Jon Silpayamanant as a Klingon performing before a production of The Pirates of Penzance (in Outer Space) in New Albany, Indiana.
So, as I mentioned in the previous post, there is an embarrassment of riches as far as performing options are concerned, if you’re willing to think outside the box. The past few years I’ve been playing the Sci-Fi/Fantasy circuit. I hesitate to call it the “Sci-Fi/Fantasy Convention circuit” if only because some of the best paying gigs I’ve gotten recently happen to be at organizations outside of the Convention circuit proper.
And some of that has started to creep into the so-called ‘high arts’ realm with organizations such as Symphony Orchestras playing themed shows dedicated to particular Sci-Fi or Fantasy franchises (e.g. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars) as part of their pops seasons.
On the whole, however, there’s always been music at conventions–even if it only consisted of filk music. Part of the Klingon schtick is as much act as play and the idea came to me as a whim after il Troubadore started playing Sci-Fi conventions at the request of some bellydancers. We decided we needed our own act and schtick, thus was born the il Troubadore Klingon Music Project.
Ok, so I talk about the short series of events from bellydancer request to Sci-Fi convention to developing a full blown Klingon Band personae as if it’s an everyday thing. But seriously, for me, it is.
That’s the specific issue at hand here. Over the years I’ve heard all manner of musicians grouse about the lousy economy and the lack of work. And here, I’m talking primarily about those musicians who do not hold full time or professional positions as musicians–this includes freelancers, but also just your normal everyday band musician. I know I’ve brought up this issue plenty of times in the past, but don’t want to flood this post with a ton of links.
The late Ron Taylor (1952-2002) as the Klingon Chef, Kaga, on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Kaga frequently serenaded his customers with Klingon folk songs
Ok, here it is, the post you’ve all been waiting for!
Kinda.
So yeah, as many of you know I’ve been playing “Klingon Music” for some time now (about mid 2009). It’s basically a side project of my difficult to categorize group, il Troubadore. We’ve simply named it the “il Troubadore Klingon Music Project” for lack of a better name (or rather, at risk of re-naming the group for the Klingon Music project, thus drawing away focus from “il Troubadore” as the group). If you prefer, you may just refer to us by our “Klingon name” of bomwI’pu’ (which almost literally translates into English as the “Songmakers”).
So, for a number of years (well before il Troubadore was formed) I’d been a member of the yahoo group, the “Klingon Music Guild” and had on occasion research [what little] Klingon music existed since. Sure, I’d come across ter’eS page (if you haven’t listened to his lurDech–DO IT–better yet, watch the video below–absolutely genius!!) as well as many websites with Klingon Karaoke lyrics, but rarely anything specifically about, well, Klingon Music.
And by that I mean music that would function as music that Klingons would have written. Sure, once Youtube started the video self-publishing revolution, it became easy to find clips of Klingon songs and Klingon Opera from the various Star Trek series and movies. And now Klingon related material abounds (do a search for Klingon Music on youtube–you’ll see) but still almost none of it is music developed in the style that Klingons would write. Even the examples from the series leaves a little bit to be desired and I often wonder if this was part of the motivation for the current production of the Klingon Opera ‘u’ in the Netherlands.
It’s about time I started blogging about Klingon Music, so all that aside, here are some tidbits from Marc Okrand’s (the creator of the Klingon Language), Klingon for the Galactic Traveler, in the chapter titled simply “Music” (and some of this info can be easily found online).
Traditional Klingon music is generally performed only by those who have had a great deal of training. The study of this type of music, whether composition or performance, is considered a discipline not unlike a martial art. There are precise forms and complex rules, and mastery of techniques takes years of study and practice. Traditional Klingon musical forms date back to the time of Kahless, if not earlier, and have shown little variation since then. (Okrand, KGT:72)
Ok, fair and straightforward enough, right? Actually there are a number of cultures whose art music still follow this kind of strict regime (though that’s starting to change now). In many parts of Asia the musical training and other performing arts training as well as martial arts training all evolved in similar ways. In fact, many dance-drama traditions in Asia still have a heavy martial arts component to the training: Kathakali in Kerala, Khon in Thailand, Jingju in China. And some martial arts traditions are intimately tied to music: Southeast Asian kickboxing; Brazilian Capoeira.
The next paragraph is something that tends to get Westerners, or at least folks who aren’t familiar with musical styles and genres outside of the Western World.
Older Klingon music was base on a nonatonic scale–that is, one made up of nine tones. Each tone has a specific name, comparable to the “do, re, mi” system used in describing music on Earth. The nine tone names are (the first and ninth, as with Earth’s “do,” being the same): yu, bIm, ‘egh, loS, vagh, jav, Soch, chorgh, yu. While the first three (and ninth) of these words apparently are used only for singing the scale, the remaining five are also numerals: loS, “four”; vagh, “five”; jav, “six”; Soch, “seven”; chorgh, “eight.” (Okrand, KGT:72)
Ok, now things are getting a bit more interesting.
I’m going to assume that Okrand, by “nonatonic scale,” means a nonatonic scale within an octave (which is misleading as it presupposes an eight note scale in the first place–maybe we should refer to it as a nonave?) distance since the starting pitch name and the ending pitch name are the same (implying both pitches are the same separated by an octave/nonave). A typical Western scale would have eight tones that are usually some combination of major seconds and minor seconds (sometimes misleadingly referred to as “whole tones” and “half tones” respectively). In the Klingon scale I’m going to assume Okrand is referring to an equal tempered scale rather than some odd combination of major and minor seconds within an octave.
Given an equal tempered scale of nine tones, we’re left with a whole mess of pitch intervals that don’t appear in Western scales. Which is not to big a deal, really, since I’m intentionally highlighting as the point of reference a Western scale, you folks can correctly guess that there are non-Western scales out there. In fact, there are plenty of them (quite literally thousands) but I’m only going to mention one class of them found predominantly in the Middle East. This is primarily because there are music intervals within those maqamat/makamlar/modes that come pretty close to sounding like what a Klingon nonatonic scale interval would presumably sounds like–namely, a three quarter tone [interval] or neutral second (technically the interval is very close to a just minor second otherwise know as a semitone maximus).
The other interesting issue here is Okrand’s discussion of the musical names as being numbers–continuing from the paragraph quoted above he says:
It is possible that, at some time in the past, the numerals were “borrowed” into the lexicon of music in order to sing the scale but, for some reason, the first three (presumably wa’, cha’, wej ["one, two, three"]) were either changed or never used. It is far more likely, however, that the borowing went in the other direction. As is well documented, the Klingon counting system was originally a ternary system (one based on three, with numbers higher than three formed from the words for “one,” “two,” and “three”). Later, owing to outside influences, it changed to a decimal system (based on ten). The independent words for the numbers three through nine were not originally a part of the Klingon counting system, but they had to come from somewhere. The musical scale is the likely source. (Okrand, KGT:72-73)
Since this is a book from the future talking about the history of the past which has not yet happened in our time, I’m wondering how much Okrand is “presaging” a future co-dominance of Chinese as well as American (i.e. Western) culture in referencing musical theoretic notions that are obviously Western (the solfège “do, re, mi” system Okrand mentions) as well as a numeric notation system which is what the Chinese use for their traditional music (i.e. jiǎnpǔ).
But this is the Star Trek universe and not the Firefly universe and more than likely it’s an unintentional Western-centric musical bias, which is fine. Marc Okrand is a linguist, not a musicologist (much less ethnomusicologist), afterall.
Stay tuned for Klingon Music Theory (part 2): Music Intervals
Also of interest, I was at the Louisville Science Center singing Klingon Songs outside and posing for photos everywhere this past Saturday (May 21). Tracy Canfield of Alien Tongues and Michael Roney, Jr. (aka naHQun) were inside giving talks about the Klingon Language during the final weekend of Star Trek: The Exhibition. It was a grand time and much honor was won!
"Spaced Out" article illustration of il Troubadore by Jon Silpayamanant (2010)
So the interview with me about the il Troubadore Klingon Music Project is out now (see the online version at this link). We’ve got a pretty busy weekend as we’ll be making an appearance at a local production of The Pirates of Penzance (in Outer Space) given by the New Albany High Schoolchoral department (May 15-16) as well as making an appearance at the Louisville Science Center as part of their current exhibit Star Trek: The Exhibition (May 15). I will also be playing in the pit for the production so will be sweating it out in full Klingon uniform for a couple of hours.
This weekend I’ll also be playing a couple of other shows (as if it wasn’t busy enough for me, eh?). The Louisville KlezmerFest with my Klezmer band, River City Klezmer. And il Troubadore will be giving a (non-Klingon) performance at the Batesville Public Library (Saturday, May 14).
Now I need to make some repairs to my Klingon costume from the last convention!
il Troubadore playing Klingon Opera and Sci-Fi themed tunes during the Sci-Fi Day Celebration at the Indianapolis Children's Museum "Incredible Costumes From Film and TV" exhibit on March 26, 2011
That was the official number of paying patrons that attended the Sci-Fi Day Celebration at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis that I performed at this past Saturday. Granted, the performance was just a small part of the total event and there were many activities for the patrons to participate in–the Frog Prince play; all the wandering folks/fans in full costume with all the concomitant photo opps; and the raison d’etre itself–the Incredible Costumes From Film & TV exhibit itself.
So no, most of the folks there didn’t come to hear il Troubadore play tlhIgan QoQ (Klingon music)–not most of them anyway–they were there for the total experience that Eric Edberg and Greg Sandow are talking about here and here. And while I have some misgivings about that issue that I commented about here there’s a different issue I’d eventually like to blog about relating to what we might call an audience development issue that I was reminded of regarding the whole “Pop vs Classical” [non] issue that was being discussed in Greg’s blog.
Klingon Female Model from a Las Vegas Star Trek Exhibit
As I mentioned in my previous post, I was up all night finishing a Klingon costume. I’d been working on it intermittently for a few weeks now but needed to get the bulk of the work done by today. I haven’t posted much here about the il Troubadore Klingon Music Project as it’s still a work in progress, but it’s close enough to our first official event that I feel I can start to blog more about this.
We’d been playing Klingon songs since 2009 and began playing conventions with other tunes from popular Sci-Fi franchises (e.g. Star Wars, Dune) and thought “what they hey, let’s do a Klingon Ballet” since we often work with dancers.
So last winter we started developing the Klingon Music Project. As our mission statement says:
il Troubadore, known on the planet Qo’noS as bomwI’pu’ has been performing tlhIngan QoQ (Klingon music) live since 2009.
il Troubadore’s mission is to record and perform all existing songs in the complete musical oeuvre of the Klingon Empire. Everything from the grand ghe’naQ nIt to the vernacular may’ bom and HIvje’ bom will be able to be heard and appreciated by Terran audiences throughout the planet Earth.
So over the past few weeks we’ve all been working on Klingon costumes to go along with the music, and eventually the ballet, wa’SaD ram wa’ ram je, itself. As you can see from the transliterated Klingon title of the ballet now you know why I mentioned the search phrase “sad ram” that brought some poor unsuspecting soul to a blog post about the Klingon Ballet.
As it stands, there just aren’t enough fully fleshed out Klingon tunes from the various series and movies, so we’ve been writing and developing our own Klingon music. Here’s a tune I wrote and that we performed at ConNooga in Chattanooga, Tennessee in February of 2009.
