Orientalism: Desert Level Music vs Actual Middle-Eastern Music

00:00 Iranians react to Orientalist music
03:45 Defining Orientalist music
11:44 Disclaimers
17:44 "Indian, Arab, same thing"
37:50 How to write orientalist music
43:28 The OBSESSION with the Double Harmonic Major
54:52 Why the Double Harmonic Major?
1:00:42 The limitation of digital instruments
1:08:33 The vicious circle of Orientalism
1:12:24 Westerners CAN write Eastern music
1:21:00 How Orientalism sucks for Easterners
1:26:34 How Orientalism sucks for Westerners

[faryafaraji]

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS:

• For those wanting examples of authentic Iranian, Turkish etc, music, you're on the right channel. That's my specialisation. Browse my channel and you'll find plenty of authentically arranged/composed music of the region, all the videos accompanied with descriptions that'll give you a good base with which to do your own searches afterwards. Check out playlists dedicated to the specific cultures. Check out my Epic Talking playlist for more videos like this one.

• "What do you think of the Dune soundtrack?" Why is everyone bringing up the Dune soundtrack? I'm talking about the representation of real life MENA cultures here. Arrakis isn't a real life culture, you can't represent it accurately or inacurately. Dune's soundtracks falls completely outside the periphery of this discussion. Sci-fi and fantasy *should* create soundtracks by mishmashing real world sounds, that's the entire point of those genres.

• I guessed in the video that the accurate pieces of music in the Crusader Kings 3: Legacy of Persia DLC soundtrack were most likely created by the Iranian collaborators of the Swedish composer, but the latter, Håkan Glänte, contacted me and I learned that he indeed did write those songs after careful research into the Persian Classical Dastgah system; which goes to further show my point that Western musicians absolutely have the ability to render authentic foreign music, and that the prevalence of Orientalism is simply due to complacency and laziness in the industry.

• "What about Occidentalism? How about the view of non-Westerners towards the West?"

So there is such a thing as Occidentalism but it's not the yin to the yang of Orientalism as some may think. Most often, it takes the form of irrational hostility towards the West. Things like rejecting well researched truths presented by Western academia solely on the basis that it's Western. I've been highly critical of this in my videos, as it obfuscates "anti-colonialism, " with anti-Western bigotry in order to get away with it. Occidentalism as a stereotypical view of the West, however, doesn't really exist as a perfectly symettrical counterpart to Orientalism.

The reason why it's mostly a one way street, and non-Westerners are generally better at representing the West than the other way around is because the West is currently the hegemon of this planet, in terms of cultural soft power. Therefore everyone around the world is intimately familiar with the generalities of Western culture because everyone is exposed to it.

The average Iranian who lived in Tehran all their life can tell an English accent is distinct from Scottish, and they do associate Received Pronunciation British with "posh." They do know the organ is a church instrument, and that the banjo doesn't sound fancy. Typical Western associations are well known to the average Iranian in Tehran.

At the beginning of the video, my uncle and I mention Mozart and Ketèlbey, Western Classical composers, and the musical form of "alla turcas, " and "Baroque music". That's because every musician in the world knows Western music and its genres, styles, composers, etc. But it may take you months to find a single Classical Western musician who knows the names of Sheydā, Dimitrie Cantemir, or who know what the terms "peşrev" or "kalofonía" mean, and what musical forms they refer to.

All musicians around the world know the basics of Western music. We all do chords, harmony, play the piano and guitar. Only a tiny fraction of Western musicians learn any music theory outside of their own. There's a reason why Western musicians are the only ones who call their form of ethnic music "Music Theory, " whilst everywhere else, even between them, people preface their music theory with the cultural specifier like "Iranian music theory, " "Japanese music theory, " etc.

I'm aware that this presents a rather unflattering picture of the West, but please understand that this is not a consequence of us non-Westerners being oh so wiser. Not trying to portray Westerners as inherently bad or evil. If we were the current cultural hegemons of the planet, we'd be just like that. In 500 years, if China or Brazil become the next superpower, they'll be the ones generally ignorant about other cultures whilst everyone else knows about them. Average Westerners aren't ignorant by default, they simply naturally embody the traits of a region with hegemonic global cultural influence, and we non-Westerners are simply luckier than them because unlike them, we all grow up listening to both our music, and Western music.

TLDR: everyone in the world knows that Madonna exists. Most Westerners have no idea who Fairuz or Shajarian are. That's just how it is due to the current geopolitical context. But that's just this context. In 500 years, if Central Asia becomes the next cultural hegemon, they'll be the exact same.

• I mistakenly use the term "Southeast Asia" in the video, but what I mean is "South Asia." Southeast Asia is countries like Laos, Cambodia, and I'm talking about the Desi cultures like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, hence South Asia.

00:00 Iranians react to Orientalist music
03:45 Defining Orientalist music
11:44 Disclaimers
17:44 "Indian, Arab, same thing"
37:50 How to write orientalist music
43:28 The OBSESSION with the Double Harmonic Major
54:52 Why the Double Harmonic Major?
1:00:42 The limitation of digital instruments
1:08:33 The vicious circle of Orientalism
1:12:24 Westerners CAN write Eastern music
1:21:00 How Orientalism sucks for Easterners
1:26:34 How Orientalism sucks for Westerners

[chrisz]

"My music is authentic enough that it's played for actual cultural events" is a flex and you should be proud of yourself

[gormlesspissant]

conspiracy theory: there's one Armenian duduk player in hollywood with HELLA connections

[lordhoot]

I'm pretty sure the basic conception of "Persian" among a lot of westerners is just "Luxury Arabic"

[Deus_Divinitus]

Fun fact: The Disney Film "Brother Bear", focuses on an Alaskan 'tribe' ( which could mean any group such as the Alaskan Creoles, Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Tsimshian, Tlingit, Haida, Eyak, Inuk, and a number of Northern Athabaskan tribes).
For the 'Spiritual scene, they used a BULGARIAN Choir to sing the tune as it would sound vaguely foreign. They didn't even use music of a "Native American" tribe, they used a Bulgarian group to sing the 'Spiritual' musical scene

[AnonPanOn]

"Persian and Arabs are the same" says some Texan who would literally throw hands if you said he looks like he's form Oklahoma.

[MediaMushroom]

As a Scottish person, I am amazed how well you nailed our william wallace grouse-pop bonjour hasta la morgen dziękuję style

[ezechielveloth]

"Scimitars of the turban hummus of the desert allahu akbar shawarma oasis" if released would no doubt be a total success

[brandonkiehl]

I'm an architect and a westerner, and I want to say that I really appreciate your example of Chinese vs. Japanese architecture. I spent time studying in both Japan and Korea, and it was astonishing to me how different the architectural styles of Japan, Korea, and China are. I would argue that the styles of those three cultures are *more* distinct from each other than the styles of France and Germany, especially when you take into account just how enormous China is. But most Westerners (including my younger self) just see big roofs with flying eaves and assume they're all the same. The average person just hasn't had the exposure to these differences that they need in order to understand the differences.

All that to say, I really appreciate that you took the time to talk on this. I'm never going to be able to unhear the duduk in pop culture, and that's all your fault.

[tahajfirst]

Reminds me of "Tiki" culture. A strange american imagined "polynesian" aesthetic, consisting of a hodgepodge of cultural products of various different peoples, totally unrelated to eachother, and with nothing in common, other than there shared exoticism in the western mind. There was also a musical component of this, with entire records of "sounds of Polynesia" type stuff, that is in no way actually representative of that peoples music.

[phlny]

Song name?

Hollywood: Duduk - Sandstorm

[hrnd_hstran]

Farya needs to make a song called “authentic Dutch music” and use a Balalaika and Bagpipes

[sarmo]

I'm a half-egyptian singer, who grew up in Egypt, but since I often avoided egyptian and arabic music, because western music was "so much cooler", I never grew into it as naturally. I've been trying to reconnect with my musical roots (binging Um Kulthoum and others), but in the western education system authentic cultural sources are hard to find. Your video puts in words the alienation I feel listening to the youtube orientalist music, but wasn't sure if it's just me. So thank you so much for taking the time to make this video!🙏 Specially diving into the music theory behind it and explaining the nuances of middle-easter modes. Well done!

[samoq]

Man now I really wanna hear European music made with the Orientalist mindset. That fusion goes way too hard.

[ЛюбовьЛебедева-оы]

As a westerner, its so JARRING how the further the video goes the worse the orientalist music starts to sound because i get to hear actual middle eastern music and it's like.... trying the actual food you only had as an artificial flavoring before. Mind blowing experience, like I unlocked the shrimp vision or something

[euniesthebaws_freepalestine]

As a person who is only half Scottish, has never been to Scotland, and knows nothing about Scottish culture, your William Wallace Epic Scottish Battle Music changed my perception of my ancestry and rekindled the flame of my heart, causing me to rush directly out of my door playing the bagpipes in order to procure a plaid kilt. Thank you.

[ThePijarro]

"A piece of music I wrote in a French-Hungarian-Temprerate climate theme" haha I'm dying. Thank you for the video Farya, you are a gem!

[futurestoryteller]

The thing I really hate about this is people think nobody in Hollywood does the research. What I'm really, really sick of is them doing the research, and then disregarding everything interesting because it's different, defeating the purpose of doing the research. In Ridley Scott's Gladiator they knew gladiators had business sponsorships and flyers, but excluded them, because audiences "would think that was silly" - I saw a whole video about how James Cameron had a small team of people working years to create unique ethnic music for Avatar's Na'avi aliens, based on tribal peoples from around the world, only to disregard it entirely for being too weird... The alien music.

You know during the second world war there were battleships painted with diagonal purple and pink stripes, like some kind of fruit-flavored candy cane? How is this not in a movie already?

We keep telling people to expand their minds, and pereceptions but consider the smallest of steps to be a bridge too far. And I'm sick of it. So many Hollywood movies want to humanize the middle east, but they don't want to show any of them living like the humans they personally know. Just sand and clay. Not one tree unless it's dead. Ridiculous

[deebzscrub]

I like how you took the generalizations made about Middle-Eastern music/culture and applied it to European music. It's a really effective way of pointing out how absurd those kind of generalizations are.

This was a really fascinating and enlightening video. I knew on some level that Western portrayals of Middle-Eastern music wasn't accurate but I didn't truly appreciate how inaccurate it was. I wish more care was taken in media to portray things more accurately. We're not only learning incorrect things from bad portrayals, we're missing out on some really good stuff.

[nightspicer]

This is basically the "Tiffany problem", especially in video games in movies. People have a certain idea of what Persian/Arabic/"desert" music is supposed to sound like, and if they'd hear the actual music from the region they would think it's weird, it doesn't fit and generally what was the composer smoking.
For the people that don't know what the "Tiffany problem" is, it's about the fact that people have the misconception that it's a modern name, but it was in fact already used in the medieval times. And because of that misconception you'll never see or hear that name in any historical fiction as to not throw off the viewer/reader