Orientalism: Desert Level Music vs Actual Middle-Eastern Music
Human talks at camera then video ends.avi00:00 Iranians react to Orientalist music03:45 Defining Orientalist music11:44 Disclaimers17:44 "Indian, Arab, same ...
www.youtube.com
Interesting video essay from an Iranian music producer about how ""Middle Eastern""" music in Western media is often a hodgepodge of instruments and compositional styles from entirely unrelated cultures. He argues that, by itself, it's not inherently a bad thing, but when this "orientalist" music is presented as authentic Persian, Turkish, Moroccan, etc. music to Western audiences, it does a disservice to both Westerners and Easterners, and leads to a vicious cycle where audiences expect to hear orientalist music in media set in the Middle East, leading composers to make more of it, which further entrenches it in the public consciousness, and so on.
It's a long essay (an hour and a half) so I know it's a tall ask to recommend this video...but I found it pretty compelling. Once you hear that Armenian duduk instrument, you'll never be able to unhear it. And there are some fun analogies made with hypothetical "occidentalist" music (imagine hearing bagpipes and balalaikas in a movie set in Italy) that help communicate what orientalist music sounds like to folks from Middle Eastern backgrounds.
His main channel content is original modern compositions of music meant to accurately reflect traditional instruments and arrangements used by different cultural traditions, and he goes out of his way to consult academic sources and people from the culture he's working with.
