1. Found Sounds - Found instruments refer to any commonplace object used as a percussion instrument. This term was first coined by composers John Cage and Lou Harrison in the 1960s. Acquiring found instruments often requires visiting scrap yards to find metals including brake drums from cars or railroad spikes. When asked to play on flower pots, wooden planks, or anything else that requires a trip to the hardware store, we often bring sticks and mallets to find the best sounding potential instruments. This often results in strange looks from employees and passerby as we inconspicuously tap on the store's sound offerings. Some of my favorite found instruments include cacti prepared with contact microphones, tin cans, and metal mixing bowls.
2. Idiophones - A classification referring to any instrument that produces sound from vibrating the whole instrument. This encompasses most percussion instruments, including cymbals, triangles, gongs and tam-tams, wood blocks and temple blocks, slapsticks, and Indonesian Gamelan instruments. Drums meanwhile are not idiophones, as they produce sounds by striking a dried skin stretched over a wooden shell and are referred to as membranophones.
3. Percussion theater - A sub-genre of percussion music involving staging, performers taking on the role of characters, and often times a running plotlines. Composers that champion this style include Mauricio Kagel, Georges Aperghis, and Vinko Globokar. These pieces are found in the solo repertoire and include Vinko Globokar's ?Corporel and George Aperghis' Le Corps à Corps. These pieces involve speaking and require the performer to communicate strong affectations. Aperghis' Le Corps à Corps recounts the story of a grisly and graphic racecar accident. Globokar's ?Corporel is much more open to interpretation, but many performances focus on communicating feelings of PTSD. Percussion theater chamber music involves a cast of characters all playing different instruments while acting out a narrative. Mauricio Kagel's Dressur is often thought of as the earliest canonic percussion ensemble theater piece. Links to all of these pieces are below!
A common misconception in the percussion world surrounds the topic of "world" percussion. This term exists in the American and European percussion communities as a way of classifying non-western instruments and playing styles. Blanket terms such as "Latin rhythms" show a lack of cultural sensitivity. This is a touchy subject as percussionists are often responsible for facility and backgrounds in Afro-Cuban, African, Middle-Eastern, East Asian, and Brazilian instruments. American and European percussionists can (often unknowingly) perpetuate cultural appropriation without the proper context and techniques surrounding these instruments. We as a percussion community are still trying to define the boundary between exchange and appropriation, but the term "world percussion" represents a form of Euro-centricity unfit for today's musical world.
Wow. Terrific, compelling pieces. I was unfamiliar with the Globokar piece. What a wonderful, concise commentary too, on the enormous and thorny topic of "world percussion." "Trying to define the boundary between exchange and appropriation" is of course salient in many musical contexts, including of course sampling and electronic music.
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