Monday, October 28, 2013

La Negra Tomasa says...

Here it is an example of a musical piece executed by the group “vocal sampling”; this song is titled “La negra Tomasa”, you can tell that this piece is executed only with human voice, even the percussion instruments are simulated with the voice. Following this example, I want to share this reflection:
In its most primitive beginnings it is estimated that the music was exclusively vocal, without the utilization of any instruments. Until now it has not been possible to determined if primitive singing was born out of the necessity to communicate from large distances or if it was born out of the necessity of using a different intonation to communicate with their gods; to say a pray or to thank them. As we all know, all instruments at their beginning had an strictly vocal behavior (some even doubled the voice), but with the passing of centuries, musical instruments were slowly acquiring a bigger protagonism thanks to the sophisticated techniques developed throughout the years. Nowadays, the sophistication level in the confection of the musical instruments is total.
So, after all the above mentioned, I think it is at least a bit ironic that in this era, we are thinking that the voice should be the one imitating the instruments, when in fact since the beginnings of music it has always been the other way around.



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