Soutaiseiriron's abstract influence

I decided to take a break from the usual classical and art music, and have found myself listening (or rather, dissecting) an unusual piece of Japanese Popular Music.

Everyday, I go to college via train. Of course, to free myself from utter boredom, I bring my iPod and just waste the commuting time away through music. Although eight percent of my playlist consists of classical and art music, I decided to have a change of pace and listen to the twenty percent in my playlist which consists of Japanese popular (JPop) songs.

Then I started to tell myself that it’s been quite some time since I listen to these kinds of things, yet fail to understand the lyrics, because, of course, it’s in Japanese. I then told myself that I would do a bit of research on the lyrics, and convince myself whether or not Japanese people really can write lyrics wonderfully. Because in the past, I find myself scooping and gawking over Anime then carefully scrutinize the lyrics of the intro. And I must say that more often than not, I am not convinced by the lyrics – it’s garbage. Of course, I always enjoy the way they write their music; they have their own unique mixture of color and vocal timbre that just makes it so worth listening to. But whenever it came to reading the subtitles while the vocalist with her “coquettish” voice enters the fray, I couldn’t even choose whether to laugh at their gibberish or to frown at it.

For the absolute musicians think that as long as a piece of music has a well-balanced sound, it would be permissible even though it possesses poor lyrical content. But for the singers and careful musical scrutinizers, even having an excellent piece of music with poor lyrics could critically jeopardize the work. I, for one, agree with the latter. I would want my song to be with great, intellectual content.

But for the Japanese band named Soutaiseiriron (Theory of Relativity), having an absolutely nonsensical set of lyrics once in a while wouldn’t really be so bad – especially if you have a reason for doing so. In this blipped video of Youtube, they present one of their earliest works with absolutely peculiar lyrics entitled Sumatora Keibitai (Sumatra Guards). Below I will post the lyrics, and the English translation as well.

yattekita kyouruu
machi hakai
mukaetsu watashi
SAIKIKKU

koushinsei tourai
fuyu nagai
asa wa yowai watashi
akubi wo shiteta no

Taiheiyou, Taiseiyou
koko iitai nani hei-you yo
nosun'da watashi no kioku wo kaeshite
CIA, KGB, FBI ni kyousantou no inbou yo
dareka, watashi wo nigashite

ton'detta BOIJAA
wakusei hakai
nasusubenai anata
SAIKOPASU
kanjousen juutai
saki nagai

matsu no tsurai watashi
GEEMU BOOI shiteta no

Hokkyokasei, Choushinsei
ryuuseigun ni onegai yo
dareka tomete
ano ko no SUUSAIDO
shinkansen, renrakusen
unmei-sen yo oshiete
watashi, asu wa
doko de doushiteru no

akubi wo shiteta no

Taiheiyou. Taiseiyou
koko iitai nani sei-you yo
nosun'da watashi no kioku wo kaeshite
CIA, KGB, FBI ni kyousantou no inbou yo
dareka, watashi wo nigashite

---
ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Dinosaurs came and wrecked the city
But then I ambushed
and attacked them with my psychic powers

Soon, the Ice Age came
Bringing along its long winter
And me, feeling so weak in the morning,

I yawned.

Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean
What the hell is "Pacific"...?
Memories of mine stolen
came back to me
The CIA, KGB, and FBI
The communists were spreading conspiracies to them!
Somebody,
please set me free!

A flying voyager ship
is wrecking the planet
You've lost your mind,
And turned into a psychopath
The roads are blocked and the destination's far

Sick and tired of waiting, I played with my Gameboy

Oh, North star,
Supernova,
Please let there be a meteor storm...
Someone stop that girl
from suiciding!
Oh, bullet train, railroad tracks,
tracks of fate
Please tell her
When morning comes,
Where and how will I cope?

I yawned.

Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean
What the hell is "Atlantic"...?
Memories of mine stolen came back to me
The CIA, KGB, and FBI
The communists were spreading conspiracies to them!
Someone,
please set me free!

Now wasn’t that set of lyrics very familiar and pleasing to the ear (of course, that was sarcasm)? The band, Soutaiseiriron, does not always have lyrical structures as peculiar as this one, although they are a band who loves to parodize Anime and other Japanese Media and infuse them into their lyrics. Other lyrics of other songs are full sci-fi concepts, but still peculiar in such a way.

But what makes them apart from other bands is that their lyrics do not try hard to “sound correct”. In my opinion, they know how to commune with the rest of the world, and truthfully know their limitations in grammar and English. So they create this kind of gimmick to seemingly “warp” their lyrics and use them as a valid excuse that this is “Anime parody”.  I mean if we check the first verse, it reminds us of the usual Japanese cartoons we find ourselves watching when we were children. One might even say that “Hey! That sounds just like (insert Japanese name here) from (insert Japanese Anime series)!

As for their music, it’s nothing too fancy. Their Genre varies, but this is an example of Post-Rock – a subgenre of Alternative Rock. It is, in a sense, Rock, albeit the utlization of certain harmonies, melodies, timbres, and chordal progressions not usually found in traditional Rock music. An immediate element that defines their genre is the vocalist, Etsuko Yakushimaru’s “coquettish ‘moe’ voice”. It’s a tad contrasting when you have a solid sounding foundation with the musical atrocities of distortion fused with the vocalist’s flirtish, smooth voice. This is new music for us. This is innovation.

This greatly reflects on our situation today – our adaptation to the ever-changing world. So much could happen in a blink of an eye. And we, as artists – what are we supposed to do? Soutaiseiriron, the band’s influence, albeit abstract, is an essential factor in this generation. The fact that they have peculiarly structured lyrics and odd musical tastes mean to tell us artists that the time is now for us to open our minds. Not be too constrained with the constraints of traditional Classical music. I’ve really nothing against Classical music. I love Bach, Mozart, and of course, Beethoven. In fact, they make up eighty percent of my playlist at home. Yet, we find ourselves being too constrained with their theories – so much that we forget to open our minds to what’s new in this generation. We find ourselves too absorbed in the past, that we forget to appreciate even the little things these people of today do.

 The odd fusion of musical forms and ideas. The peculiar combination of unorthodox timbres with traditional ones.  The literary nonsense of some lyrics of songs. These are small things that define our generation. Like it or not, we embrace it.

Clusters

Tone clusters, then, are chords built from major and minor seconds which in turn may be derived from the upper reaches o the overtone seriers and have, therefore, a sound foundation.

-Henry Cowell on Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (Schwartz and Childs)

Cowell, as a composer, had unique aims in searching for his own musical style. He was fascinated with primitive music or primitivism and folkloric music, particularly with non-western instruments. I believe that this opened his mind to many new means of sound production – using your palms, fists, elbows, and forearms when playing the piano made him discover certain musical textures and timbres. This technique will be later known as Clustering.

One of the known works of Cowell that employed tone clusters was his 1912 piece entitled The Tides of Manaunnaun. All throughout the duration of the piece, Tone Clusters are very eminent in the accompaniment section. This creates a sort of vibrant and sonorific characteristic. The melody of the piece is very singable and lyrical, and although there’s the fact that the ‘singable’ melody superimposes the unlyrical superimposed secundal accompaniment, the character of the piece has a very strong, folkloric element. Cowell was smart to have separated the melody and accompaniment in 2 or even 3 octaves, so that the music does not sound ‘clashing and mishmashing’ – by this, he achieves musical balance.  And by playing with fists, palms, and elbows seems to have some sort of effect to the listener both visually and aurally. It really does create that seemingly 20^th century element.

The Pointillism of Luigi Nono (Ruijinōno no tenbyō)

          Pointillism or Punctualism is a style of musical composition whose structures are predominantly affected from tone to tone. It is unlike the music that we are used to listening to everyday, which has a certain theme or a melody being developed overtime, and divided by means of phrasing. In Punctual Music, such things are not to be treated with much attention. As I’ve said, the music’s intellect comes from the interaction of the several fragmented musical particles that occur during the duration of the piece. Much similar to Psychology’s “Knowledge Ordering” (more specifically, the known “Bottom-Up processing”), Punctualism involves observing (or in our case, listening) to the individual notes – the “micro-components”. Afterwards we listen to how these several “micro-components” interact with each other. And at the end of the piece, based on how all of these notes have interacted with each other, we can define the “macro-structure”, or the piece as a whole.

          Punctual Music is a direct opposite of linear, group-formed, or mass-formed music. It is music, which consists of separately formed particles.

          One of the best examples of Punctualist music is Luigi Nono’s “Polifonica Monodia Ritmica” scored for Woodwinds, Percussion, and Piano.

          There were rarely any “singable” or how should I say, sustaining themes in the piece, only various fragments. This explains the “separate particles” I was saying a while ago. And at first listening, one might not understand what’s really happening to the piece. One might even say to himself that “this is just an absurd sounding of random notes”. There are no diatonic relationships or any other scalar relationships between notes, which would give us a hint that this is atonality, as well as a scarce utlization and play in rhythm. If we would notice, there aren't much "runs" in the piece, neither could we listen to the rhythmically confusing tuplets. 

          Though as we listen to it again and again, we find out that there is a connection that is being formed from these several separate particles. There are also small hints that the rhythm develops over time, though there still isn't any clear reason as to how it developed (abruptly, I suppose). Also, one of the peculiarities of this piece is in it's instrumentation. Classicalists and Purists might object the idea of having an intellectual piece of music scored for Woodwinds, Piano, and Percussion (particularly, the Snare Drum) because of it's unorthodox manner and imbalance. 

What's worse, is that there is an extreme scarcity in the music's thematic identity, and no immediate sign as to how the music develops.

          This may be what we would call a radical piece of work, because of the seemingly farfetched method it utilizes to express an idea, and for the ordinary listener, the composer's "whimsical ploy in placing notes".

Defining Seminal - Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" (Sutoravuinsukī no "Haru no Saiten" o - shushi no teigi)

          Okay first things first. This video has been removed from Youtube for quite some time now.

          To be honest, when I first watched this video, I never thought of it to be intended for Ballet. I just thought of it as an absolute piece. A friend from the past recommended that I find a video or an audio of this and listen. Never did he tell me about the piece's dark history, nor of it's intentions and it's "supposed" mood. And it was only about three months after, when I learned of this piece's history as I read a bit of it in wikipedia. And that was how I came to appreciate the piece more, and have secured myself a copy of it.

          Nevertheless, this is one of my most favored uploaded videos. It was such a shame that they had to remove it, and to all of the people who never got to watch it, missed half of their lives. A seminal piece like Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" conducted by one of the most sought after conductors like Salonen is really a rare feed even in Youtube where you tend to find all sorts of things. First, there's the rarity of the score. Well, nowadays since all sorts of things can be delivered and republished through various kinds of means doesn't really make the piece of music ultra-rare and hard to find. But there's still that bumbling question as to "who is crazy enough to be playing a gigantic piece?". This work by Stravinsky is definitely not to be taken lightly. For in the history of music, this piece has undergone major criticism by the afficionados and theorists alike, for it's profound and over-the-top character.

          At that time, Russia was appreciating Ballet so much that it became sort of like yesterday's movie theatre. And so the impressario, music composer, and the choreographer were all valueable that time. And in line with that, names like Serge Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, and Vaslav Nijitsky were names to be remembered.

          History states that before the premier of The Rite of Spring in 1913, Stravinsky had already become an anticipated figure in the world of music. Stravinsky quickly rose to fame because of his well-received The Firebird in 1910. Though his 1911's Petrouchka wasn't well-received, still, people were actually looking forward to this man's music. Following that turn of event, Stravinsky actually prompted himself to give to his people something new and radical, never did he know that "that something new" would actually blow the minds of the listeners and throw almost all of them in a state of riot.

            And that is what The Rite of Spring did in the history of music. Because of it's seemingly farfetched elements and radical characteristics, it earned it's seat in history's classical music riots sitting alongside Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major, an early favorite. Stravinsky's intensely rhythmic score combined with his extraordinary ability to perfectly fuse dissonance with consonance to create a marvelous concordance threw off people in a state of shock, who expected their Ballet music to be more demure and reserved. We could say that at this time, this type of music is rarely type-casted as that of the necessarily "Ballet", which meant to relax the watchers who payed a good amount of money so that they could actually have a place to let off steam.

          And so, having explained a brief history of the piece, we now delve to one of it's greatest performances as of today: according to the interpretation of Esa-Pekka Salonen.

          As a fellow musician, and lover of things adventurous, I can say that conducting a gigantic piece like this, much less analyzing and appreciating both it's theoretical and aethetical aspects forever remains a challenge, even to the musicians of the highest caliber. However, Salonen gave his fellow artists a powerful ray of hope in this video. Let us think of this 20th century score to be like a devouring beast confined at the bowels of the underground, and was freed and tamed by one of the master trainers. To all of the people who have a love for movies and action flicks, watching something like that would really captivate their hearts and bedazzle them in amusement. That is the pure equivalent to the artists. Watching - no, listening to something like that is pure amusement to us.

          Salonen's interpretation of this radical score really never ceases to amaze me. The phraseology of the piece was well heard; proving to us that the conductor really took the time to study and "fillet" the piece in a vicious precision. What amazes me also was his manner of conducting. The manner by which he conducted and directed the piece was so precise, that it seemed so off-putting, yet correct for a mysterious reason. It also goes to show that he has vast knowledge in elements of multirhythms and polyrhythms, and can easily convert complex and compound rhythms into simpler ones, much to how a skilled baker can perfectly mix a pair of eggs in a batter.

          Another amazing thing about our conductor is his patience and endurance. The piece is considerably long, approximately thirty three minutes. Heck, just conducting a fifteen to twenty minute piece would practically sap out most of your strength. And to think that this thirty-three minute piece is rich in both the theoretical and aesthetic sense, even just by conducting five or ten minutes of this piece is already enough to throw a conductor in an utter state of fatigue. And of course, there is still that fact that Salonen had a great deal of patience when he directed the orchestra, as well as his massive willingness to go through such an ordeal. To sum things up, the fact that the orchestra sounded that good ultimately means that he directed the piece magnificently.

          Salonen also conducted this piece with fire and passion, as it is evident in his facial expressions, and conducting movements/gestures. Normally, when one studies this piece, he tends to get lost inside the composer's theoretical aspects, often overlooking the piece's delightful factor which "magically" makes the conductor or the listener's ears dancing to the music's rhythm and harmony. Which roughly means that because the conductor or interpretter loses himself inside the piece's theoretical aspect, he tends to substitute his "delighted" face with a serious face during recorded performances, which could have a not-so-positive output to both the video watchers and the orchestra members, whose morale could be affected even by the conductor's facial expressions.

          To wrap things up, I would say that I really enjoyed watching. Even if it's radical or purely off-putting for a Ballet, it was perfect for an absolute performance that had me watching most of the footage at the edge of my seat.