Saturday, October 7, 2023

Duet for a couple of instruments

 

I enjoyed this bit of music a lot. It's a real eye-opening performance from the bassoonist. I'd like to know what the percussionist is sitting on/playing. Is it a custom instrument or just a stool. I mean, he is getting a lot of tones from the front.

2 comments:

susan said...

I enjoyed it too - it's not often you get to hear a bassoonist playing with any kind of percussionist. So I looked for a percussion box and found:

The cajon is the wooden acoustic percussion instrument you sit on and play with your hands (pronounced "kah-hone"). It's sometimes called a beatbox or box drum.

Then there's the Witch Dance video I mentioned that Belle and some local women will be performing for Hallowe'en. You're right they're getting the time of year mixed up but I guess it's understandable.

wiki: It is suggested that Walpurgis Night is linked with older May Day festivals in northern Europe, which also involved lighting bonfires at night, for example the Gaelic festival Beltane.

Ben said...

Yeah, it probably was a treat for both the bassoonist and the percussionist, from the looks of them.

Ah, the cajon. Thanks. Yeah, they seem to be used a lot in Afro-Peruvian music. Makes sense that the "j" is pronounced as an "h" as generally happens in Spanish.

I liked the Witch Dance video. Not something you see every day. The song playing in the background sounded oddly like a German language version of Louis Prima.

I could believe that Walpurgis Night and Beltane were connected in the past. Even if they didn't start out that way, coming from somewhat different cultures, you do see syncretic traditions in a lot of places.