Crossing The Pond: Exploring Traditional Galician Music with Bluegrass Guitar
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Abstract
Crossing the Pond is a project aiming to explore Galician fiddle music from the perspective of a Bluegrass guitar player hoping to incorporate some of what he learns into his own playing, compositions, and artistic awareness. Drawing from personal musical experiences and my understanding of Bluegrass as a folk music tradition, I chose immersion as a methodology for investigating the way Galician musicians cultivate awareness and mastery of their art. Towards this goal, I elected to delve into Galician music in the following four ways: adapting an existing composition to incorporate a Galician musical element, writing a melody for Bluegrass fiddle using the form and structure of a Galician Muiñera as a template for composition, exploring the recontextualisation of traditional melodies in a non- traditional setting, and lastly, through the cross-cultural exchange intrinsic to this type of research. Consequently, my efforts allowed me to explore the intersection between not only the music cultures of Galician and Bluegrass, but additionally, the diverse artistic arena which is Berklee College of Music. To that end, my work to gain perspective in Galician music would allow me to developed relationships with individuals who will forever impact my understanding of traditional art, community, and musicianship.
Publication Date
7-1-2018
Campus
Valencia (Spain) Campus
Keywords
Galician Music; Cross-Cultural Exchange; Bluegrass Music; Vigo; Bluegrass Guitar
Recommended Citation
Caton, Daniel. “Crossing The Pond: Exploring Traditional Galician Music with Bluegrass Guitar.” Master's thesis, Berklee College of Music, 2018. https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-contemporary-performance/109.
Comments
Project Components: paper (.pdf), presentation (.pdf), audio files (ZIP file containing 3 .wav files), video (.mp4), chord charts (ZIP file containing 4 .pdf documents).