Diferent cultures of Harmony International

Harmony international is project of Young artist festival that gahters choir singers from diferent parts of the world. There is some few reasons why is this project so important. Choirs from all over the world comes to Bayreuth and spend over two weeks of works and reharsing together on some new musical peaces that had never sing before. Repertoar makes diferents kind of music like arrangements of jazz and pop songs, medieval madrigals, traditional songs, world music, peaces of classical composers from 20th and 21st century. Singers from the Harmony International choir never have opportunity to meet or work before. That is also one of the important things of this project: making friendships with people from diferent parts of the world, exchanging their own musical and cultural experience and also working together as one big group. The video that you have seen now is a song from the last year final concert. Choir is made from the singers from China, Filipins, Portugal and Latvia. This year singers of the Harmony international will be choirs from China, Armenia, Jordania, Portugal and Iceland. On this presentations we will have opportunity to see and hear diference betwine cultures of the countries that this choirs comes from.First we will start from music culture of China. Chinese cultural tradition is one of the most developed cultures in the history of civilization. As Platon once said the country is strong enough as much as your music is good, chinese leaders are also belived in this thougt. They belived that the good tradition, culture and music be good for develop of country and all the people. It's known that is in China rules a lots of dinasties. Through succeding dynasties over thousand of years Chinese musicians developed a large assorment of different instruments and playing styles. A wide variety of these instruments such as guzheng, dizi, erhu and pipa. Now we will listen one chinese traditional song and it's name is Moo Li Hua which in trancelation means Jasmine flower. Now we are moving to the only island-contrie in the world who is called Iceland. Because of it's name and the point of view that is near the North Pole I always tought that Iceland is cold and low developed country. But that is not like that. Iceland is one of the contry with the beautiful nature, landscapes, geysiers, northern lights and blue lagoon. This is also the country that has very rich and vibrant cultural and musical life. Icelandic music has a long tradition with some songs still sang today dating from 14th century. Love songs are ofteh about love, sailors, hard winters, as well as elves, trolls and other mythological creatures. Now we will listen an iceland traditional song named Morning prayer. Listening to this song you may noticed a conection with a medieval music. After Iceland we are going to the south of Europa to Portugal. During the 15th and 16th century Portugal was main economic, political and cultural imperial force in Europe. Portugal also have a long history of music which is accompanied and strongly contribuded to the develepment of the outstanding music history of Europe. On the other side traditional music of Portugal belongs to the poor people and students who has wanted to keep traditional musical heritage. Traditional music of Portugal belongs to fado and tunas. Fado in trancelation means faith. It is claimed that fado origins are going back to the 15th century when women cried with longing for their husbands that saild to the never ending seas. On the other way Tuna-s are male or female student group of musicians, players and singers. You will recognize them very well because of their clothes. And these few days you will have opportunity to spend some more time with the Tuna group which name is TUIST. Now we will not listen to the music of Tuna-s but don't worry, after a few days you'll know every songs of them. Slowly we are moving back to east, now to Armenia. The armenian culture is similar, but on the other ways diferent from her borders countries like Georgia, Irana, or mediteranian contries like Greese or Cyprus. It's very important that we know that the Armenia was the first country that accepted christianity as official religion. Yesterday on the party we have opportunity to listen to some armenian traditional songs and feel the spiritualiti of their music. Because of that music is the most important part of their cultural heritage. Now we listen some of the armenian ortodox chant from the song book named Komitas. Armenian music is ancient in origin and continuos in development. Traditional armenian music we can devided to the pastoral songs, urban music, ancient troubadour style, verse songs for male voices and religions songs. The hymns or songs with accompanation of some instrument are dedicated to work and pastoral life. And for the end of this presentation of difrences betwin cultures of countries that will join us on Young Artist Festival we have Jordania. Cultural heritage in this country is devided. We easily can see defrenses betwin christian and the muslim tradition. People in this country are very conected with the nature and we can noticed that in their traveler songs with whome they fulfil their time. So maybe is the best that we look these vidio and see some point of views of jordanian people. In this video you had opporunity to see and hear also the instruments and how they spend time during the break. All of the countries are very intresting, historicaly very wide with their own tradition music and culture. Now in these days that are coming we have opportunity to be introduced with these cultures from the first hand and to see the way of living in diferent place on earth. Thank you very much for your attention!1