Lesson 19: Music Across Cultures and Genres

Western classical music is only one of the world's musical traditions. Every culture has its own sounds, scales, instruments and ideas about what music is for — and listening across cultures is one of the most rewarding things a musician can do. This lesson is a first tour of that wider world.

In India, classical music is built on two ideas: raga and tala. A raga is a melodic framework — a set of notes with rules about how they are used, and with a mood or time of day attached to it. A tala is a rhythmic cycle, a repeating pattern of beats that can be as short as a few beats or as long as sixteen. Indian classical performances are largely improvised within these frameworks, and a single raga performance can last an hour or more. The main instruments are the sitar and the tabla drums. In West Africa, music is built on polyrhythm: several different rhythms played at the same time, interlocking like the parts of a machine. The djembe drum and the balafon (a wooden xylophone) are central, and music is woven into daily life — work, celebration, storytelling and ceremony.

Scales and Sounds Around the World

Many musical traditions use scales that are different from the Western major and minor. The pentatonic scale, with five notes instead of seven, is found in Chinese, Japanese, African and Celtic music — and in most folk songs and blues. Because it has no semitones, its notes never clash harshly, which is why pentatonic melodies sound so gentle and open. Indonesian gamelan music uses tuned gongs and metallophones, and its scales are different again — the instruments of one gamelan set are tuned to each other, not to a universal standard, so each ensemble has its own unique sound. Japanese music uses instruments like the koto (a long zither) and the shakuhachi (a bamboo flute), and values silence and space as much as sound itself.

Genres and Listening with Respect

Within the Western tradition, genres are another kind of variety: jazz, blues, rock, pop, hip-hop, country, electronic dance music and film music each have their own rhythms, instruments and conventions. Jazz grew from blues and ragtime in the early twentieth century and is built on improvisation and swing; hip-hop is built on rhythm, rhyme and sampling; electronic dance music is built on repeating patterns and synthesisers. Listening across genres and cultures works best with respect and curiosity: learn the names of the instruments, find out what the music is for, and listen to whole performances rather than short clips. Music is not a competition between traditions — it is a library, and every shelf has something worth hearing.

Blues, Reggae and Film Music

A few more traditions show how wide the musical world is. The blues, born in the American South in the late nineteenth century, is built on the 12-bar progression from Lesson 14 and on the blues scale, with its flattened "blue" notes that bend the pitch between the cracks of the piano keyboard. Blues gave rise to jazz, rock and roll, and much of modern pop. Reggae, from Jamaica, is built on the off-beat: the guitar and keyboard play short chords on beats 2 and 4, the bass plays a melodic line of its own, and the result is a relaxed, swaying groove that has spread around the world. Film music is a genre of its own: composers like John Williams write orchestral scores that tell the audience how to feel — a heroic brass theme for the hero, a tense string tremolo for danger — and the music is timed to the second to match the picture. Folk traditions are equally rich: Celtic music from Ireland and Scotland uses jigs and reels in 6/8 and 4/4, and Spanish flamenco combines guitar, singing and handclaps in complex rhythms. Each tradition rewards the same approach: listen, learn the names, and find out what the music is for.