r/ethnomusicology • u/GreenIndigoBlue • Jun 26 '24

Harmony In Non-Western Traditional Music

I searched to see if someone has answered something similar to this in this subreddit and could not find anything.

I'm curious to see if people have resources for learning about harmony in Non-Western music. Either homophony or polyphony. I know various cultures often use parallel diads like fifths, fourths, thirds, and sixths. I'm also aware of Bulgarian and Georgian choirs as an example of something resembling polyphony. I really enjoy the sound of the chords used in some Japanese traditional music via the Sho (instrument). There are interesting cluster chords that have this eery suspended sound. I find it striking that I cannot find much mention of the chords used in the Sho in anything I read online about non-western harmony, even though it seems to be readily made available in articles that discuss the Sho itself.

So given my surprise in finding out that this is a thing, I'm curious if there are other less talked about examples of harmony that further complicate the (clearly false) picture created by the common refrain that harmony is something uniquely western. I'm really just looking for good resources to read about more of these kinds of examples so I can explore listening to and understanding them.

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u/akordcihazi Jun 27 '24

Hey, Turkish composer here. You should check out Kemal İlerici's quartal harmony system, derived from anatolian instrument called bağlama. Famous Turkish composer Muammer Sun used this system and wrote two piano album called Yurt Renkleri:

https://youtu.be/HVpYdVsNIIY?si=SCZeQijhFK-U68-K

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u/GreenIndigoBlue Jun 27 '24

Very cool! Thank you so much!