over the unusual grooves of the freeway, or the top-right burner of your stove and that strange way that it clicks as it is preparing to light. When seeking melodic inspiration, look no further than dawn and dusk avian orchestras or to the natural lilt of emphatic language. We are the audience and we are the composers and we take from these pieces we are given. We make, we make, we make, we make, knowing that when it comes to nature or language or soundscape, there is no end to the inspiration -- if we are listening.
A to ne znači da ne proučavate glazbu. Proučavajte glazbu, pratite svoja sonična podrijetla i uživajte u tom istraživanju. No, postoji sonično podrijetlo kojem svi pripadamo. Tako da sljedeći put kad budete tražili inspiraciju za udaraljke, ne gledajte dalje od svojih guma dok se kotrljaju preko neobičnih utora na autocesti, ili gornjem desnom plameniku vašeg štednjaka i taj čudan način na koji klikče dok se priprema za vatru. Ako tražite inspiraciju za melodiju, ne gledajte dalje od zore i sumraka ptičjeg orkestra ili prirodne raspjevanosti izražajnog jezika. Mi smo slušatelji i skladatelji i uzimamo od tih komada koji su nam dani. Stvaramo, stvaramo, stvaramo, stvaramo, znajući da kad se radi o prirodi ili jeziku ili zvukovlju, nema kraja nadahnuću -- ako samo slušamo.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)