Some say Surf music drew upon mideastern folk music

[alfredo]

Dick Dale was influenced by the music his uncle played on the Oud.

Here's some Armenian Oud music. Near the end you can hear what I am speaking of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy8mjop1Qwk

I wonder if the Oud music of the Mideast and north Africa also influenced Flamenco.

My grandfather played the Oud and mandolin. My dad broke the mandolin over his brother's head.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Can't say I could pick it up

the time signature is so different it's hard to tell.

Reminded me of the Blue Rondo à la Turk from Brubeck's Time Out album which used a number of different time signatures.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjSi4krk5YU He picked that up from 9/8 time Turkish folk music. That's the rhythm of an Irish slip jig too.

[Forkboy]

2. I can hear a dash of it in there.

Can't get all technical,I'm just a music addict,not player,but I listen to a lot of surf ranging from stuff like the Venturas and Dick Dale to The Mermen and Man..Or Astroman? (The Aqua Velvets are pretty slick too).I definitely hear some touches of it in that vid (which is pretty neat in it's own right).

A lot of the music I listen to now incorporates so many varied styles that there seems to be no one genre anymore that's pure.I just got a CD from a guy called Caina that's mostly this ambient black metal stuff,but there's parts where it's closer to jazz or folk than black metal.It's a bizarre CD,and so far one of the top 3 of the year for me.What I'm getting at in my own meandering way is that I'm to the point where I'm picking up influences from all kinds of music in places you wouldn't expect it.

[Squeech]

3. Al-Andalus

That was the name of the Iberian peninsula when the Moors ran it. It was widely considered to be a golden age (and not even merely by contrast to the rest of Europe, which at the time was well within the Dark Ages). By all accounts it was a great flowering of art, music, poetry, natural philosophy, and all three Peoples of the Book lived together in peace and prosperity.

Of course the Moors brought their music and their instruments with them. (The instrument we know as the lute evolved from the oud, and the name is really the same, l'oud in French.) So the ancestors of the musicians who play flamenco today heard the Moors play those weird modes with the minor seconds and sixths-- like that cliche flamenco effect, where you play an E major chord in root position and then move it one fret up the neck.

I'm told they influenced the troubadours too, itinerant musicians who wandered all around western Europe playing for anybody who'd feed them. They probably had to travel to al-Andalus to learn new tunes because there was very little new music wherever the Catholic Church dominated-- they tried to suppress everything except Gregorian chant.

Now of course every kind of music that's ever been recorded is accessible to Western consumers, and musicians who really like the music of, say, the Middle East will start to play in those same modes just because it's what they've been listening to. Hope this helps!

[tigereye]

4. great info as usual, Squeech!

:hi:

[NashVegas]

5. Slack Key ...

I was at a Chris Whitley show in 1996 (? when he took a full rock band out with him) and the pre-show music featured some slack key recording that sounded very Middle-Eastern, can't remember who it was.

Here's David Lindley on the oud.

http://www.behindthebeat.net/mp3/a330a1341.mp3