Warning: You're getting a tome today.

After reading this review in yesterday�s NY Times, I decided to give The West Wing another shot for a slot on my minimal TV viewing roster (which must also make room for my unapologetic addiction to The Gilmore Girls). I have to say that I don�t really see what all the raving was about. While I was a big fan of the first couple of seasons, the melodrama has taken over, as seems inevitable with any sustaining drama. I don�t see how adding a Republican presence changes that at all. Still, it�s diverting and better than most of the other viewing options, for what that�s worth. And since I just saw Barton Fink for the first time a week or so ago, John Goodman as Acting President Walken takes on a peculiar tone.

I am quite tired of the self-indulgent ending segments that consist of music over splices in dramatic action with no script. It is interesting on occasion, but it seems to be a pattern for them these days. However, I thought last night�s choice of music was intriguing.

The song was a piece called �Sanvean: I am your shadow� off Lisa Gerrard�s 1995 album The Mirror Pool. Strangely enough, I had just picked up a copy of this CD last week. Gerrard is perhaps better known as a member of the now defunct band Dead Can Dance, on Britain�s 4AD label, which originally recorded �Sanvean� on the 1994 live album �Toward the Within.� 4AD, for those who might be unfamiliar, has a small roster of artists that includes, among others, Throwing Muses, The Breeders and at one time (and perhaps again soon) The Pixies. In the 80s the label sponsored a project that recorded a few albums under the name This Mortal Coil. This Mortal Coil was actually a collaborative project among 4AD artists who each did their own segments in various combinations and then through-composed the connections. The result is a wall of continually shifting sounds that melds in and out of different keys, styles, genres and instrumentations. The influences are varied as house music, punk, Celtic, Medieval liturgy, pagan ritual, folk-rock and film. Dead Can Dance and now Lisa Gerrard�s solo work are probably the most akin to the spirit of This Mortal Coil, although they lack the rock edge that TMC had. They do occasionally make use of the composition-through-the-track-break strategy. Gerrard�s most recent work that I know of is the soundtrack to the film Whale Rider, which unfortunately I have not yet seen and can�t comment on.

But back to �Sanvean� on �The West Wing.� The Mirror Pool as an album draws on, as its primary influences, English Baroque music and music of the Middle East (at least one of the songs included has an Irani provenance). �Sanvean,� written by Gerrard with Andrew Claxton and originally performed as an instrumental on Dead Can Dance�s 1994 live album Toward the Within, is a clear blend of both. It opens with a synthesized string orchestra performing a descending chord pattern that seems borrowed from Handel (an aria of whose is also included) and evoking a church-like tone (perhaps because of the absence of bass notes). The pattern repeats as a passacaglia (like the ubiquitous Pachelbel Kanon), but slowly alters notes, moving in and out of minor and major keys and adding dissonances both within the accompaniment and against the vocal part and eventually losing the root bass. This latter technique gives the sense of the melody floating off. Resolution takes place when the bass returns to place and the dissonances are reined in (they do not all resolve in traditional fashion). The language is indeterminate, or at least nothing I was able to identify. The cadence of the undulating melody, combined with Gerrard�s peculiar vocal tricks of occasional ululation substituting for vibrato along with her penchant for singing just a little bit flat invoke the microtonicism of music of the Middle East. �Sanvean� is equally suited for the scenes in the Catholic church while calling to mind the locus of the terrorist action.

Such a dual purpose is, of course, relevant in real life too, at least as we know it in 2003. But what exactly does a piece like Sanvean say? I have taught introductory courses to World Music at the university level a number of times (although not for a few years, due to a temporary attempt to extricate myself from an academic year. Alas, I fear I am doomed!). Teaching students about world music in a single term always seems to me to be a slightly ridiculous venture. Instead I try to teach ways of listening and thinking about the function of music while offering a brief overview of music from a �canon� of cultures endorsed by the available textbooks and recordings. One of my favorite topics for discussion is the concept of �cultural grey-out� � music at the intersections of cultures. Lisa Gerrard�s music doesn�t exactly fit the usual description of cultural grey-out which is what results from the coexistence of different cultural musics. Gerrard clearly sought out the sounds that worked for her. Her former Dead Can Dance cohort Brendan Perry has referred to his music making as his way of understanding the world. Gerrard seems to take a similar tack and imports tunes, aesthetics and even instruments from the Middle East and Asia for her work (another example of this can be found on Canadian artist Loreena McKennitt�s The Mask and the Mirror which blends Medieval, Celtic and Middle Eastern influences in a similar but less formally abstract fashion.)

How much does such a blend allow us to understand other cultures or at least confront them? In my years as a teacher of world music, Middle Eastern music was consistently among the least well received by my students (Beijing Opera usually tied with it for last place). The microtonicism (the use of a scale with many more notes much closer together than the western scale) sounds out of tune to western ears and the nasal vocal style sounds harsh. The language is another barrier to understanding. How much does a watered down version like Gerrard�s help? It may in fact inspire some to discover its origins. Perhaps if one is familiar with Gerrard and McKennitt it is easier to get into Oum Kalthoum (also Oum Kaltsoum, Om Kalsoum, Om Kolthoum, Umm Kulthoum, and half a dozen other variants). But is the creation of a piece like �Sanvean� a bid for world peace and understanding? Or is it merely another example of exoticism (a la Edward Said�s "Orientalism").

As a musicologist it is my job to complicate things, but I do think Gerrard�s primary interest in Middle Eastern music is likely to be that it sounds cool and mixes well with the other styles she�s interested in and suits her voice. But the ways in which she adapts it are also effective in walking a non-initiate into the style. First, she eliminates language altogether, instead vocalizing in something that sounds like speech but isn�t. Second, she begins with more coherently tonal harmonic, splays out in the middle both harmonically and vocally, before pulling back in at the end. She tames the Middle-Easternness.

Dramatically, the blend of styles obviously suits its use on the West Wing. But the statement it makes is ambiguous. It could be interpreted as representing a unified sorrow over the situation on the part of the Westerners and the Middle Eastern country they�re bombing. It could be viewed as Americans taming the Middle East, controlling it. Or it could be viewed as Middle Easterners invading American culture and consciousness. Of course, all of these things could also be said of the U.S. under the Bush administration. �Sanvean� was written at least seven years before 9/11. It could have been written yesterday.

Now you all know why it's bad for me to watch too much TV. I promise that I won't be publishing an analysis on the use of Carol King's "If you lead" as the theme song of The Gilmore Girls. That is all.

0 people said it like they meant it