Kraar
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Kraar
Krar (Amharic: ክራር) is a five-or-six stringed bowl-shaped lyre from Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is tuned to a pentatonic scale. A modern ''Krar'' may be amplified, much in the same way as an electric guitar or violin. The ''Krar'', along with ''Masenqo'' and the ''Washint'', is one of the most widespread musical instruments of the Amhara ethnic group. Role in Amhara society Historical In Amhara society the ''krar'' was viewed as an instrument inspired by the Devil and was therefore inferior, whereas the ''Begena'' was for praising God and seen as sacred. The ''krar'' was used to adulate feminine beauty, to create sexual arousal and to eulogize carnal love. The instrument has been associated with brigands, outlaws and wanderers. Wanderers played the ''krar'' to solicit food, and outlaws played it to sing an Amhara war song called ''Fano''. Contemporary Today, the ''krar'' which used to be the plaything of the Amharas, has become one of the most popular Ethiopian stri ...
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Masenqo
The Masenqo ( am, ማሲንቆ; Tigrinya: ጭራ-ዋጣ (ዋጣ) is a single-stringed bowed lute commonly found in the musical traditions of Ethiopia. As with the krar, this instrument is used by Ethiopian minstrels called ''azmaris'' ("singer" in Amharic) . Although it functions in a purely accompaniment capacity in songs, the masenqo requires considerable virtuosity, as azmaris accompany themselves while singing. Construction and design The square or diamond-shaped resonator is made of four small wooden boards glued together, then covered with a stretched parchment or rawhide. The single string is typically made of horse hair, and passes over a bridge. The instrument is tuned by means of a large tuning peg to fit the range of the singer's voice. It may be bowed by either the right or left hand, and the non-bow hand sits lightly on top of the upper part of the string. See also * Music of Ethiopia * Music of Eritrea The music of Eritrea, is a diverse mix of traditional an ...
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Secular Music
Non-religious secular music and sacred music were the two main genres of Western music during the Middle Ages and Renaissance era. The oldest written examples of secular music are songs with Latin lyrics.Grout, 1996, p. 60 However, many secular songs were sung in the vernacular language, unlike the sacred songs that followed the Latin language of the Church. These earliest types were known as the chanson de geste (song of deeds) and were popular amongst the traveling jongleurs and minstrels of the time.Grout, 1996, p. 61 The largest collection of secular music from this period comes from poems of celebration and chivalry of the troubadours from the south of France. These poems contain clever rhyme-schemes, varied use of refrain-lines or words, and different metric patterns. The minstrels of this time were not themselves poets or composers. Instead they adapted the compositions of others to sing, play, and dance to in their own unique versions. Other styles included love songs, ...
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Eritrean Musical Instruments
Eritrean may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Eritrea * A person from Eritrea, or of Eritrean descent. For information about the Eritrean people, see Demographics of Eritrea and Culture of Eritrea. For specific persons, see List of Eritreans. * Languages of Eritrea, several, but none called "Eritrean" * Eritrean cuisine, a fusion of Eritrea's native culinary traditions and social interchanges with other regions * Eritrean coastal desert, ecoregion is a harsh sand and gravel strip along the southern part of the coast of Eritrea and the Red Sea coast of Djibouti * Eritrean literature, works in Tigrinya language See also * * Eritrea (other) Eritrea may refer to: * Eritrea, the modern African state * Eritrea (opera), by Francesco Cavalli * ''Eritrea'' (colonial ship), Italian warship * Eretria Eretria (; el, Ερέτρια, , grc, Ἐρέτρια, , literally 'city of the r ... {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguatio ...
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Dull
Dull may refer to: __NOTOC__ Places * Dull, Perth and Kinross, Scotland, United Kingdom, a village * Dull, Ohio, United States, an unincorporated community * Dull, Texas, United States, a ghost town People * Jack Dull (1930–1995), American professor, scholar of the history of Han China * Orville O. Dull (1888–1978), American film producer and director * Ryan Dull (born 1989), American Major League Baseball pitcher Other uses * Dull Gret, a figure of Flemish folklore See also * Hugh the Dull, Lord of Douglas (1294 – between 1342 and 1346), Scottish nobleman and cleric * Dullness Dullness may refer to: In vision *A lack of perceived brightness *A lack of perceived colorfulness In medicine *A dull sound in response to percussion (medicine) **Shifting dullness, a medical sign In philosophy and religion *Tamas (philosophy) ...
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Asnaketch Worku
Asnaketch Worku () (born 1935 – 14 September 2011) was an Ethiopian singer who sang in the Amharic language and a ''krar'' instrumentalist, the instrument which symbolized her fame during the 1960s and 1970's. Asnaketch also had a long distinguished career as an actress. Biography Worku was born in the Sidist Kilo neighborhood of Addis Ababa and was raised in the city. Her parents separated shortly after her birth and she never met her father. After her mother died when she was three, Worku was raised by her godmother, whom she was not very fond of. Later, she moved in with an older sister, Elfinesh Marefia, and the two enjoyed going to plays and concerts. Buying her first krar for only 25 cents, Asnaketch taught herself how to play and began performing in small bars and cabarets. However, she quit her job at a bar on Churchill Road due to low pay and harassment. After a case of unrequited love, she grew depressed, stopped eating for three days, and was briefly chained to her ...
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Pulse (music)
In music theory, the pulse is a series of uniformly spaced beats—either audible or implied that sets the tempo and is the scaffolding for the rhythm. By contrast, rhythm is always audible and can depart from the pulse. So while the rhythm may become too difficult for an untrained listener to fully match, nearly any listener instinctively matches the pulse by simply tapping uniformly, despite rhythmic variations in timing of sounds atop the pulse.Fitch, W. Tecumseh and Rosenfeld, Andrew J. (2007). Definitions The pulse may be audible or implied. The tempo of the piece is the speed of the pulse. If a pulse becomes too fast it would become a drone; one that is too slow would be perceived as unconnected sounds.P. Fraisse, ''Les Structures Rhythmiques'', Erasme Paris 1956, H Woodrow ''Time Perception'' in "A Handbook of Experimental Psychology", ed. S.S. Stevens, Wiley, NY 1951, both quoted at http://www.zeuxilogy.home.ro/media/manifesto.pdf zeuxilogy.home.ro) When the period o ...
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Harmony
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However, harmony is generally understood to involve both vertical harmony (chords) and horizontal harmony ( melody). Harmony is a perceptual property of music, and, along with melody, one of the building blocks of Western music. Its perception is based on consonance, a concept whose definition has changed various times throughout Western music. In a physiological approach, consonance is a continuous variable. Consonant pitch relationships are described as sounding more pleasant, euphonious, and beautiful than dissonant relationships which sound unpleasant, discordant, or rough. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Counterpoint, which refers to ...
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Strum
In music, strumming is a way of playing a stringed instrument such as a guitar, ukulele, or mandolin. A strum or stroke is a sweeping action where a finger or plectrum brushes over several strings to generate sound. On most stringed instruments, strums are typically executed by a musician's designated strum hand (typically the musician's dominant hand, which is often responsible for generating the majority of sound on a stringed instrument), while the remaining hand (referred to as the fret hand on most instruments with a fingerboard) often supports the strum hand by altering the tones and pitches of any given strum. Strums are often contrasted with plucking, as a means of vibrating an instrument's strings. In plucking, a specific string or designated set of strings are individually targeted to vibrate, whereas in strumming, a less precise targeting is usually used. Compared to other plucking techniques, any group of strings brushed in a single sweep by a plectrum could be con ...
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Timbre
In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voices and musical instruments. It also enables listeners to distinguish different instruments in the same category (e.g., an oboe and a clarinet, both Woodwind instrument, woodwind instruments). In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical instrument or human voice have a different sound from another, even when they play or sing the same note. For instance, it is the difference in sound between a guitar and a piano playing the same note at the same volume. Both instruments can sound equally tuned in relation to each other as they play the same note, and while playing at the same amplitude level each instrument will still sound distinctively with its own unique tone color. Experienced musicians are able to distinguish between diff ...
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Pitch (music)
Pitch is a perceptual property of sounds that allows their ordering on a frequency-related scale, or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies. Pitch is a major auditory attribute of musical tones, along with duration, loudness, and timbre. Pitch may be quantified as a frequency, but pitch is not a purely objective physical property; it is a subjective psychoacoustical attribute of sound. Historically, the study of pitch and pitch perception has been a central problem in psychoacoustics, and has been instrumental in forming and testing theories of sound representation, processing, and perception in the auditory system. Perception Pitch and frequency Pitch is an auditory sensation in which a listener assigns musical tones to relative positions on a musical scale based primarily on their perception of the frequency of vibration. Pitch is closely related to frequency, but ...
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Bead
A bead is a small, decorative object that is formed in a variety of shapes and sizes of a material such as stone, bone, shell, glass, plastic, wood, or pearl and with a small hole for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under to over in diameter. Beads represent some of the earliest forms of jewellery, with a pair of beads made from ''Nassarius'' sea snail shells dating to approximately 100,000 years ago thought to be the earliest known example. Beadwork is the art or craft of making things with beads. Beads can be woven together with specialized thread, strung onto thread or soft, flexible wire, or adhered to a surface (e.g. fabric, clay). Types of beads Beads can be divided into several types of overlapping categories based on different criteria such as the materials from which they are made, the process used in their manufacturing, the place or period of origin, the patterns on their surface, or their general shape. In some cases, such as millefiori and ...
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