Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1
After a co-working period from July, 2015 to February, 2016, the full cycle was
premiered at the ARIA launchInterrupting the City in Antwerp City on 4-6
March, 2016. The first three movements were premiered at the (Per)forming Art
Symposium at the University of Leeds on 20 September, 2015.
70 Chapter Five
2
Tuning the Marimba Bar and Resonator, Jeff La Favre, accessed March 3,
2016, www.lafavre.us/tuning-marimba.htm.
Inner Sight Etudes 71
Onwards from the central point of movement five, the musical themes
from the first five movements recur as a mirrorlike reflection (lateral
reflection) of the cycles second half (see figure 52). Also, the inner
experience of the first marimbist is magnified via another type of
mirroring (or imitation) by the second marimbist. In addition to these
mirror effects, the performance incorporates theatrical lighting that creates
shadows of the two performers to enhance this musical idea visually. 3
3
Thanks to Ricardo Lievano participates as second marimbist, Kris Depuydt for
the theatrical lighting design and KENISMAN for the visual projections.
4
Ritual is hereby defined as actions and behavior that are done in accordance with
social custom or normal protocol within a community. It is applied in this context
to describe the partnership and music practice between musicians. A ritual is also
understood as a performative structure consists of individual customized and
personalized processes that happen inside a society and a community. A ritual
manages to mirror between the inside (the inner-self of an individual, performer or
composer) and the outside (the society, or the audience).
Inner Sight Etudes 75
Pattern A Pattern B
Melody
5
The balafon I played on during this field study is built by Youssouf Keita. This
instrument is tuned in pentatonic scale according to the Western temperament.
76 Chapter Five
6
Adilia Yip, Song Barica melody and patterns performed by Youssouf and
Kassoum Keita, filmed January 2012, YouTube video, posted November 2013,
http://youtu.be/sFFMJQNsSL8.
Adilia Yip, Song Barica performed by Youssouf and Kassoum Keita, filmed
January 2012, YouTube video, posted November 2013,
http://youtu.be/55JiT8h7A3s.
7
It is not surprising to ethnomusicologists that during the teaching process of
African instruments, patterns of movement are imparted physically by the
teacher to the student. According to Kubik, a xylophonist in southern Cameroon
teaches by holding his students hands and imparting direct impulses to them until
the student has absorbed the movement pattern and stroke at the correct instant.
Gerard Kubik, Pattern Perception and Recognition in African Music, in The
Performing Arts: Music and Dance, vol. 10, ed. John Blacking & , Joann
Kealiinohomoku (UK: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 227. Koetting also wrote about
his experience with a Ghanaian who was asked to teach drum-playing to a group of
university students, which the students learnt and even performed the music largely
based on the physical movements required to produce the music. James Koetting,
Analysis and Notation of West African Drum Ensemble Music, in Selected
Reports in Ethnomusicology, vol. 1 (University of California, Los Angeles: UCLA
Ethnomusicology Publications, 1970), 119.
Inner Sight Etudes 77
8
Adilia Yip, Song Famante: 2 ways coordination technique, filmed January
2013, YouTube video, posted November 2013, http://youtu.be/5AsQn1iM3hE.
Adilia Yip, "Youssouf teaching his son balafon," filmed January 2013, YouTube
video, posted November 2013, http://youtu.be/qAUw7ISZ6sw.
78 Chapter Five
9
Adilia Yip, Song Kebini original version, filmed January 2013, YouTube
video, posted November 2013, http://youtu.be/It3HQu1LP6A.
10
Adilia Yip, Exploring the Embodied Music Practice of the West African
Balafon Culture: The Challenges and Potential to a Western Classical Marimba
Performer, in Music+Practice 2 (2015), accessed 21 November, 2015,
http://www.musicandpractice.org/volume-2/challenges-potential-to-western-
classical-marimba-performer.
11
Andreas Lehmann and Anders Ericsson, Research on expert performance and
deliberate practice: Implications for the education of amateur musicians and music
students, in Psychomusicology 16 (1997): 40-58.
12
Robert Woody and Andreas Lehmann, Student Musicians Ear-Playing Ability
as a Function of Vernacular Music Experiences, in Journal of Research in Music
Education 58 (2010): 101-115.
13
Valerie Ross, Music Learning and Performing: Applying Written and Oral
Strategies, in Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 90 (2013): 970-878.
14
Woody and Lehmann, Student Musicians, 103112.
Inner Sight Etudes 79
music as an aural tradition;17 third, the notion that transposition and other
means of altering the score (such as rhythm and improvisation) are triggered
by multisensorial representations rather than purely auditory principles.
Finally, and most importantly, I am interested in the notion that music is a
communal process that allows performers to relate and interact directly with
each other without the added barrier of a visuallynotated score.
Compositional Processes
Inner Sight Etudes consists of multifaceted compositional processes that
all point to a central concept: composition is created in the now
improvisation is the crucial compositional process containing transitory
movements and imagination on the part of the performer. The composition
lives in its performance and, likewise, the performance is an ever
changing composition. According to Benson, the nature of improvisation
is transitory; the existence of these improvisations is genetic, historical and
changing; however, they endure in this manner and so prove that
composition and performance each have a continuing identity.18
20
According to Broeckx, turning the experience, imagery of scenarios and
emotions into musical creations is named as cenaesthesis, distinguished from the
broader definition of synaesthesis of inter-changing of sensations (Jan L Broeckx,
Muziek, ratio en affect, (Antwerp: Peeters, 1985).
21
Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, 125-6.
84 Chapter Five
when strikes from the left and right sides are decisively differentiated from each
other. Andrew Warshaw, Locomotion-Encoded Musical Patterns: An
Evolutionary Legacy, paper presented at Music and Evolutionary Thought
Conference, Durham, June 2007.
86 Chapter Five
ownership of the same innate ability and encourages them to explore it.
Also, the audiences emotion is triggered when the performer tries to
narrate her imaginative world in the improvisations and connect to the
outside world; an apt example of this is when she synchronizes with a
second performing marimbist by depicting the mannerism of their face.
In Inner Sight Etudes, both processes of forming and performing are
presented to the audience. During its creative process, the authors sought
innovative compositional processes and a place for nonvisual scores in
Western musical practice: the performer developed her knowledge of
Western contemporary music by studying and employing balafon
performance techniques (such as embodied movement patterns and
sensorial experience), whilst the composer resumed her investigation into
the performancecomposition and developing the aural and mental
internalization of music during learning processes. Together with these
concrete research frameworks, Inner Sight Etudes is designed to advance
in each upcoming performance. Importantly, it demonstrates how forming
and performing are two operating factors that feed each other and intensify
though an iterative process.