Martinican Music
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Martinican Music
The music of Martinique has a heritage which is intertwined with that of its sister island, Guadeloupe. Despite their small size, the islands have created a large popular music industry, which gained in international renown after the success of zouk music in the later 20th century. Zouk's popularity was particularly intense in France, where the genre became an important symbol of identity for Martinique and Guadeloupe.Ledesma and Scaramuzzo, pgs. 289–303 Zouk's origins are in the folk music of Martinique and Guadeloupe, especially Martinican chouval bwa, and Guadeloupan gwo ka. There's also notable influence of the pan-Caribbean calypso tradition and Haitian kompa. Folk music Carnival is a very important festival, known as Vaval on Martinique. Music plays a vital role, with Martinican big bands marching across the island. Vaval declined following World War II, bouncing back with new band formats and new traditions only in the 1980s. Like Guadeloupe, Martinique features particip ...
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Island
An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, and a small island off the coast may be called a holm. Sedimentary islands in the Ganges delta are called chars. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands, such as the Philippines, is referred to as an archipelago. There are two main types of islands in the sea: continental and oceanic. There are also artificial islands, which are man-made. Etymology The word ''island'' derives from Middle English ''iland'', from Old English ''igland'' (from ''ig'' or ''ieg'', similarly meaning 'island' when used independently, and -land carrying its contemporary meaning; cf. Dutch ''eiland'' ("island"), German ''Eiland'' ("small island")). However, the spelling of the word ...
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Masquerade Ball
A masquerade ball (or ''bal masqué'') is an event in which many participants attend in costume wearing a mask. (Compare the word "masque"—a formal written and sung court pageant.) Less formal "costume parties" may be a descendant of this tradition. A masquerade ball usually encompasses music and dancing. These nighttime events are used for entertainment and celebrations.  History Masquerade balls were a feature of the Carnival season in the 15th century, and involved increasingly elaborate allegorical Royal Entries, pageants, and triumphal processions celebrating marriages and other dynastic events of late medieval court life. The "Bal des Ardents" (''"Burning Men's Ball"'') was held by Charles VI of France, and intended as a ''Bal des sauvages'' (''"Wild Men's Ball"''), a form of costumed ball (''morisco''). It took place in celebration of the marriage of a lady-in-waiting of Charles VI of France's queen in Paris on January 28, 1393. The King and five courtiers dres ...
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Lesser Antilles
The Lesser Antilles ( es, link=no, Antillas Menores; french: link=no, Petites Antilles; pap, Antias Menor; nl, Kleine Antillen) are a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. Most of them are part of a long, partially volcanic island arc between the Greater Antilles to the north-west and the continent of South America."West Indies." ''Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary'', 3rd ed. 2001. () Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc., p. 1298. The islands of the Lesser Antilles form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Sea where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. Together, the Lesser Antilles and the Greater Antilles make up the Antilles. (Somewhat confusingly, the word Caribbean is sometimes used to refer only to the Antilles, and sometimes used to refer to a much larger region.) The Lesser and Greater Antilles, together with the Lucayan Archipelago, are collectively known as the West Indies. History after European arrival The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive on the ...
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French Caribbean
The French West Indies or French Antilles (french: Antilles françaises, ; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Antiy fwansez) are the parts of France located in the Antilles islands of the Caribbean: * The two overseas departments of: ** Guadeloupe, including the islands of Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Les Saintes, Marie-Galante, and La Désirade. ** Martinique * The two overseas collectivities of: ** Saint Martin, the northern half of the island with the same name, the southern half is Sint Maarten, a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. ** Saint Barthélemy History Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc was a French trader and adventurer in the Caribbean, who established the first permanent French colony, Saint-Pierre, on the island of Martinique in 1635. Belain sailed to the Caribbean in 1625, hoping to establish a French settlement on the island of St. Christopher (St. Kitts). In 1626 he returned to France, where he won the support of Cardinal Richelieu to establish Frenc ...
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Rattle (percussion Instrument)
A rattle is a type of percussion instrument which produces a sound when shaken. Rattles are described in the Hornbostel–Sachs system as ''Shaken Idiophones or Rattles (112.1)''. According to Sachs, Rattles include: * Maracas, widely used in Cha Cha Cha and jazz. ** Chac-chac, as known in Trinidad, Dominica and the French Antilles. * The egg-shaped plastic chicken shake, filled with steel shot and available in varying tones depending on the size and quantity of shot. * Folk instruments especially used in ceremonial dance. * Toy rattles for infants. Though there are many different sorts of rattles, some music scores indicate simply a rattle (or the corresponding terms French ''claquette'', ''hochet''; Ger. ''Rassel'', ''Schnarre''; It. ''nacchere''). Examples * Chankana * Ganzá * Hosho * Maracas * Maracitos * Katsa * Chajchas * Rainstick * Kashaka History In Ancient Egypt, rattles were used during funerary rituals to signify regeneration in the after-life. Rattles ...
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Merry-go-round
A carousel or carrousel (mainly North American English), merry-go-round (List of sovereign states, international), roundabout (British English), or hurdy-gurdy (an old term in Australian English, in South Australia, SA) is a type of amusement ride consisting of a rotation, rotating circular platform with seats for riders. The "seats" are traditionally in the form of rows of wooden horses or other animals mounted on posts, many of which are moved up and down by gears to simulate Horse gallop, galloping, to the accompaniment of Music loop, looped circus music. Carousels are commonly populated with horses, each horse weighing roughly 100 lbs (45 kg), but may include a variety of mounts, for example pigs, zebras, tigers, or mythological creatures such as dragons or unicorns. Sometimes, chair-like or bench-like seats are used, and occasionally mounts can be shaped like aeroplanes or cars. The names ''carousel'' and ''merry-go-round'' are also used, in varying dialects, to ...
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Kazoo
The kazoo is an American musical instrument that adds a "buzzing" timbral quality to a player's voice when the player vocalizes into it. It is a type of '' mirliton'' (which itself is a membranophone), one of a class of instruments which modifies its player's voice by way of a vibrating membrane of goldbeater's skin or material with similar characteristics. Similar hide-covered vibrating and voice-changing instruments have been used in Africa for hundreds of years. Playing A kazoo player hums, rather than blows, into the bigger and flattened side of the instrument.How to Play Kazoo
Kazoos.com, 2013, accessed July 12, 2013
The oscillating air pressure of the hum makes the kazoo's membrane vibrate. The resulting sound varies in pitch and loudness with the player's humming. Players can produce different sounds by singing specifi ...
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Comb And Paper
Comb and paper is a rudimentary musical instrument which consists of a comb with a piece of paper pressed to it. To play it, one has to press their lips to the paper pressed to the comb and sing or vocalize into it. The voice makes the paper vibrate and changes the voice quality. The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica refers to it as "the comb-music of the nursery". "Comb and paper" belongs to the category of "singing membranophones", sometimes called "mirlitons" after "mirliton", another name for the eunuch flute. Playing comb and paper is sometimes called "blue-blowing", possibly in reference to Mound City Blue Blowers. Comb and paper used to be one of many improvised musical instruments to accompany country–western dances. Notable uses The 1923-1936 jazz band Mound City Blue Blowers had Red McKenzie playing comb and tissue paper. The unusual noises heard in the Beatles song "Lovely Rita" after the lines "and the bag across her shoulder / made her look a little like a m ...
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Accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed in a frame), colloquially referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist. The concertina , harmoneon and bandoneón are related. The harmonium and American reed organ are in the same family, but are typically larger than an accordion and sit on a surface or the floor. The accordion is played by compressing or expanding the bellows while pressing buttons or keys, causing ''pallets'' to open, which allow air to flow across strips of brass or steel, called '' reeds''. These vibrate to produce sound inside the body. Valves on opposing reeds of each note are used to make the instrument's reeds sound louder without air leaking from each reed block.For the accordion's place among the families of musical ...
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Flute
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening. According to the instrument classification of Hornbostel–Sachs, flutes are categorized as edge-blown aerophones. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist or flutist. Flutes are the earliest known identifiable musical instruments, as paleolithic examples with hand-bored holes have been found. A number of flutes dating to about 53,000 to 45,000 years ago have been found in the Swabian Jura region of present-day Germany. These flutes demonstrate that a developed musical tradition existed from the earliest period of modern human presence in Europe.. Citation on p. 248. * While the oldest flutes currently known were found in Europe, Asia, too, has ...
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Bamboo
Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, but it probably comes from the Dutch or Portuguese language, which originally borrowed it from Malay or Kannada. In bamboo, as in other grasses, the internodal regions of the stem are usually hollow and the vascular bundles in the cross-section are scattered throughout the stem instead of in a cylindrical arrangement. The dicotyledonous woody xylem is also absent. The absence of secondary growth wood causes the stems of monocots, including the palms and large bamboos, to be columnar rather than tapering. Bamboos include some of the fastest-growing plants in the world, due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. Certain species of bamboo can grow within a 24-hour period, at a rate of almost an hour (equivalent to 1 mm every 90 seco ...
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Percussion Instrument
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''The Oxford Companion to Music'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone. The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and cym ...
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