performed by Stupovi
key: D aeolian
mode: D E F G A Bb C
melody: verse — S l t d r (m in the ritornello)
form: strophic with ritornello
meter: mixed
English function names: tonic subtonic
Tagg (modified): home counterpoise (away)
Riemann: t dP
Scale degrees: i VII
Chords: Dm C
Dm
|/. / / |/. / / |/. / / |/. / / |
Dm C Dm
|/. / / |/. / / |/. / / |/. / / |
A song about a woman watching a tailor sew her wedding garments on one hand, and about standing up to oppression on the other. Pianist Koshanin has written extensively about this song in his blog, and it makes more sense to read that for background than for me to summarize it here.
I immediately noticed the similarity in form to Ceniv se u popa, a Macedonian tune we looked at earlier in the life of this blog, in that it is basically a drone-based song, with a tiny dip to indicate the end of the section. A sort of harmonic punctuation, if you will. A fill, even.
Also earlier in the life of this blog, I wrote a little about meter, but only touched upon what is traditionally called "mixed" meter, and what Edwin Gordon would call unusual unpaired meter. Let's start with unpaired because that is a little easier to unpack. We clearly have a repeating set of three macrobeats, the first of which is longer than the following two. Because there are three, it's not a pair, therefore it's unpaired. Not too hard. You may be thinking, as I often do, that because the phrases tend to be in sets of four, it's even, and therefore paired; but that's not how the theory works. It's not about the phrase level; it's at the beat level. The meter is unusual because the macrobeats are of different lengths — some with three microbeats, some with two. But let's be real: it's unusual for say, Germany, but not so much for Kosovo. That said, Bavaria has a whole genre of dance tunes called Zwiefache that have — you guessed it — macrobeats of different lengths. That is why I still prefer the term mixed, because it's less judgmental. Usual/unusual is too much like normal/abnormal; it's not how I want to talk about music.
In the slash notation above, I've used a dot to indicate the longer macrobeat, which is similar to staff notation's dotted notes. I took a medieval transcription class on semester and there I learned that the dot originally meant a note that was divided into three parts.1 We often teach that a dot adds half to its value. The math is the same, but I have found that adding fractions in one's head is difficult for many students, whereas thinking of it as tying together three of the next smallest value leads students to subdivide and play more accurately. Again, of course 1 +½ = ½+½+½, but musically it is much easier to audiate three sixteenths than ⅛+1/16.
other recordings:
Brankica Vasić, Balkan Ethno, Take It Or Leave It Records. E aeolian. Different ritornello.
Izvor, Ogrejala mesecina, Biveco. E aeolian.
Koshanin, Over the Seven Seas, self-released. E aeolian. A modern treatment.
Balkan Ethno Orchestra, Zora, Beo Records. F aeolian.
Mara Djordjevic, F# aeolian. Sometimes she ends the melody in phrygian.
If you are into mathematical logic problems, let me tell you: transcribing medieval notation into modern notation is the thing for you!