Speaker 1: Pushkin, this is solvable. I'm Ronald Young Jr. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like forcing the entire world to eat with the
Speaker 1: same spices, or to speak with the same language or
Speaker 1: with the same dialect. You know, it's fairly common knowledge
Speaker 1: that a lot of genres of music borrow from one
Speaker 1: another to make their respective sounds. Hip hop borrows from
Speaker 1: R and B rock borrows from country. Songs are sampled,
Speaker 1: sometimes covered. The DNA that links most popular music tends
Speaker 1: to dominate and influence musical cultures around the world, even
Speaker 1: down to the very creation of new music and the
Speaker 1: tools and instruments used to make it. Ultimately, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the supremacy of Western music theory, and Western music
Speaker 1: theory essentially has at its source a very specific kind
Speaker 1: of music making was made and funded by a very
Speaker 1: specific class in a specific period of time. It shouldn't
Speaker 1: be a surprise that even the music we hear in
Speaker 1: our heads and try to shepherd out into the world
Speaker 1: has already been colonized in many ways by Western influences.
Speaker 1: The very idea of what music is, who makes it,
Speaker 1: what are the classics are all questions that have been
Speaker 1: answered long before a creative sits down to make something new.
Speaker 1: We won't be able to move forward into the future
Speaker 1: where we can actually explore different kinds of music, making
Speaker 1: things that might be transcultural, that represent our commonalities and
Speaker 1: our differences in different ways. Kaya Malami is a musician,
Speaker 1: composer and researcher based in Berlin. He just released new
Speaker 1: software Apotomy and Lima, which are expanding the pathways of
Speaker 1: music creation beyond the dominant sound palette. Creators are given
Speaker 1: the tools to compose music using non Western tunings. The
Speaker 1: default settings are the act of choosing. It's just about
Speaker 1: that spark. If you can catch that spark and if
Speaker 1: you can let it have space to grow brighter, then
Speaker 1: you know people will automatically find themselves taking their own
Speaker 1: path and discovering the things that make them feel that magic.
Speaker 1: I'm Kayama Lami, and I believe that the cultural asymmetry
Speaker 1: in music technology is a problem we can solve. Cultural
Speaker 1: asymmetry is the fact that music technologies and the way
Speaker 1: that music is presented and represented tends to lean towards
Speaker 1: a Western conception of what music is rather than be
Speaker 1: something that is balanced where all musical cultures are on
Speaker 1: an equal footing in an equally respectful. Way, tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about your earliest music memories. My earliest
Speaker 1: musical memory is learning to play the violin in Damascus,
Speaker 1: I think I had. I was seven or eight years
Speaker 1: old at the time, and then we moved to London
Speaker 1: when I was nine, and then I didn't really have
Speaker 1: any connection with my Arab identity per se, or at
Speaker 1: least the connections were tenuous at the time. But what
Speaker 1: I did notice was that the band Killing Joke released
Speaker 1: an album in the mid nineties called Pandemonium, on which
Speaker 1: a very famous Lebanese violinist his name is about Abdelaal
Speaker 1: he played, and particularly there's a track called Communion. That
Speaker 1: sound of this really heavy industrial music with this violin,
Speaker 1: this beautiful levantine, you know, Arabic violin scattered all over.
Speaker 1: It really really really got me. It just hit It
Speaker 1: hit a place in my spirit that I wasn't really
Speaker 1: aware of. Was that a moment that kind of pushed
Speaker 1: you forward into the type of work you're doing in
Speaker 1: music now? I think so what it showed me was
Speaker 1: that these desparate worlds, or these these musical worlds that
Speaker 1: I felt were desparate, could actually be pulled together. In
Speaker 1: some in some way could somehow combine together in a
Speaker 1: way that that didn't feel cheesy to me, and it
Speaker 1: didn't feel like exotic, you know, and that stayed with me,
Speaker 1: and I've been kind of searching for my own path
Speaker 1: along those lines for for many years since. So talk
Speaker 1: to me a little bit. You use the word ex
Speaker 1: when you're saying that you're you're talking about I think
Speaker 1: the ways in which world music and non Western music
Speaker 1: is pulled into Western music as a kind of a
Speaker 1: way to add make it a little spicy, which I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think is the best method of using that music.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about how that makes you
Speaker 1: feel like when you hear instances of music being used
Speaker 1: that way. I think it really depends on how For example,
Speaker 1: when you hear something like Big Pimpin by by Jay
Speaker 1: Z and Timberland, Big Pimpin, Baby Spin and Cheese, it
Speaker 1: feels really meaningful, right, yes, Whereas when you hear something
Speaker 1: when you hear something that like there was a band
Speaker 1: called Shakti by John McLaughlin and Zaki Hussein, it was
Speaker 1: more about the sound of those instruments rather than the
Speaker 1: feeling of that music. And that's what I always found
Speaker 1: a little bit more tokenistic and somehow exoticized. They just
Speaker 1: never quite it just never quite felt real enough to me.
Speaker 1: And it's funny for me to say that that something
Speaker 1: like Big Pimpin feels more authentic, But I think the
Speaker 1: reason why it feels more authentic is because it uses
Speaker 1: a sample. Therefore, the sound and the feeling of that
Speaker 1: music is present within the sound of that recreation or
Speaker 1: that or that reyear. Right, Whereas when you hear something
Speaker 1: like Shakti, all I hear is twelve ton equal temperament,
Speaker 1: jazz modalities, jazz tonalities with these very rigid time structures,
Speaker 1: but you have the sound of the tableau and the
Speaker 1: virtuosity of the tableau, which is never quite enough for me,
Speaker 1: you know you It's it's almost to be like when
Speaker 1: people take forward foods and they try to make like
Speaker 1: a taco out of stuff using using Indian ingredients, rather
Speaker 1: than letting these things like stand on their own as
Speaker 1: their own foods. It's like, why are you trying to
Speaker 1: shape it into something that's more familiar to you rather
Speaker 1: than using it and letting it shine on its own. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about them though, So talk about the
Speaker 1: ways in which you think Western theories have kind of
Speaker 1: colonized music, Well, ultimately, I think the issue is not
Speaker 1: that something has colonized something else. It's the remnants of
Speaker 1: colonialists and the supremacist mentality have maintained themselves and been
Speaker 1: inherited by the technologies that we use to make music
Speaker 1: today and the way that musics from around the world
Speaker 1: have been represented and marketed, and therefore that gaze or
Speaker 1: that perspective has been imprinted in people's minds. So when
Speaker 1: we got to the early eighties and digital synthesizers came through,
Speaker 1: and then we get into the world of digital audio
Speaker 1: workstations and using computers to make music, they were also
Speaker 1: based on these Western music series. One is the rhythmic grid,
Speaker 1: which you know divides a certain amount of time into
Speaker 1: equal divisions of time when dealing with digital instruments, but
Speaker 1: the same goes for tonality for pitch, where the octave
Speaker 1: is divided into twelve equal steps into twelve equal semitones
Speaker 1: and it sounds like this, okay. And then the minor scale,
Speaker 1: so like, can you give me examples of what it's
Speaker 1: like to get outside of the major minor scale if
Speaker 1: we're talking about getting outside of this supremacist rigidity of music.
Speaker 1: If we want to get out of this simplicity and
Speaker 1: the rigidity of the major minor, oftentimes will think about
Speaker 1: different kinds of scales, but actually the tuning itself is
Speaker 1: something that is really really powerful. So this is a
Speaker 1: Persian dust gar scale called Chahga, and the beauty of
Speaker 1: it is in these couple of intervals. That's really alien
Speaker 1: to yeah music in the world. Yeah, that sounds it
Speaker 1: sounds like you have a little bit more leeway, a
Speaker 1: little more latitude in that scale than there is in
Speaker 1: the traditional major scale. Can you give me another example
Speaker 1: of something else that's not so westernized? Yeah, sure, So
Speaker 1: let's have a listen to. This is an African idio.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of xylophone called the Empire used by
Speaker 1: the Naki Bembe Xylophone group from Kampala and Uganda. And
Speaker 1: I analyze this tuning from a recording that they sent
Speaker 1: me and it sounds a bit like this. So that's
Speaker 1: a pentatonic scale that has really beautiful, beautiful character to it,
Speaker 1: and you imagine it when it's paid on something more percussive,
Speaker 1: especially lower down. Beautiful character. Oh that's amazing. I feel
Speaker 1: like I could listen to just you play different types
Speaker 1: of scales on different types of instruments all day. So
Speaker 1: how do we solve that, How do we break out
Speaker 1: of the ideas of this of those Western minds that
Speaker 1: we have towards music, and how do we open it
Speaker 1: up and allow people to be more creative and more
Speaker 1: expressive and have more latitude to create unique music for
Speaker 1: everyone to enjoy. One thing is to find a way
Speaker 1: for developers to be able to implement these things with
Speaker 1: ease and simplicity, which already exists, but it just needs
Speaker 1: a kind of It just needs tying up and being
Speaker 1: presented and represented in the right way. Along with that,
Speaker 1: we need to be able to reach out to those
Speaker 1: developers and say to them that this is important. I
Speaker 1: don't think people really realize how much twelve tone equal temperament,
Speaker 1: like rigid digital twelve tone equal temperament, has really impacted
Speaker 1: and affected music all over the world. I mean, you
Speaker 1: listen to anything from the pop music of Latin America
Speaker 1: to the pop music of Central Asia. It's all mediated
Speaker 1: through this particular tuning system which represents a specific musical
Speaker 1: culture from a very specific period of time. And I
Speaker 1: don't think people realize how how damaging that has been,
Speaker 1: not only on the music making, but also on audience's ears.
Speaker 1: You know, we've we've become so accustomed to hearing equal
Speaker 1: temperament now that that most people hear anything else as
Speaker 1: either nostalgic or just weird and out of tune. And
Speaker 1: this is incredibly problematic because it's it's kind of like
Speaker 1: forcing the entire world to eat with the same spices,
Speaker 1: or to speak with the same language or with the
Speaker 1: same dialect, you know. So we need to make people
Speaker 1: understand that this is an important issue and it needs
Speaker 1: to exist because without it existing, we won't be able
Speaker 1: to hear anything else, and we won't be able to
Speaker 1: move forward into the future where we can actually explore
Speaker 1: different kinds of music making, things that might be transcultural,
Speaker 1: that represent our commonalities and our differences in different ways.
Speaker 1: So we need these tools in order to be able
Speaker 1: to imagine something else. That's one thing, and the other
Speaker 1: side of it is actually education. Aside from the fact
Speaker 1: that these capabilities don't exist in the technology, we also
Speaker 1: don't learn about them in music education, and information about
Speaker 1: them is very scattered. It's very much a Western perspective, narrative,
Speaker 1: and trying to break that rigidity of Western music theory
Speaker 1: and Western music education, which is not only a present
Speaker 1: in you know, the West as a whole, but has
Speaker 1: also imposed itself on the rest of the world because
Speaker 1: of colonization, because of imperialism, because of cultural hegemony. We
Speaker 1: need to make sure that these musical ideas from all
Speaker 1: these different cultures are represented in a way that's equal
Speaker 1: to how Western music Western composers have been. There's no
Speaker 1: reason why everybody has to learn about Bach and Mozart
Speaker 1: and doesn't get to learn about Paco de Lusia and
Speaker 1: ali akbar Khan. You know what I'm I think it's
Speaker 1: about valuing all of these musics from all over the
Speaker 1: world and their ability to enrich our lives, and to
Speaker 1: treat all of these musical traditions on equal ground, not
Speaker 1: that one is superior to another just because it has
Speaker 1: harmony and you know, a huge orchestra of instruments behind it.
Speaker 1: I mean that still has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: the decision makers and who decides what is music or
Speaker 1: what is good music. Because I think that same type
Speaker 1: of that same type of oppression exists when we're just
Speaker 1: talking about different styles of music. You know, I've heard
Speaker 1: people say things like hip hop isn't real music, or
Speaker 1: this pop song isn't a real song, or so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. When it comes to the types of
Speaker 1: music that we're deciding is real and isn't real. I
Speaker 1: think you bringing up the example of hip hop is
Speaker 1: really really important. It's taken years years for electronic music makers,
Speaker 1: beat makers, hip hop artists to be respected in the
Speaker 1: same way that you know, Western classical composers are respected. Again.
Speaker 1: It boils down to this supremacy, you know, we are
Speaker 1: always taught again or there's these ideas that are embedded
Speaker 1: in our minds from an early age that if you
Speaker 1: want to be a professional, capable musician, you need to
Speaker 1: be able to read music, you need to understand counterpoint
Speaker 1: and harmony. Black musicians, whether they be African American jazz
Speaker 1: musicians or hip hop artists, have had to suffer this
Speaker 1: for a very long time too. And the parallel is there.
Speaker 1: It's about the inequality. And I think what you brought
Speaker 1: up back in Mozart, what it made me think of
Speaker 1: is when we're talking about the music that we're teaching
Speaker 1: the children, what steps do you think that we can
Speaker 1: take to kind of unlock the possibilities with children, rather
Speaker 1: than kind of just teaching them four four time and
Speaker 1: back in Mozart and kind of bringing in an African
Speaker 1: drummer and say ooh, isn't this fun and thinking of
Speaker 1: that as exotic? What can we do to actually make
Speaker 1: all of music more accessible across the world rather than
Speaker 1: just one view of it. You know, teaching a bunch
Speaker 1: of school kids how to bang on a gembe for
Speaker 1: an afternoon is just not good enough. It's tokenistic, it's exotic.
Speaker 1: It takes the boxes and that's all it does. It
Speaker 1: doesn't get into the core. Whereas if you were to
Speaker 1: bring an African master musician and allow him the time
Speaker 1: and space to be able to talk about groove, to
Speaker 1: be able to talk about polyrhythms, to be able to
Speaker 1: talk about interlocking rhythms, to be able to talk about
Speaker 1: tonality and musicality and pitch and scales and tunings in
Speaker 1: a more in depth way, and then to be able
Speaker 1: to represent those ideas using modern sounds, using digital tools.
Speaker 1: That sounds like I'm demanding a lot, or it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a utopian daydream, but I think that the
Speaker 1: technology is there to allow for that, and that we
Speaker 1: have plenty of musicians all over the globe who are
Speaker 1: more than capable of teaching those kind of ideas, and
Speaker 1: so marrying the two together for me, would be the
Speaker 1: first step. And I really don't think it's so difficult.
Speaker 1: I think it would be quite reasonable to expect something
Speaker 1: like that to exist. So tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: how your software is solving that problem as well. In January,
Speaker 1: I released two browser based softwares in collaboration with the
Speaker 1: Creative Studio called Counterpoint. It's run by Tera Parvan and
Speaker 1: Samuel Diggins. One is called Lima and what's called Apotomy.
Speaker 1: Lima is a tool that allows very instant, intuitive access
Speaker 1: to tunings from all over the world, and it runs
Speaker 1: in a web browser. So it's really really convenient for musicians, researchers, composers,
Speaker 1: educators to use because all you need is a computer
Speaker 1: and you can explore or create here immediately what these
Speaker 1: different tonalities sound like. So the examples I play to
Speaker 1: you earlier were me just switching through some different presets
Speaker 1: that are publicly available in this software. That was a
Speaker 1: major step towards trying to really make this information easier
Speaker 1: for people to engage with. Now, Apotomy is a slightly
Speaker 1: different beast. It's more of a music making environment based
Speaker 1: on generative music, which essentially is music based on parameters
Speaker 1: and probabilities. But what differentiates it from any other kind
Speaker 1: of generative music software is that it's directly focused on
Speaker 1: these transcultural scales and different tunings from all over the world.
Speaker 1: I know we're on a podcast that nobody can see
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, but what I've done is I've launched
Speaker 1: a browser with Apotomy running. I've selected Arabic tuning by
Speaker 1: Alpha Rabi from the tenth century, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: choose a very particular characteristic macam, which is a kind
Speaker 1: of mode called rajah. I love it. And so what
Speaker 1: you would do is choose a tuning system and a
Speaker 1: subset that you want to work in, and then you
Speaker 1: have a bunch of sliders and buttons and things that
Speaker 1: you press in order to change the probabilistic nature of
Speaker 1: the music that's going to come out. This is very
Speaker 1: very simple. As a sound, I'm going to just craft
Speaker 1: it a little bit more, a little bit of delay
Speaker 1: and gives that a little bit more character. And now
Speaker 1: by just trying the sliders and changing some of the parameters.
Speaker 1: I can start to generate these different patterns, and then
Speaker 1: you use a couple of embedded web based synthesizers to
Speaker 1: create that music. That's just one track. I'm going to
Speaker 1: bring in a second track now, and I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: this run lower. And these are all options that are
Speaker 1: available in the software exactly. It's it's a kind of
Speaker 1: modular framework. So I'm going to quickly change the sound
Speaker 1: now to something that might be a bit more interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh now I'm getting a very eighties movie, eighties action movie. Exactly.
Speaker 1: These synths are all quite eighties. So let's just add
Speaker 1: another guitar here on that on the other side. So
Speaker 1: it all feels about eighties at the moment because we're
Speaker 1: just using these very simple rhythmic things structures. But I
Speaker 1: can also switch over to a different kind of rhythmic construction,
Speaker 1: which are called Euclidean rhythms. You can hear these beautiful
Speaker 1: poly rhythms. I'll stop there just otherwise we can really
Speaker 1: be here for hours. I could have never heard this
Speaker 1: kind of music using an Arabic macom being done so quickly,
Speaker 1: so easily, just in a web brow not even in
Speaker 1: a web browser, in any kind of digital software environment before. So,
Speaker 1: even though it sounds a little bit cheesy and a
Speaker 1: bit dated in a bit eighties, what it does is
Speaker 1: it allows my imagination to go elsewhere, so that when
Speaker 1: I come to make my own music, I have this
Speaker 1: weird stuff in the back of my mind that allows
Speaker 1: me to think about my own music and my own
Speaker 1: musical culture in a different way, in a way that's
Speaker 1: a little bit more meaningful and a bit different, a
Speaker 1: bit more progressive maybe. So let me let me add
Speaker 1: your professional musician obviously, and you know what you're doing
Speaker 1: jumping into the software. How do you think that this
Speaker 1: would work for a beginner like somebody that's just like
Speaker 1: trying to get acquaintance with these new tonalities and new rhythms.
Speaker 1: What would be the best method for them to use
Speaker 1: this software. I've spoken to a lot of people who
Speaker 1: didn't know much about this subject and who were using
Speaker 1: these tools for the first time, and I think everybody
Speaker 1: found them intuitive enough for them to have their imagination stimulated.
Speaker 1: The beauty about both lima and apotomy is that rather
Speaker 1: than having presets and defaults that are biased in any way,
Speaker 1: or let's just say non neutral in some way. The
Speaker 1: default settings are the act of choosing. That's something that's
Speaker 1: really important because it gives users a sense of agency.
Speaker 1: So what I would expect from and non professional users
Speaker 1: is for them to get excited about this and to
Speaker 1: just explore and discover by doing, and then hopefully be
Speaker 1: stimulated enough to take that interest further. It's just about
Speaker 1: that spark. If you can catch that spark, and if
Speaker 1: you can let it have space to grow brighter, then
Speaker 1: you know people will automatically find themselves taking their own
Speaker 1: path and discovering the things that make them feel that magic.
Speaker 1: There's one thing I think the limitation is that this
Speaker 1: is free software, and it is browser based, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to you know, beat out software like ableton Live
Speaker 1: or fl Studio or other places bits of music making
Speaker 1: software that you can use and without marketing budgets with
Speaker 1: those softwares. Are you ever concerned that maybe the word
Speaker 1: won't get out that things like this exist for people
Speaker 1: to use, And do you ever consider what the future
Speaker 1: looks like using this tool going forward? With those factors
Speaker 1: in mind, you're right to say that commercial software run
Speaker 1: by global companies with a lot of money for marketing
Speaker 1: and development is definitely not a beast that can be
Speaker 1: tackled with something like this that runs in the browser
Speaker 1: and it's for free. But this was a conscious decision.
Speaker 1: I don't think that those technologies are are bad and
Speaker 1: need to be replaced by something else. I just think
Speaker 1: that they're missing a really crucial element which is imperative
Speaker 1: for non Anglo European musical cultures, and without them, music
Speaker 1: is poorer as a result. Matt and Robert's, a great
Speaker 1: American saxophonist, said during a panel discussion I participated in
Speaker 1: with her a while ago, she said that people of
Speaker 1: color need to have to work harder. That's just the
Speaker 1: nature of the way that systems have been constructed. And
Speaker 1: what I love about these tools is that they actually
Speaker 1: make our lives much much easier, make it much easier
Speaker 1: to create and to develop ideas and to experiment and
Speaker 1: to explore than it was before. So they're great stimulants
Speaker 1: for the musical imagination, and I hope that that that
Speaker 1: in itself can be something that will lead to something else,
Speaker 1: whether that be more great music or more great tools,
Speaker 1: only time will tell. What are a few things that
Speaker 1: listeners can do to help continue your work. Please just
Speaker 1: use the tools, tell your friends about them, and explore
Speaker 1: these ideas. Ultimately, I'm a fan of music, and a
Speaker 1: big part of making these tools is because I'm keen
Speaker 1: and desperate actually to hear more music that has these
Speaker 1: kind of energies and these kinds of tonalities. So please
Speaker 1: just make music, tell your friends and let me know
Speaker 1: so that I can hear it. Hi'm Alami as a musician, composer,
Speaker 1: and researcher and creator of Apotomy and Lima. We included
Speaker 1: links to both at our show notes, so feel free
Speaker 1: to jump in there and play around and see what
Speaker 1: you could create. Next week, go Solvable, We're talking about
Speaker 1: a different set of digital tools that are solving problems.
Speaker 1: Able Gamers is an organization that is making gaming devices
Speaker 1: available and accessible for everyone. I hope you'll join us
Speaker 1: for that conversation. Solvable Senior producer is Jocelyn Frank, Research
Speaker 1: by David Jah, Booking by Lisa Dunn, Our managing producer
Speaker 1: is Sasha Matthias, and our executive producer is Mio Lobel.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Hiam Alami and his musical collaborators for
Speaker 1: sharing audio from the Apotomy live performance from CTM twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. There's a link to their full performance in
Speaker 1: our show notes. I highly recommend that you check that out.
Speaker 1: Solvable is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate, and review. It
Speaker 1: helps us find our way to the ears of new listeners.
Speaker 1: You can find Pushkin Podcasts wherever you listen, including on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app and Apple Podcasts. I'm Ronald Young Junior.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.