Orientalism: Desert Level Music vs Actual Middle-Eastern Music
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
- Human talks at camera then video ends.avi
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 - Hudba
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.
• "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 a British accent is distinct from Scottish, and we do associate Received Pronunciation British with "posh." They do know the organ is a church instrument. 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 thr 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
Release William Wallace - Scottish Music now! XD
But seriously, as a Filipino music student, I love this video essay. I've been listening to your music since around 2022, and it's been great. Thanks for your content, both the really good music and the fun video essays. I look forward to more of it. :D
My Kurdish father Loves you and your music I am also half Assyrian
As someone with middle eastern background I am glad you are talking about this
" 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."
Thanks for saying this--I was wondering if you'd meant it as Southeast of MENA/MENAT countries which would be South Asia, but glad you clarify!
- makes video called “epic Arabian Persian desert music”
- solely uses traditional Cambodian instruments
conspiracy theory: there's one Armenian duduk player in hollywood with HELLA connections
Yes it is true, all of Hollywood is in fact controlled by the Armenians. Some people thought it was those other guys!
duduk monopolist :D
I mean Glendale isn't that far
Pfahahaha, that's a funny one! Sorry, I just have a very vivid imagination, and I burst out laughing imagining that one Armenian bloke peeking out of the corners of the recording booths with his duduk. Just to put his duduk where it does not belong, if you catch my drift.
"My music is authentic enough that it's played for actual cultural events" is a flex and you should be proud of yourself
The biggest flex imho- that type of accuracy and collaboration should be the standard for “historical” musical recreation and composition.
Yeah, "my music got played in front of the Roman coliseum" is a way bigger flex than I think he made it out to be.
Indeed
@@aubreejobizzarro1208 I think you are hitting an excellent nail on the head here! This video and it’s discourse underpin a much larger concept and actually make good and meaningful insights on the idea of culture, cultural appropriation, and just inspiration.
This speaks to how too often a big name media productions and the like will be directly connecting to a culture and be presenting as a representation of said culture…. And then do no leg work to actually represent that fucking culture! Not only is this just cultural appropriation, but it will now be disseminated amongst an audience in the west who will unknowingly walk away with that thing becoming a representation of that culture in their minds, which will then continue an unfortunate cycle of cultural misrepresentation.
You denote how this is the best, and imo only good, way to create music that claims a connection to a culture or a history, and I fully agree and love this and the specificity of the idea. Because there is also the issue of people trying to claim large concepts as part of a cultural identity and it’s very use or application in something else as being cultural appropriation, and they will bully and pick on artists, for example, using an instrument in a way or style that isn’t identical to how they would use it culturally, and it’s like “dude I never claimed I was making authentic Egyptian or Jordanian music, I just think the Simsimiyaa sounds and looks dope”
Right, like, how do you just causally drop off such an insane feat on us like it's just another monday.
As a Chinese person I'm reminded of the ways western music creators represent "east asia" as a mysterious land of ninjas, yin yang, and dragons. In a single software-generated piece I might hear the Chinese erhu, the Japanese shamisen, a gong in the background, and Mongolian throat singing but the piece would be titled "dark ninja battle music" or something dumb like that. And just like westerners are obsessed with the duduk and the double harmonic minor scale for desert orientalist music, they're obsessed with the gong and the pentatonic scale for orientalist music pertaining to Eastern countries. It's a form of confirmation bias on the part of the composers who only want to sell to their viewers something they think their viewers are familiar with which is more orientalism
We should include the real deal. I think people can handle it. I get bored of our music after a while. :-) I still enjoy it, I just like hearing other elements.
This is not at all confined to western music creators. Plenty of Japanese created games also do this.
@@Mechanomics most non-westerners are just as ignorant if not more ignorant of other non-Western cultures as the average Westerner
Please, the people want what they expect. People do not pay money to be educated on these things. When a random american says “play something arabic” he expects somethint fake arabic. And since he’s your customer, why give him something he does not want? It is foolish to condemn anyone for giving ignorant folks what they ask for.
@@Tecmaster96 I specifically looked on CZcams and Spotify for Middle Eastern/Asian music mixes and found the Orientalist garbage and was pretty pissed about it. I’m not musician but even I could tell it was fake. Maybe some ppl like the fake stuff and that’s fine but I wouldn’t say all ppl do. Especially if they are specifically looking for something authentic and it’s hard af to find. Hopefully it will get easier in time, but not with the attitude that westerners are all dumb yokels who don’t care about music. That’s a backwards attitude in itself if you ask me. From my perspective I don’t pay money to have some lazy work of art that’s inauthentic, especially if it’s advertised as being a specific genre.
When you talk about how orientalism has done western audiences dirty, I would like to add something else, as a Brazilian person: I think it does even more harm for people like me, from non-middle eastern third world countries.
We also get our culture misrepresented all the time, but not only that, we only have access to misrepresented versions of all the other cultures in the world except for the western, european and american culture.
All of us, third world countries, live in a different bubble, where we have access only to our own cultures and to the dominant culture in the world, and that makes it much harder for us to realise how much we’re being robbed of. If the entire world had access to the entire world, culturally, the western hegemony could not be mantained, they would not be able to be the main characters in all of our perceptions of the world.
Videos like this are very important, not only for middle easterners, americans and europeans, but also for east asians, africans, latin americans and more. When we learn about the diversity of the world, we become more free ourselves.
I mean, even American/European cultures are rarely accurately represented by our own media. I have no doubt that it’s to a lesser degree than foreign cultures, but it’s not like the common tropes associated with Westerns or pirate movies or medieval flicks or Victorian novels are particularly accurate to the historical periods they’re set in. We don’t really even need to go historical to find huge discrepancies between fictional stereotypes and the real world - the stereotypical American high school setting bears little resemblance to what American high schools are actually like, outside of maybe the general aesthetic.
At the end of the day fiction is meant to entertain, not educate. Sometimes that means knowingly playing into inaccurate stereotypes simply because it’s what audiences expect.
very well said!!! as an arab i agree completely. when i started comparing notes with a mexican friend for example i started to realize how much we all had in common and how fascinating our differences were
Well said
Such a good point.
That is an extremly underrated comment. I am from Germany and you just gave me a completely new perspective, that I have totally missed so far. Thank you very much
I'm pretty sure the basic conception of "Persian" among a lot of westerners is just "Luxury Arabic"
This is so accurate wth
If only they had the arabic part right lol
Tied closely to Persian rugs and Persian cats.
Ironically the caricature of the diaspora Iranian Faraji showed in his Greek Music video is a good representation of how Westerners hold contradictory views.
Persia = luxury, always set in an interior or a colorful bazaar
Iran = enemy!! Must be desert or some other bad place to live, buildings are run down
Kinda like how my one coworker (from Afghanistan) told me once that Farsi is luxury Dari.
Because of the carpets and cats
"Scimitars of the turban hummus of the desert allahu akbar shawarma oasis" if released would no doubt be a total success
There's a restaurant called Shawarma Oasis around the block from my house. Good to hear they're getting press
Release it Farya!
I bet Farya almost had a heart-attack when ubisoft released that prince os persia new game with a hip hop track as its theme.
Shit......you just gave me an idea for a comedy/satire film that makes fun of orientalism.
😂😹
Song name?
Hollywood: Duduk - Sandstorm
I'm American Pakistani. when I was a kid I used to play a game called Medieval 2 total war. Being Muslim, I liked playing as the Muslim factions, especially since the overall vibe of literally anyone I knew who played it was "deus vult" and the Muslim factions were pretty much the underdogs (also horse archers). Being of a Pakistani background and speaking Urdu (a language that is almost completely intelligible with Hindi) I listened to a lot of Bollywood music and watched a lot of Bollywood movies. Playing the game I was genuinely shocked by how Desi it sounded. Some of the vocals were straight up Urdu-Hindi words. I'm not well versed in explaining musical compositions and patterns, but being of the culture, I know what cultures we're similar to, and we're not very similar to people from Morocco or Egypt. I brought it up with some people I played the game with and their reaction was literally 20:36. It annoyed the living shit out of me because it wasn't somewhat wrong, it was completely wrong.
Have you ever actually listened to any Indian classical (Hindusthani or Carnatic) music? None of the music he said sounded indian did not sound remotely indian. I am not sure how much he knows about Indian classical with things like ragas, gamakas etc.
Farya needs to make a song called “authentic Dutch music” and use a Balalaika and Bagpipes
I think we all need to start doing stuff like that. Even the playing field a little.
As long as he rhymes "blauw" with "ik hou van jou" it will be fine. 😂
I know you're joking but Dutch people did and do use bagpipes, bagpipes are a pan-european instrument much like lutes were, misattributed as being specifically Scottish in popular imagination
@@fartz3808 Indeed. If only people knew how many different types of bagpipes there are. For example, the Central European variant: czcams.com/video/VvuXs2xvsPQ/video.html
@@fartz3808 he knows, he even mentioned Greek bagpipes. But I don't know of any Dutch music from the last 300 years that uses the bagpipes so it would be really weird. But the "foekepot" is a funny instrument to use for this.
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
The question is who's doing the disregarding? I'm willing to bet a that a lot of the time the soundtrack composers might be a lot more open minded than whoever they're working for, and/or that other things such as budget/time constraints do not allow them to immerse themselves completely into the actual theory and deliver what they'd want to
@@OpticIlluzhion I'm surprised Farya doesn't recognize this, as his experience is that a project lead hires him, a Middle Eastern man, requests an authentically Middle Eastern soundtrack, and then discards what he delivers on the basis that it's not true to the "Middle Eastern sound" _they're looking for,_ and he even insinuated on some primary level that he _might_ be willing to produce that sound, so long as they aren't ignorant of what they ask. While it is probably true that most Hollywood composers are ignorant of foreign music, it's also true that they're not really in a position to put their foot down about any of it anyway
I think it's really telling how in the Hans Zimmer clip, Zimmer indicates that he is fully aware the duduk has nothing to do with Morocco. He straight up says it's Armenian. This knowledge evidently didn't make him rethink using it to represent Morocco.
@@Krixwell He is also one person
Well, if you were top Hollywood executive, you would probably do the same thing as they do.
Why? Because for every executive, the main purpose of their business model is to make money.
Therefore, executives are utterly scared of anything truly innovative and too much different, in any way, be it from storytelling, camera angles, music...
And the fact is that they are mostly right, and they are not idiots. They are constantly checking the pulse of the public, and feeding them with what they want.
So in a way, that's a kind of loop that's not so easy to break.
Only when critical mass of people starts noticing that they are constantly fed with same type of content and simply refuse to consume it, there will be chance for alternative to arise.
Extremely interesting video! It reminded me of a personal experience which happened more than a year ago. I am from Macedonia, a Balkan country, but I live in Poland. In Orthodoxy we use the Julian instead of the Gregorian calendar, so we celebrate all holidays two weeks later than Catholics/Protestants. My sister was visiting me in Poland around our New Year's Eve (January 13) and I noticed that in Warsaw they were organizing a "Balkan New Year" (which is, of course, wrong, as not everybody in the Balkans is Orthodox), so I thought it might be fun for us to try and feel like home in a foreign country. We went there and to say that we were disappointed is an understatement. The DJs were Polish, dressed in stereotypical Roma clothes, playing some songs in Polish with a melody that I have only heard at "Balkan" parties abroad, but never in the actual Balkans. Later that year I met a Polish person who said that they are very interested in Balkan music, and they sent me videos of some Dutch band covering (quite poorly) the most famous Balkan songs :D. Orientalism is a bottomless hole and once you become aware of it, you can notice it in every possible area of your (non-Western) life. Thank you for this video.
what you were listening to was most probably turbo-folk music which draws heavily from turkish music, afaik. not to disparage an entire music genre, but it really has poisoned every single balkanic or slavic country around at this point lmao, to the point where it overshadows anything that has actual local or national elements.
@@EF5iris That's my mother listens to so often, I don't even know what native/traditional Serbian music sounds like, probably decent because I think folk music is generally good regardless from were, and I do love the accordion as an instrument, but gooooooood turbofolk gives me a headache
@@geist6032 full disclosure im a full turbofolk music hater bc the ppl who listen to it r most often super primitive, narrowminded, or simply plain normies 😭
@@EF5iris My man 🤝
So if eastern music's strength is the variety of mods, does it mean it's a Bethesda game?
Todd Howard invented the Middle-East
As an American, this makes me mad - why does Hollywood insist on treating us all like idiots?
because the people in charge of the entertainment business ARE idiots
Well, if Americans are watching every single Marvel movie while gorging on copious amount of popcorn at cinema, I guess the bills checks out and brings out profit
there's more idiots than smart people. If you want quality, you gotta spend some effort to find it. It's a shame how real quality *isn't* mainstream, but that's how it is.
Well we keep paying money to see slop like the 20th fast and furious movie. Maybe we should raise our standards and vote with our wallets
Imagine how much depth and color the world building for movies would be with real culture... We could actually learn to appreciate other cultures without even knowing it.
Because all in all as a society we are idiots. Just look what composes the top music charts across America and other western countries. To listen to good music, we need to look underground, or at least outside the mainstream culture
15:22
-Who are you to critique them?
*Starts grilling kebabs*
-Understandable, proceed with your critique, sir
The guy also speaks Farsi. What more do you need?]
Saw the kabobs, thought the same thing. I really just want his hair though.
Watching this at 4am and I want them so bad!
Nice Ermine pfp
@@KasumiRINA Шашлик, кебаб, сельвакі, якіторі. Смажене м'ясо на шампурі, чи паличці в тому, чи іншому вигляді існує у всіх народів світу, на середньому сході називається кебаб, кабаб, кабоб.
В Україні назва йде з Татарської мови.
this has gotta be one of my favorite essays now. while i don’t have a developed ear for non western music, it’s plain to hear that the real thing has more depth than orientalist music
Great way to put it, “not having an ear for non Western music!” Cause I did find myself once or twice going “this is clearly a beautiful and culturally significant performance style…. And I’m not feeling it”
at no point did I think the music was “wrong or incorrect” but I did find an instrument or two to be unpleasant listening.
Hollywood has done the same thing with our own Native American culture. Only recently has Hollywood begun to use Native American actors to portray Native Americans in movies.
What do you mean?
Blue eyed people that Nazis would consider to be ubermench and Native Americans look so alike!
(sarcasm)
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.
I feel like tiki is less aggressively racist and more ignorantly nostalgic.
Actually, the term "tiki" comes from the Maori mythology of New Zealand, where it refers to the first men created by the gods. Tiki sculptures, which are usually modified representations of men, originated in the Marquesas Islands and are a significant part of French Polynesian culture. Tiki figures are often carved from wood and have spiritual and symbolic significance.
Tiki culture is an American art, music, and entertainment movement that began in 1933 with the opening of Don's Beachcomber, a Polynesian-themed restaurant and bar in Hollywood, California. The restaurant is considered the first tiki bar and is credited with inspiring tiki culture, which is a mix of elements from different Polynesian, Melanesian, and Micronesian cultures. Tiki culture is known for its elaborate cocktails, mugs, and clothing.
Tiki culture has spread beyond the United States, with tiki restaurants and cocktail bars opening in Europe, including Kanaloa in London and Palm Beach in Berlin
@prime-viscosity absolutely!! I have studied Maori and Polynesian carving techniques extensively and I utilize them in my artwork. All I was saying is I feel like oriantalism comes from a more ignorant and racist viewpoint rather than for admiration and nostalgia. US servicemen were just trying to emulate their experiences they had in the south pacific whereas oriantalism is totally divorced from lived experience. Oriantalism exists purely in the imagination of the western composer it is not trying to capture the experience of travel to Iran or Turkey or wherever.
It’s appropriation. Flattening a whole bunch of different cultures into a cardboard cutout so that outsiders of those cultures can make money. They are completely inaccurate often times disrespectful and always dehumanizing. It is the same as orientalism in many ways, including the history context of war and colonization of the exotified group. It removes and destroys pacific cultures reducing them to easy to consume stereotypes, not harmless, not trivial, and definitely not innocent in any way.
@@jimbocowman511 Apologies, my comment was directed towards the OP. You confused me though, in your initial comment you said you feel that tiki stuff is not aggressively racist, but rather ignorantly nostalgic; and then your second comment kinda switches on that point- was that a typo or am I being a big dunce?
As a Scottish person, I am amazed how well you nailed our william wallace grouse-pop bonjour hasta la morgen dziękuję style
Ahaha! Sei un genio comico, je suis mort de rire! Ты молодец! Das ist so gut gefunden. Köszönöm! Και καλή ημέρα!
😂😂😂
Also a Scottish person, I totally agree!
I might only be Scottish descended, but I can still feel myself transported back to the land of my ancestors. I can almost perfectly imagine the smell of some famous Scottish pierogi alfredo being cooked up in the kouzína my great great abuela. ❤
@@robertgibb6990 Prost! pierogi alfredo pesto beans😋😋 just like abuela von Trapp used to make.
I'm so excited to have been reccommended this by the algorithm! I'm one of the hapless westerners bamboozled by these soundtracks and it's such a treat to learn about real middle eastern music. Thanks for putting this out there for those of us who wanna learn more about music theory and history!
hi! i'm a classically trained musician who also happens to be tamil, and it does really piss me off when westerners take my culture's musical traditions and lump them into the Big Orientalist Trash Can. especially when they appropriate my culture and pass it off as yours lol. most people don't even realise that there isn't one single form of "indian" music due to how large and diverse the country is -- carnatic and hindustani music, for instance, sound so different from each other. thank you so much for actually talking about this, ive been thinking about it for a while and you perfectly put my thoughts into words.
the only real thing i take issue with in your video is the bit about music software in your disclaimer section. i don't know that many other traditional south indian musicians lol, and i only really know how to sing and play the bansuri, so if i wanted to write for veena/tabla/etc i would have no choice but to use a midi soundfont. i don't think it's fair to criticize those orientalist youtube channels for using digital/synthesized music, just because real and historically accurate instruments are so inaccessible even to people who strive not to be orientalist. i don't think there's all that much of a correlation there.
Yes like Iranian music, indian music is very diverse.
I agree with what you say on digital instruments, if CZcamsrs refrained it would be very restricting on somehow obtaining these instruments or getting someone with experience to play these instruments
@@udesterswag yeah, i feel like gatekeeping digital instruments is extremely unproductive and excludes composers who want to be culturally accurate but can't afford real instruments to test out their music.
@invertedtritone I hope it makes you feel a little better to tell you that at least half of us in North America and Europe know that we're getting bullshitted like this, and we're about as happy with it as we are with the fact that so many foods on the shelves at the grocery store have high fructose corn syrup in it to make it taste Ok... like... fine. It was cute that it worked once or twice but really there's such a thing as good cooking instead.
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.
I don't about you but I'm going to watch Braveheart with this soundtrack playing. After he screams "THEY'LL NEVER TAKE OUR FRRREEEDOM!!" and this rises with the cheers of the raging Scotsmen? Yes. It is as literally accurate as that movie.
@@lucinda3964 pirating braveheart as we speak (ive never watched it)
A bheil fèileadh mhòr agad a-nis?
@@ChrisPorterMusic it's in the video at 42:02
You couldn't be a more stereotypical picture of someone who thinks they're Scottish but isn't even if you tried
With your "European William Wallace epic Scottish western music" example I nearly fell out of my chair😂😂😂
Same, I just keep replaying it and I die laughing every time. I think especially because of how the opera vocals are on the off-beat of the instrumentals.
*Add Bulgarian chants and an aulos for the hell of it, because hey, vibes.
Also because I like the aulos.
It's almost good in a kitbash sort of way.
As a European I really felt I was supposed to be offended, which really makes the point even clearer but in a funny way. Love it
It was high key a bop imo
Thank you very much for this video! Being a Westerner and a musician/composer who lived for couple of years in Turkey and had a pleasure to know some Turkish musicians, I am totally agree how much it enriched my music landscape.
I feel very happy that when I was working on "Istanbul theme" for work, I had a chance to record a vocalist and a saz player who was born and raised in Turkey with Anatolian background. And who actually explained me the difference between Anatolia and Istanbul 😅
This whole experience did not "rob me" from being able to enjoy Prince of Persia OST, I still can and sometimes do :)
Just like knowing what a good black coffee is didn't "rob me" from enjoying some sugary-milky stuff with lavender syrup from time to time.
So thank you again for such a great video on a very interesting topic! Subscribing and gonna watch the hell out of your content 🫶
Great video, instant subscribe. The other thing I was thinking of with Orientalism is how it doesn't just compress things geographically, but also temporally. Thousands of years of history, and yet everything still sounds the same regardless of when it's supposed to be set.
I did also want to say, I know you were just using it as an example of a western ethnic instrument, but if you were ever curious, the ethnomusicalogical history of the banjo is actually really fascinating. Its origins were in the Caribbean based on West-African instruments and it was considered a black instrument for most of its history before its association with white hillbillies. The performer Rhiannon Giddens has done a lot of work on the history of the banjo and it's good stuff if you ever have the time.
Alternative title: Farya Vs the Duduk
Farya Vs Italian Americans
The Duduks of Hazzard?
As an Armenian, even when totally misplaced, I’m glad the duduk is at least recognized as an Armenian sound/instrument. I have very low standards. 😁
@@parap7697 And that's the problem. Nobody's recognising it as Armenian. Most think it's Arabic.
@@faryafaraji I take your point, but I have a feeling many know it's an Armenian instrument, but they don't know what Armenian actually is, and so they conflate it with "generic Hollywood Middle East." We recently had that problem with Ladaniva, the group that represented Armenia during Eurovision. Even though it's clearly pop music influenced by sounds mostly associated with Eastern Europe, at its core, it's also very Armenian, but when it was released, there were many comments arguing that this was "not Armenian," but rather "Balkan or Gypsy." It made me think that those who have never heard actual Armenian music, likely associate it with that Hollywood Middle Eastern duduk sound (and probably also generic "Arabic warbling vocals"), and were therefore confused when Armenia presented this song as Armenian pop folk.
I remember going to a Persian store out of curiosity when I was about 12. I asked for traditional music, thinking that I would like it based on my exposure to the "World music" genre of the 90s an early 2000s. The woman at the counter explained to me that since I can't understand the poetry, Persian classical music wouldn't be very interesting for me. I thought, "she doesn't understand the authenticity of my fascination and affinity for other cultures". Then I listened to it... I was UTTERLY bewildered. I kept waiting for the music to start only to find that the entire thing felt endless and like I had nothing to grasp onto besides brief periods when slow percussion appeared. It didn't fit my naive idea of 'Middle Eastern', it just sounded.... foreign in a way that I had never been exposed to and couldn't anticipate.
That same year I ended up studying the Baha'i religion and sought out the local community of mostly Iranian practitioners. I noticed that when I heard Persians chant Baha'i prayers, it was similar to the classical Persian cassette I bought, and gave a tiny bit of context to it. I realized the music was intended to be contemplative and to convey some deeper poetic meaning. So, I began exploring a lot of different genres of Iranian music more and more, still kind of trying to find what I thought it should be, only to fall in love with this revelation of sounds I'd NEVER heard before and didn't know I'd find. I realized that Iranian music isn't really part of the Western imagination, even as a trope, and what we think of as Middle Eastern is typically a Disney Aladdin mish-mash of South-East Asian and Arabic stereotypes.
Bahai is a interesting religion, you don't hear about it very often. I first heard of it in a Onion skit 😂.
Thanks for sharing your experience, that sounds neat.
"I realized the music was intended to be contemplative and to convey some deeper poetic meaning"
My exact epiphany I had when I was 16 and listened to progressive death metal for the first time xD. It was fun to see you had a similar reaction to something else. Have a nice day ♥
There’s also this thing with a _certain_ majority religion in that area that prohibits music except for percussive and prayer chanting vocals 🤫
@@RadenWA Persian classical music is usually in service to poetry, which is not religious in nature. The majority of a suite consists of ‘avaz’, which is non-metered vocal pieces with usually one instrumental accompaniment. This has nothing to do with Islam. Regional/folk music and everyday music can often be rhythmic and danceable.
47:35 I'm a game developer that (luckily!) came across this video while researching middle-eastern themes, thank you so much for educating on the alternatives to the double harmonic major - I'm here specifically looking for something that ISN'T that grossly overused sound.
Damn, my dudes beard is immaculate
It's like his very own Nintendo golden seal of authenticity
I had this EXACT problem as a Westerner. At one point years ago I started wondering if "oriental" music was made in any key other than double harmonic minor, and for the life of me couldn't figure out how to find anything authentic. Like, as an utter layman, any search words I could think of kept taking me back to the same nonsense no matter how hard I tried.
breaking out of CZcams algorhytm is a chore. Start liking small, very small videos with very few views, watch them without skipping. The smaller the video, the better. If algorhytm puts you into a basket "this dude is watching REALLY niche stuff" then be ready to see completely different, shadow CZcams you couldn't see before. Yes, it's THAT crazy.
Man I love dungeon synthwave
@@exquisitecanineaficionado
What you need to do is to translate what you want to search to the native language.
Then you escape algorithm by logging out your account or you can use VPN too.
@@exquisitecanineaficionadoThe flip side of this is that CZcams tends to convince itself that you only want at most one or two specific niches at a time... CZcams seems designed to discourage watching a variety of content.
Well if you count East Asia as oriental, Japan has its own scale or two.
I was under the impression that "traditionnal" middle eastern music was scarce because non-alcoholic music has widely been considered haram and against Islam since it's beginning over a thousand years ago, which is longer ago than most music we have
*Edit, non-a cappella music
Btw guys, totally relate to this CZcams algo stuff, great advice
One thing I really dislike about orientalist music (and orientalism in general tbh) is that it makes it harder to find music that's actually from "those" regions of the world or representative of "those" cultures, from my westerner position at least
The most popular sources I can access in the languages that I can speak so far are oversaturated with these generic, orientalist "oasis shawarma vibes" music
I like to play instrumental music when I'm doing work. I choose my videos based on vibe (do i want 80s vaporwave? Do i want folksy hippie? Etc). I do have some "arabian oud" music that was recommended and it's basically the same digital tune looping over again. Now that this video has opened my eyes, I'm going to delete them from my playlist. If i want Saudi instrumentals or Persian instrumentals, i want the real thing, not an orientalist interpretation which is basically a stereotype
yeahh i looked up persian music on youtube, and i had to dig rreally far into the search results to find any real iranian music
Agree. And some of that music is beautiful. But I would like to find lists of great music that is original. I found some, but it"s hard to get.
Exactly! There used to be a Spotify bot account I think or something similar to an algorithm based spotify playlist creator called "The sound [country + genre] and it was really great!
As a kurd, who lives in the middle east, even I have been westernised and my tastes white washed, so finding music through Spotify playlists really helped a lot.
That said, those tools are mostly exclusive to modern music, "ancient" folk and instrumental music are still underrepresented in our digital age. It's so hard to find something like that if you don't speak the language of the culture ur looking for :(
Start with Layth Sidiq, possibly the world's best violinist in the Arab music tradition (and also an excellent Western classical and jazz violinist), and then let the CZcams algorithm take you from there. Also see videos of the Arab National Orchestra. Key search words would include "maqam," "microtones," and traditional Arab instruments such as the oud, qanun, and ney.
czcams.com/video/LB6qWnqiDYU/video.html
czcams.com/video/vABZdfnqqqM/video.html
czcams.com/video/H-CxR5X94iQ/video.html
Oriental music has persisted in the west for so long that particular pieces of music from media over the years of our lives, particularly in childhood, stick with us so much so that we begin to accept the music as an aesthetic and even get nostalgic over it sometimes. Before watching this video I believed that the oriental sound and music I’ve heard all my life was in fact real, I didn’t know if it was popular in South Asia, North Africa, or if it was historically accurate but I genuinely thought it was real music, I’ll be it a simple version exported from Middle East to Europe and NA purely for the aesthetic, but I was blown away to learn how truly illegitimate it really is. I’m only 20 min into video and I’m so ecstatic to continue watching and share my thoughts as an American so you can reflect on my view point to build a better picture of the Western thought bubble echo chamber of ignorance that we indeed live in. Although I think it is important to note that with more progressive open minded people over the last few generations here in the west we have become significantly less ignorant than before. And now that the internet has taken over western life and culture (I think it has done more harm than good for my degenerate country) we are so connected that I never thought I would discover such a massive cesspool of ignorance on any subject, until today when I found your video. Being young and growing up on the internet as someone who isn’t afraid of different culture too much I have come across plenty of occidentalist hate around in some foreign circles like on youtube (which yes I know is predominantly western). But sir, so far into the video I think everything you’ve said seems fair and based.
Tbf a lot of occidentalist hate comes from places where Eu and specifically USA colonized or went to war and did terrible things that I’m mostly ignorant of. I can imagine their thought process but I can’t accept it, they sometimes seem as ignorant to real western life as westerners are ignorant of their Eastern life.
Anyways much love guys ❤ get the F off the internet for the day. This is well more than enough for one day, go do something productive.
I love this video so much!!!! As an Eastern/Greek Orthodox, I grew up around people from Arab/Caucus/Balkan decent, and so even when you're engrained in that culture, as an American/Diaspora person, it can still get meshed together, and I'm so happy I found your video to learn more.
As someone who is a beginner of studying Byzantine chant, I was fascinated on how similar it sounded both like the Roman music but also "orientalist". When non-Orthodox visit some of them find chant kind of jarring. And we use a modal system as well. I'd love to hear your takes.
Sorry for rambling, I just really am inspired by this video and now need to check out others
"Prisencolinensinainciusol" is a song by Italian artist Adriano Celentano, and I think he encapsulates exactly what you're talking about. He made a song that the lyrics were complete gibberish, but they sounded "American" so the Italian youth who loved rock music but didn't speak English thought it was great. It kinda proved that as long as you have the right "vibe," people will dig it.
Personally, I think it's an awesome song and, in some ways, very ahead of it's time with they way they looped the beat and horns.
@@KasumiRINA I had no idea Celentano was so popular over there! I've always loved "Il Ragazzo Della via Gluck".
in his defense, if there were actual words, then I'd say it would be authentic. If he wanted Americana, he nailed it.
That song is awesome and catchy as fuck
@@KasumiRINAno one here called him "some italian artist" my guy
I just listened to this song for the first time, it's hilarious:)
I remember the Arabic Nokia ringtone that became viral, and someone turned it into an “epic”, orchestral piece… And its microtonality was changed into the most cliched “Eastern”-sounding progression 😭
They made a phase two as well, and it’s just as generic and flat 😭
Isn't the original piece the ringtone was modelled after way better anyway? Like, I listened to all these videos and the "epic orchestral" piece just... sounded boring af
@@DarthLenaPlant The original song is called "يا طرشي" by the way
that song goes so hard (the nokia version)
@@porcupinepunch6893 uh I can't copypaste this on mobile yt, how do you spell it in Latin script
i was invested in your analysis of music, when the 37:30 mark hit me like a truck and i burst out laughing. you have an incredible sense of cynicism and satire when necessary, it really accentuates your personality (when compared to most other video essay youtubers, who have little to none).
awesome video, 10/10
nice pfp, I love larks tongues :)
@@keenban larls 🌞
im absolutely salivating at the fact that i finally, finally found someone who adresses this in detail. ive been /hungering/ for a complete breakdown of this topic for so long. im half persian myself and live in europe, so all ive ever been exposed to is essentially all the orientalist music youve talked about, while knowing that this isnt at all representative of the way actual middle eastern music is supposed to sound like.
im always trying to bring my friends closer to the actual culture of the middle east, humanizing the people of the area. for example, im running a role playing game set in my own middle eastern setting bc i was so tired of the tropey way its represented in media, but whenever i consider putting music in the background, this stuff is mostly what i will find. as someone without a musical bone in their body (coming from a family who also isnt musical in the slightest), i cant actually give them what im looking for, i just know that what i find is Not It.
ive actually taken classes at university about ottoman and arabic culture and art, and both included lessons on their musical histories. obviously nothing in depth like in this video but about the history and development, and what i found fascinating is that at least in arabic music, the text/poem of a piece is sometimes considered even more important than the melody (because of their rich poetic tradition). so given that, the fact that the orientalist pieces on youtube often just feature a wailing woman who isnt /saying/ anything, feels even more insulting than if it were just an instrumental piece.
all this to say that i immensely appreciate your art, and your dedication to putting a video such as this out there. thank you so much for sharing with us!!
I'm not Indian, but I grew up listening to a lot of Indian classical music because my parents enjoyed it. The closest I came to the painful cringe you describe feeling from nonsense Orientalist music is a vague sense of unease when I heard Southeast Asian percussion used in 'Ancient Arabic Persian Desert Market' songs in Western movie soundtracks. Your beautiful composition, "William Wallace Epic Scottish Battle Music," has changed me: I get it now. I've experienced true pain. Also it was hilarious, please make more Occidentalist music.
I second the need for more Occidentalist music. I want to hear Banjos in Roman Army music alongside that Harpsichord. Throw in some non-historical throat singing, and we can call it "Battle of the Teutoberg Forest Epic Battle Music"
most japanese RPGs are full of occidentialism!
It's a hilarious and ironic example because we already have our own "William Wallace" movie full of wildly inaccurate music. It's called Braveheart. The entire soundtrack is played on Irish uilleann pipes. There's even an iconic scene where a scottish bagpiper is seen standing on a hill holding a set of highland pipes, playing "outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes." But instead of highland pipes he's playing... soft, friendly, lilting irish music on irish pipes. Real highland pipes sound harsh as hell and burst eardrums. It's comically well-known among westerners that scottish bagpipes sound like a cross between a screaming pterodactyl and a fire alarm. The tone is not friendly and calming at all. It's also worth mentioning that Uilleann pipes wouldn't even be invented for another five hundred years. _In Ireland!_
If they wanted the soundtrack to be soft and friendly then they should have used harp music. Harp players were EVERYWHERE. They were the storytellers and the lore keepers of their day--extremely important people. This fact is not generally known now because England went about systematically killing off all the harpists in the 17th century. You'd think a movie like Braveheart would've embraced this history to show the audience how badly the English destroyed celtic culture, but this was left out as an oversight because the composers and directors are just that lazy about this stuff. Even on a big budget western soundtrack written by a western composer, they're still just chucking darts at a board and calling it a day.
@@pirojfmifhghek566 I mean we are talking about a movie that featured 14th century Scottish people dressed as 2nd century Picts (wearing kilts that wouldn't be invented for another 300 years), shipped William Wallace with a woman who would have been 13 and living in France at the time, depicted everyone involved as downtrodden peasants rather than privileged nobles, and began with a title card setting the plot ten years too early. Even the name of the film is wrong, as it steals the moniker of "Braveheart" from Robert the Bruce, who it wrongfully portrays as a traitor. The entire film is an affront to history.
@@CodyosVladimiros ok but real talk? the "make all kinds of wild and disconnected instruments fit together" is absolutely my jam aha. Put bagpipes and synths with some sitar and a harpsichord and then an electric guitar aha. Plus a pan pipes solo and some Bulgarian choirs. I am all for that shit.
Therapist: "The Orientalist Camel isn't real, it can't hurt you..."
40:00 is a cinematic masterpiece
I knew getting good articulation out of VSTs was a general problem for digital composers but it was very interesting to learn about how this is a particular problem for near eastern music, among the other topics you discuss.
I've been quite annoyed before at "historical occidentalism" in western media, such as portraying people in the European Middle Ages running around in ridiculous leather outfits etc., so I really admire your ability to critique the inauthenticity of this music without alienating regular people who enjoy it on its other merits. This video made me much more interested in the different kinds of authentic near eastern music and I feel like it will do the same for others!
This was such an excellent and eye-opening video essay! Thank you Farya!
BTW, "Rosna Livada" and some of your other Balkan, Serbian and Slavic songs I found on your channel are spot on. They sound and feel 100% authentic and local, your pronunciation is amazing, were I to hear them in a different context I never would have thought those songs were made by an Iranian dude. It's wonderful to see how respectful and careful you are with music from different cultures, I've read the descriptions of the videos and I'm amazed by the thought, research and dedication you put into your art. Hats off to you man!
Funnily enough, this even applies to traditional Western\European music, in the imagination of the 'average' Western\European consumer\music producer. The "Medieval" music, as it is often rendered in modern media, usually bears little resemblance to the actual European Medieval music, whether folk or institutional
itual.
Because the average consumer\music producer just couldn't care less..
And even more, the common medieval clichés, from society to material culture, are often just that, deeply ingrained clichés, and not really medieval at all. And if they are medieval, they freely mix a thousand years of history and various regions together in a big stew.
I lose my shit every time I look for medieval music and find dungeon synth instead
Also, most of the music is in a high fantasy style for every kingdom, more in the tone of anglosaxon and US modern composers.
They overlook whether it is a dancing, joyful, narrative, or religious tone and theme of traditional high to late middle ages.
That's one thing I like about the bardcore genre, since it has an actual genre name and usually just parodies existing pop music, more people seem to be aware that it's not historically accurate. On the other hand the orientalist music issue is just as rampant as Farya stated
Hey I happen to like oldschool rpg style fakedieval music. It has a charm of it's own.
I’m from ruralish America and have almost entirely European ancestry. I remember distinctly the first time I heard the term orientalism in a sociology class in college. I remember asking more and more questions because I just could not grasp the concept. They kept showing visual examples or trying to to describe it and I felt dumb, but I just had no idea what it was referring to. I understood theoretically what they meant, but I just couldn’t aesthetically process it…..it took a long time before I realized every. Single. Concept I had access to of the Middle East was orientalist. Every piece of art or music or imagery that came to mind. Even whatever accurate, reflective piece of culture I’d experienced from any part of the Middle East had been flattened by my internal concept into an orientalist mishmash. Jesus Christ. What a surreal realization
How enlightened of you to think so. I’m sure they try just as hard, using ridiculous academic concepts that are impossible to apply pragmatically, to understand our culture and history. Most people are aware of the lens of internal bias and prejudice through which they view the world, yet they simply do not care. How it took you so long to realize, I do not know, as your country has demonized via the media machine, and invaded the orient under the guise of the ‘Global War on Terror’. You probably learned of the concept of an ‘other’ in sociology class, where were you the last 30 years when it was being created by your country? What did this ‘surreal realization’ even grant you?
This is one we keep in the personal growth diary
@@jhd303 okay, but it's good to share real experiences of growth like this one, because they can be the most helpful to people who are still at that stage. It gives them a direct example of behavior that they can relate to, and it shows that change is possible. It's a form of showing hope and positive change.
@@jhd303 I'm not sure what your problem is here because there is nothing wrong with this comment.
Good way to understand orientalism is to recognise it as a depiction of the Middle East and North Africa that is designed in a way to justify the West's personal colonialist aspirations and politics towards Arabs
Genuinely one of the most interesting videos I’ve listened to on CZcams in a while- and I am a classical Tuba player from the U.S. Thanks for posting!
interesting that the "mixed race effect" you were talking about does plague even the most closely related of cultures, I know many Americans can barely differentiate Irish from Scottish let alone other regions of the isles but ask someone from London for example and they could notice the difference in accent just from different cities.
To defend western composers for games and movies a little bit is that they're usually not the creative be all end all for the projects they're working on and have to navigate around temp music and project lead expections. Which means that even if they go out and do their research and put a lot of effort into creating authentic music their demos might just get shut down and they're told to do what's familiar.
While not specific to Orientalist music, one of the biggest examples to me is the Soundtrack of Avatar. Composer James Homer worked with ethnomusicologist Wanda Bryant for like two years to create a unique sound for the Na'vi and virtually none of their work made it into the final movie and what did make it in was extremely watered down because everything they came up with was shut down for being too alien.
In general the amount of work and effort that went into the world building of Avatar is absolutely unhinged. A fully developed Na'vi language, various scientists hired to make sure that the world was as plausible as it could be. Every plant, every animal, every piece of tech has detailed background information. And it was all wasted on a movie that boils down to "Pocahontas but blue".
Imagine shutting down demos for being "too alien" when we're dealing with a culture of actual aliens. I wish it was possible to re-discover some of those.
There is some dramatic irony in the making of the movie, how it ended up reinforcing the "noble savage" and orientalist/exoticising myth it originally tried to deconstruct
@@aimee9478 happened with the avatar soundtrack, they told horner to do something different so he did research in unknown music traditions and used those and almost all of it got thrown except one little vocal thingie going on in the background
@@tj-co9goI’m unconvinced they were committed to that.
@@tj-co9go
What the guy above said. I like Avatar, but the Na'vi were definitely the 'noble savage living one with nature and everything's perfect' and the humans were 'the evil, exploiting conquerors who only cares about money and other stuff the audience doesn't care about'.
As a half Balkan Turk, half Pakistani who plays the baglama, I cannot count the amount of times someone told me to play "arabic music"
What music do you play to them?
@@kito9694 Pashto 💀
@@kito9694 Turkish
Mr.Worldwide ahh background
@@ayyylmao101 LMAO
WOAH the violin part. I had no idea it was so versatile that's awesome
What a great balance of informative, humorous, and eye opening. Thank you for doing what you do!
Honestly, Orientalist music reminds me of this brand of chips in America called "Veggie Straws." They have a picture of vegetables on the bag and say things like "Enjoy a healthy snack made with real vegetables" but then you look at the ingredients and it's literally just potato chips with less salt. You can certainly enjoy them, I love them, but at the end of the day it is just potato chips with a bunch of vegetables on the bag
Great video!
Damn. I really thought those were healthy as a kid lol
@@isaiahromero9861 Lol, I mean, it has less sodium technically and potatoes are a vegetable but it is basically just potato chips
@@babula1965 I didn't even think about the fact that potato chips are ALREADY technically made with real vegetables lmao that's honestly genius marketing if you think about it
You can't forget the green and orange food colouring, that's pretty key xD
@@KoruGo part of a complete breakfast
Halfway through the video, but I got an idea. You know what you could do ? Perhaps for a 1st April joke. Making a composition which mixes douzens of european instruments from every country, and title it "The fields of the parisian queen" or "the knight of Helsinki", and say it's a classic "Catalan/Dutch mountain music"
EDIT : lmao you made it it's incredible
Lmao omg I would love this.
Please, compose the Knight of Helsinki piece, I am a Finn who lives in Helsinki, and would love to hear it.
(And make it traditional Scottish bagpipe music instead of Karelian singing 😂😂😂)
The word "Dutch" and "mountain" is so hilarious put together
Wait I have to hear it💀 where's the link
@@MM-vs2etThat's true xD
"Dutch Mountain Music", yes, my favorite authentic folk music genre, second only to the "Swiss Naval Hymm"
I am about 48 minutes in and so far I want to say that I love your video’s pace, and balance of info/comedy. I’ve been watching CZcams video essays for over a decade and I just really appreciate how you use the skits/comedic bits to highlight the info that you deliver. Hard to articulate, but I think you are doing a great job.
Before your video I had an awareness of orientalism (an intro anthropology class from college gave a brief introduction of Edward Said) where we talked about Dune and orientalism in movies, but I never made the connection to desert level music.
Thank you for your effort
This is what I love about CZcams (and it used to happen more often many years ago), I am not that interested In music, but some how this film ended up in my recommended list. And I can’t stop watching! This is what made CZcams great in my eyes!
Thank you for making this, teaching me some new things and widening my horizon!
This reminds me so much of a short but very good talk by Rami Ismail. He spends just 20 minutes teaching the audience the basics of how to read Arabic script, then he shows some screenshots of popular games (like, military shooters and stuff), and even with only 20 minutes of learning, the audience can see immediately that the "Arabic script" in the screenshots are completely garbled and nonsense. It takes *so little* learning to do miles better than we have so far. It doesn't take long to show a little respect.
Thanks for the recommendation!
What's so frustrating about the excessive usage of the Duduk is that we have wind instruments that sounds just as mystic, raspy and eerie!!
The Gasba, The Zoukra and The Mezoued exists and they're played by actual tribesmen and Amazighi people! and they're VERY omnipresent in north african folk music and have an immense potential to be utilized.
FR
I'm not gonna lie I'm not interested in seeing/hearing myself through the lens or someone who thinks of us as "tribal, dirty and gritty"
@@Jolly_Jelly_ that just shows how much research and respect he shows toward anything that is not eurocentric, and the prejudice that comes with it.
I was so disappointed when i heard that he was the one in charge for the Dune soundtrack, and my concern can be heard through it
@@MarkHogan994 and the duduk is a fremen instrument.. like cmon lets stay in good faith and not pretending that Dune universe was created in a vaccum and doesnt wear its arabic influences on its sleeve. Even frank herbert admits it, and the books are pretty well researched and respectful of the cultures that served as the blueprint of Dune. I cant say that about the films im afraid as much as i liked them, they’re a neutered and diluted story of what Herbert was trying to tell, in fear of not being too gratting to western audiences
I’m not even middle-eastern, just a regular American, and I even find the duduk over used to the point that it’s grating. I am a composer, so maybe I’m more sensitive to these over use of the instruments and scales, but yes I found it just as grating way before I even saw this video. Just do something different Hollywood, it can’t be that hard!
This was beautiful. I loved the expertise you immediately opened with from your family, the dive into *why* we're stuck with such inaccurate music, and spending the rest of the video really showing why it's such a tragedy. I'm immediately subscribing and hoping I can foster a deeper appreciation for music across the region, as well as a more skeptical ear for when media tries to frame a sound as being from somewhere its creators may not know or care about.
This video makes my mindset feel very validated. Especially as diversity has become a rising factor in our media I’ve been very mindful of the “status quo” we attribute to a lot of these exquisitely rich cultures and it breaks my heart because I’ll attempt to search deeper but a lot of the time for many reasons it’s just entirely inaccessible. So thank you so much for what you’re doing with this channel, the world needs more people doing what you’re doing.
Have you heard the OST for Prince of Persia 2 on DOS? The adlib ost is very surprising because the composer did their best to try and replicate the articulations and sounds of actual Persian music, despite falling into some common pitfalls (it still uses that one scale a lot). I was reading the comments on a youtube upload of it and saw some people from Persia saying its far more accurate to actual Persian music than any other game music they had ever heard! You might find it intriguing, especially since it was all done with FM and rudimentary music software. I can't speak for it's accuracy because I know nothing about Persian music, but it sounds like its worth looking into.
Well I'll be damned, just listened to it and the composer even included microtonality. Had I known, I would've definitely included this in the positive examples
@@faryafaraji Also the new Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown worked with Iranian artist Mentrix for its soundtrack, with a core plot revolving around Simurgh and its feathers (which I assumed was inspired by the legend of Rostam's father?). There was a mini-doc called "Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown - A Musical Odyssey" detailing their composing process. That game actually brought me to your extremely educational and insightful channel. I'm deeply appreciative of this introduction to authentic oriental musical traditions and wish I could give your video multiple thumbups.
@@faryafarajion the topic of Prince of Persia the 2008 game did include Ahura Mazda and Ahriman as major parts of the plot. No idea how much cultural basis there is to the depiction though
How am I supposed to sleep when Farya dropped an hour and a half long video essay?
Ha-haha. Wrong side of the globe. I enjoy it for breakfast
Time zones. I saw it after waking up
I literally didn't sleep for watching this.
Move to a different time zone!
......oh i hadn't looked at the runtime until i saw this comment LOL. i. Will have to come back to this video later ynnnng
Literally love the style in which this video was filmed (alongside the great script and information shared). When you were at the grill fanning, I was grinning! Soo great.
Mr. Faraji I absolutely loved this video of yours... So many things were mentioned that even I as an Iranian was ignorant about, and had to realize. I'm illiterate in music but I really enjoy listening to your work. I wish health and happiness for you and your family.
20:59 “For the scenes set in Paris, I’ve used the sound of a Cretan mandola” Don’t know why, but that cracked me up
Cretan... Croissant... They're basically the same thing, amiright? 🤌
I NEED, repeat, NEED the occidentalist composing as a short
I wanna hear an actual piece like that.
Meme value is valuable.
Basically hollywood and anything USA makes calling it western, celt, viking, roman you call it
@@KasumiRINA the only place Bri'ish Romans are good is Monty Python
As a student of belly dance and and middle eastern culture, I literally squealed with joy when I saw this video pop up in my feed! There are so few resources that help explain things like this. Thank you for providing us with this wonderfuI and educational platform. I can’t wait to watch all your videos and learn more!
This was crazy informative and eye opening. Thanks, Farya.
As a Brazilian I wanna share an experience in our history. Stan Getz, was a struggling Jazz Musician who was stationed in Brazil during the beginning of Bossa Nova. He decided to cling to the genre for a comeback and in America he made a record using Bossa Nova rhythms called Jazz Samba. It was good, but no Brazilian would call it Bossa Nova. It was only when he collaborated with actual Brazilian Bossa Nova Musicians like João Gilberto, Tom Jobim and Milton Banana. That he got Bossa nova. Not only did he get the sound, the record Getz/Gilberto is considered a stable on the Bossa Tradition. Image how much great music we could've had if Western Composers, choose to collaborate with Middle-Eastern Musicians. Instead of making general assumptions.
I'm not brazilian, but as someone who listens to a lot of music. This is so true! I would listen to real bossa nova and brazilian music and hear people credit Stan Getz. It always boggled my mind because it sounds nothing alike.
Do you have any other Bossa Nova jazz recommendations similar to Getz/Gilberto, particularly from Brazilian jazz musicians? Getz is one of my favorite jazz musicians.
I've been using Rate Your Music to find other Bossa nova, including the artists you list above, but I imagine the RYM list is made from the western viewpoint.
Mano eu acho um lixo esse disco do Stan Getz
@@Ryan-wr8fx Brazilian jazz musician is a strange way to call, but, this is not your fault
Go for, Luiz Gonzaga, Elis Regina, Pixinguinha, Dominguinhos, Elza Soares
I heard there was a lot of back and forth influence between NYC jazz and Rio jazz.
I have been bellydancing for about 20 years, and early on, I began to notice there was *something* about the different types of music I was being exposed to in various classes. Sometimes the songs felt "real" and sometimes they felt "fake." I wasn't sure how else to describe it, I was in high school and had no knowledge of music theory or ethnomusicology. As I got older, I read Edward Said's "Orientalism," I studied the history of all the dances that made up "belly dance," and came to learn and identify the instruments and rhythms unique to different regions of the MENAT. Often times I was on my own searching for this stuff. I was afraid to ask dumb questions that would betray my ignorance, but I was eager to learn.
I would have killed to have seen this documentary when I was 16. It would have allowed me to articulate my feelings so much better, and give more power to that little voice in my head that wanted to scream "this is cringe," "something is wrong," "this ain't it," whenever I heard a song called "Eternal Arabia"
Dancers are often visual symbols of a culture's musical heritage. Understanding the music you're dancing to isn't just important -- it's the damn point.
Thank you so, so much for making this doc and posting it free on CZcams, so hopefully other young dancers can have an easier time learning about the music they are dancing to.
I'm also picking up bellydancing (which also has been a great hook into learning more about rich middle-eastern cultures
As a fellow bellydancer, I have seen the same bullshit in Western "belly dance". Faked costuming with no regard for areas of origin; bindis on the forehead, a mishmash of jewellery from different areas, weird music and bad attitudes toward the cultures of origin. 60's and 70's white feminism has a lot to answer for here.
The minimum that belly dancers should do is educate themselves with the cultures and musical traditions of the regions that this dance draws from. Orientalism was the draw for me, then when I realized what Orientalism was, it was an invitation to really come to know these cultures.
You are right in that we do have a responsibility to accurately portray the cultures we aim to depict, there's just no getting around it if you love the dance. You dignify them if you present them authentic dance and understanding. There was no greater compliment that I have received as a dancer than when I was told by an Iranian musician that I danced to his music like I understood it in my body.
That being said, I mainly dance fusion, but in the right settings. Honor the rich traditions, and celebrate the artistry and innovation when appropriate.
And for goddsakes, please stop dancing to Arabian Nights! I don't care how good the version of the song is! It's peak cringe.
Thanks for posting this! I have 'belly danced' in the past, and had similar feelings but couldn't articulate them. Watching this video really gave me some great insights and thoughts of 'oh dear, I have really fallen into that trap'. And then feeling a bit ashamed for not realising sooner. Fantastic, clearly articulated and expressed video and so happy to see other belly dancers on here expressing much more eloquently what I am trying to say than I can. Looking forward to doing some reading and growing my understanding. Starting with the Edward Said :)
If you're a westerner I will kindly request you to stop doing it as it is an affront to everyone's eyes
Incredible and thorough video! I learned a lot! I really appreciate how you gave examples for those of Western-centric understandings through those European mashup examples, it really illustrated your point (and provided some laughs as well) and was really eye-opening! Thank you for all the efforts it would have taken for you to record and make this video!
Thank you! This is a topic I've been thinking about for a long time and I feel so lucky to get to watch such an informative video about it.
Hey, Farya, can you make more Occidentalist music? "William Wallace" kinda slaps.
Hell yeah!
Hell yeah that slapped so hard , I want the full version of the music and it on a Scottish Highlands music playlist (1 hour long, so you can feel like a true scot)
I sort of want to see an Occidentalist movie as well. Harmonica blues when showing european royalty, french fries, blue jeans and top hats in 16th century portugal, greece shown overcast all the time and ice filled ports using viking longships in the modern era?
I actually want the full song to be released
Watch chinese movies about westerners. PS: western music is just irish river dance for the rest of the world
Now I kinda want someone to make a parody music channel that posts Hungarian-Danish Alpine Dance Music with bagpipes, accordeon and cembalo.
Don't forget the yodeling japanese grandpa.
as a hungarian, i’d pay good money to hear something so unhinged
Thank you for work you did to post this. I heard you and my world view is updated to something more real. In the day since watching, I am enjoying your playlists. I'm learning how to listen and understand microtonal scales. Again, thank you.
this was so tremendously informative and interesting, i really appreciate the time and passion you’ve put into this
I think the final boss of orientalism would be the nation of Sumeru in Genshin Impact.
From Chinese developers, it doesn’t claim to be based on any particular culture, but is a hodgepodge of Indian, Persian, Arabic, Egyptian and Turkish cultural elements, mashed together with a soundtrack that tries to represent every single one of them in some way with varying levels of authenticity.
There’s the Indian sitar, bansuri, tabla; the Persian santur, daf, tombak; the Arabic oud, ney, qanun, darbuka; the Armenian duduk; the Turkish baglama, even the Greek bouzouki, the Italian mandolin and the Chinese erhu, with one track going out as far as the African udu.
And the insane thing is, it’s also one of the only games I’ve ever seen that does an actual decent attempt at representing Persian culture, from a character doing a pretty authentic looking Persian dance, to an entire area dedicated to Persian folklore reframed in the context of the game’s lore - Sorush, Mihir and Rashnu of the Pari race descended from the divine bird Simurgh whose home is the Vourukasha Oasis sets out to perform the rite of Chinvat to stop the Dev, extinguish the sign of Apaosha and restore the Harvisptokhm using the power of Khvarena, etc etc.
It’s obvious they’ve done a great amount of research, so it’s not like they don’t know about the cultures they’re representing, but they’ve still chosen to mix them in a way that's so strange it honestly has no precedent in Western media. To call it orientalism would be too reductive, but they’re also too double-harmonic-major-duduk brained to be accurate, so it exists in this purgatory of orientalism.
Also regions there are usually based on one country, meanwhile Sumeru is just... everywhere from the entire MENA region to Indian subcontinent squeezed into one region. I've seen an Iranian fan interpret it as the Chinese creators being inspired by the history of the Silk Road trade (same person also contrasted Sumeru characters that represent particular real life cultures well with an Aladdin-based orientalism personification of a character, lol). All in all, those circumstances surely create one hell of a case of "purgatory of orientalism" as you said
Didn't you basically answer yourself? It's not western media, they approach it in a different way and mix things differently than the usual western creator would. Same goes with depictions of middle eastern cultures by the Japanese (which incidentally Genshin developers borrow liberally form, to the point a lot of what you say isn't particularly unique). Equally stereotypical, but in generally different ways.
Play the Civilization games..they do a great job in nailing the authenticity of the cultures of the world. King Cyrus is depicted just how he should look in Civ 6
Post-Orientalist syncreticism
I was just thinking about where Genshin lays in this discussion and you're so correct. It's like Orientalism+
Thanks for making that William Wallace music, haha, I think it was extremely effective at proving the point for westerners!
Banger essay!
Eyyy it's the man himself. Thanks mate!
We need an orientalist version of the lick
@@Bryophyta the whole "Obsession with double-harmonic" part IS the orientalist lick, my dude.
Thank you for not being afraid to challenge the Western norms in your videos, thank you for spreading a sliver of our true cultures and thank you for being the person that you are, Adam.
yup, this is the comment I was looking for.
Glad I took a chance on this video, it's definitely opened my eyes into a reality that I was unaware of before.
I can't thank you enough for this video. I learned SO much. It is the first one I have seen from your channel and I am so looking forward to catching up and learning more.
Holy smokes. CZcams has a looot of video format junkfood and other trash. But every once in a while, you come across a place like this, a rich deposit of valuable nutrition, chock full of vitamins and minerals.
The rhythm during your Turkish vocal posture clip at 30:48 does something strange to my feelings. It is (to my ears), a curious rhythm that I feel compelled to hear and learn more of. Thank you!
Music in CZcams is also like that.
I have seen extremely obscure but extremely good music (In My Taste not for Everyone of course) that has on average less than 100,000 Views and some even have less than 15,000 but I listen to and love everyday
as a japanese woman, i dunno what you're talking about. all we do is eat sushi and commit seppuku.
also i live in the part of town where all the middle eastern immigrants live so i actually do get to hear cool oriental music when they barbecue and stuff, its cool. we've also got a bazaar with cool music and tasty mangoes
Do you eat sushi as beautiful japanese.mp3 music plays as you walk out in robes and holding a fan?
You killed me at "commit seppuku" 😂
Seppuku part got me choking
@@johndoe70770 Not for long :)
As a japanese you aren't part of that Samurai caste so I doubt you were expected to do Seppuku. I guess they don't teach japanese caste system in Japanese school.
Thanks sm for this, bro. As a half-Persian person raised in the US all my life, I have always felt really disconnected to my dad's culture. I still always felt something off about this pseudo-Persian/Arabic/Egyptian music and I appreciate you for hashing out why in this video. big props to you and thanks for making this! definitely an insta-subscribe here!
While you were explaining how your "historically informed reconstructions of ancient/cultural music" were played in cultural events, I looked at your channel for an example... And the first video on your page is Le Tourdion. Being French Canadian, I was like "well he's making it easy for me". Verdict : you're the real deal. Your pronunciation of this old French is perfect, without a doubt. Unlike in France, Quebec kept a lot of these older pronunciations (Ex : je bouè Anjou ou Arbouè), so it makes me even more sensitive to those nuances... but you nailed it. Don't know if you speak French or just learned this song, but that's impressive in either case.
Edit : just saw you're apparently in Montreal... makes sense ahah
Edit 2 : ...Annnnd just saw the end of the video (Le Tourdion)... now I feel dumb.
1:12 Your uncle looks just like you, thats amazing
😂
Can 100% confirm what you're saying about western music training and microtonality!
I started playing the violin when I was six years old. If you learn the violin, 99% of what you play is gonna be european classical.
When I was about 18, my teacher gave me a piece with some microtonal elements and it completely broke my brain. Like, on a conceptual level I knew what I was supposed to do, but at that point I had spent ca two thirds of my entire life training myself to play with 12 notes in an octave, I had trained my hearing to get those notes exactly right (because a violin doesn't have frets so you actually have to hit them properly like you do in singing). Trying to reliably hit a note that was right between the two notes that my brain would accept was insanely difficult because I didn't just have to hit that note, I had to hold it while fighting the visceral, instinctive reaction of my brain screaming at me that I was playing the wrong note
Great teaching moment, 10/10, would recommend!
(couple years later I got to try out a Cura in an improvised music session and experimenting with microtonality when I had frets to help me was actually a lot of fun!)
Yeah I’m a jazz/country guitarist and even though there are some microtonal elements for “bluesy” notes hearing real microtonal music is really harsh to my ears. I just want to reach out and tune the peg up a bit. For jazzy stuff the idea of microtonalilty is that you are approaching notes or getting that dissonance intentionally not for melodic but expressive purposes. Middle eastern music will straight up hit the in between note in a melody or chord and although I try to understand it I just have spent my life training my ear to hear it’s a flat note.
you would have to retune to strings. it's super weird, i believe,on the fingerings if you don't redo the strings. it will make more sense if you do the right tuning
on violin, i mean
@@PhaedraDarwish From what I can tell, middle eastern music uses various tunings, but the microtonality doesn't come from those, it's in the fingering.
Either way, the piece my teacher gave me to try was written with a standard european GDAE tuning in mind, so for that one, it was all down to fingering anyway
Yeah, I'm not nearly as trained as you, and every time he demonstrated microtones a little voice in my head said "Error! go double check your notes!" Western musical traditional really does hate microtones.
As a Québecois with a Persian significant other, as well as several Arab friends, I've really been delving into Middle Eastern music in general as of late, and this video just pops up at the perfect time. Merci bien Farya, il va falloir que je check plus de tes vidéos!
I really appreciate the exercise in empathy! Feeling that jarring effect on a visceral level is an experience that I wouldn't otherwise have been able to make.
Last time I was this early the Sasanians were actin up
Man last time I was this early Lord Byron still thought that Greeks were pure unadulterated westerners
As Malaysian, orientalist music for Malays are basically Chinese music mix with tribal drums and small gongs.
Hello from Scotland! Great video, really enjoyed it.
I am so happy I found your channel! For the past decade, I've had a major interest in the Achaemenid Empire, which turned into a desire to learn about Iran's and surrounding countries's cultures and histories. I've always been stumped on finding actual indepth, informative resources about Iran. When looking at what's available at arms length on my side of the internet, the top results are often think pieces that have no further context, blatant misinformation, orientalism or information looked at under a western lens instead of in the context of the culture. On my part, my orgins aren't from Iran or the Middle East so when looking up these things be it clothes, family values, or music I had almost no foot to stand on other than I know that this places exist and surely there must differences that distinguish it from the countries that surround it. When I do find things, the next thing I'm usually left to figure out if what im looking at is pre or post Islamic.
But here you suddenly appeared on my recommendation and I couldnt be more happy! I deeply appreciate all the examples and comparisons from the modes, the instruments, and just how different middle eastern countries compose thier music. I am now intersted in learning more on the music theory of that region, I never would have thought of looking into that on my own. This is so cool, I'm subcribing right now and I cannot wait to learn more from your channel.
William Wallace - Scottish Music goes incredibly hard. Beautiful European temperate climate American vodka vibes.
The architecture analogy makes a lot of sense, I could instantly recognize differences in Asian architecture, but I wouldn’t be able to tell European architecture apart, except for major landmarks. Pop culture plays a huge role in cultural understanding. A lot more people can recognize Korean architecture nowadays due to the rise of K-dramas/K-pop compared to the last decade, and the same applies to Japan for similar reasons. If media in general had more care instead of generalizing, many more people would be able to make distinctions.
Before watching this, I was only vaguely aware of the idea, “it’s kinda funny that every movie/game/etc in the middle east has that yellow filter, camels, street markets, women with face-covers, desert, that samey-sound” but I didn’t realize just how crazy stereotypes got. Great video.
I am a white Danish person and I can easily tell traditional Japanese and Chinese architecture styles apart but I have also studied art history including architectural history at university, and take an active interest in the topic way more than I imagine most people anywhere do - I don't expect the average person in China to even notice the cultural differences between the Scandinavian countries either
kpop is black american culture🤷♀️the language is korean hut that’s it
it's the same reason as how raya the last dragon made me wince so many times just from the trailer. i know they said they consulted southeast asians, but the thing is, they consulted young urban southeast asians (who are at least partly westernised), and southeast asians of migrant origin (e.g. from china). if you're heartland southeast asian, who still have some inherited familiarity with what things go together, and what things and worldviews just don't go together, doesn't exist or even antithetical to our worldviews, it feels jarring. but i was able to enjoy aladdin even though i knew intellectually that the design aesthetic is not actually arabic.
@@nurainiarsad7395 yeah, I felt the same way about Raya, it feels jarring seeing them mix different SEA cultures when they could have just focused on one.
@@nurainiarsad7395 I've never seen "Raya and the Last Dragon", I guess I am not missing much? I do remember reading a review of it on someone's blog and thinking the plot (as he described it) came across as a total ripoff of Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds" just transplanted into a heroic fantasy setting instead of a unique surrealistic post-apocalyptic world. (which for me was half the fun of "Nausicaä")
Thoughtfully written, well spoken, and humbly conveyed. Quality analysis right here.
Salam, khasteh nabashid!
I was floored when CZcams recommended this video to me, because it's something that's been on my mind for years, and I'm happy to see other people speaking about it.
I'm Iranian born and raised in Canada, and while I don't know a thing about music, I've always complained that what we're spoon-fed in the West that's supposed to pass as "our" music sounds *nothing* like our music. It's a bizarre thing to grow up listening to authentic Iranian and Azeri music from my parents while also consuming Western media that has such a soulless and inaccurate portrayal of our culture. In the same vein, Arabic script (or, even worse, some weird pseudo-Arabic font) is used inaccurately solely for the sake of giving something "exotic vibes".
Anyway, I wish I could hit "like" about 1000 more times, because this video is terrific. Thank you so much for making this and sharing it with the world. Cheers. :)
Honestly, most people are ignorant even of their own country and culture:
My grandma is part of a group that tries to preserve and learn local culture to people, as modern day life uproots everything and makes people less connected with their roots.
Part of that is singing, singing songs from their youth, lullebys but also songs of grief.
My family is from Scheveningen/Duindorp.
But why i bring this up is that often people just go "ah you from Urk". Urk is a different place with different history and different styles of clothing. There are so many people not knowing their own country's culture...
To expect them to know a thing about what's for them the other side of the world is like expecting the fish to walk.
Warm greetings from the Netherlands🇳🇱.
Also completely made up "epic William Wallace Scottish Battle music" probably exists. I have spoken with Scottish people and every time Hollywood makes a movie about something Scottish it's a whole can of worms.
Hell yeah look up "Celtic epic battle music" you won't be disappointed. Has Gregorian singing and all kinds of good stuff in it.
And the "just give them scimitars and turbans" trope in movies is also sadly used for many other cultures, even European ones. Romans ALWAYS have big, square shields with SPQR on it, we all know the look. As with all cultures evolving through time the Roman army changed drastically throughout time to the point they don't look alike at all. But Hollywood says SPQR so that is all we get.
Ignorance sucks and it's great you address these stupid and lame tropes! There is a whole world unknown to most that is right there! So much to discover and enjoy, to limit ourselves is to torture ourselves!
Duindorp, Urk, it's all near water isn't it? 😂
It's true Braveheart is the bane of my existence
Im not a regular viewer, sometimes when I'm not doing my stuff I end around here. But is undeniable the quality of this man stuff. Good music, great knowledge, great speeching skills.
Thankyou.
May your life be prosperous and long.
so glad to see the algorithm's still bringing me good stuff-instant sub. i've been binging your video essays for the past week, you're kinda like adam neely, but spicier (never would've thought i could handle such a thing)
Just out of curiosity typed "Iranian music" in Russian on youtube and got a ton of Iranian singers and musicians. Found a lovely video from a Moscow conservatory - it's breathtakingly beautiful. Thank you for the video and an opportunity to enjoy something new.
Just a few things I sort of want to say:
1. The personal timing for stumbling on your channel couldn't be better. I recently stumbled onto some amazing rock/metal acts out of the general region your speaking about and its cool to learn more about the cultural/traditional parts of what I've recently heard (Bloodywood is one of the bands, folk metal act out of India)
2. I like the argument for not eliminating Orientalist music but rather just label it clearly. I mean soda and juice both taste amazing and can have fruity notes, but I too would grow very frustrated if every time I wanted orange juice I got smacked with a overly sweetened carbonated approximation of it. But simply labeling the bottles as "juice" and "soda" would eliminate that frustration. Also it would eliminate the second hand embarrassment and outright annoyance with those who have never been given juice and/or told its not the same as soda and thus they gulp back soda insisting its the same as juice. Much to the lament of those who make juice but cannot get anyone to try it as they assume they already have an intimate familiarity with the flavour.
BLOODYWOOD MENTIONED!!!!!! they're incredible :]
Very well said!
This is a good analogy
This vid is amazing! My buddy sent it to me while we are working I read the title and new instantly what your thesis statement would be! I watched the video beginning to end and was enthralled all the way through! As a college dropout that got a D in music theory I really appreciate the breakdown, seriously great work.
Absolutely need this to be said. Love the video, definitely subscribed.