As you know, I love music…
… that’s not a surprise.
What might be a surprise is that I used to NOT understand why some people would make noises while the musical performance is going on.
I don’t mean babies crying (that’s what babies do), or people unwrapping their lozenges in the concert hall (better that than coughing). What I’ve always found surprising are the:
extramusical sounds and yells
that happen during a performance.
For example, if you’ve ever been to a mariachi performance, you might have heard one of these “ay yi yi yi” cries ring out during the song.
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| Pedro Infante doing a grito in performance |
A grito is a common Mexican interjection (typically at loud volume during a song), used as an expression of joy, sadness, or excitement. Even though it’s not part of the music, it IS a part of the performance!
Once I learned this about gritos, I became much more understanding about these sounds (and non-traditional sounds in general).
Here’s what a grito sounds like:
You can learn how to do a grito by looking at this quick tutorial on how to do it:
Today’s Challenge isn’t to find out more about gritos (they’re cool and everything, but now you know about them)… the Challenge is broader than that.
1. Can you find examples of other outcries / sounds / shouts that are analogous to a grito. That is, they are (in some sense) outside-of-the-music–that is, extramusical.
I can think of a couple of examples of sounds like in other countries’ traditional music (maybe you can too). The real question for this week is How can you search for something like this that’s so… difficult to describe?
As always, let us know what you discover. But even more importantly, tell us HOW you found it. This is a bit tricky, so your solution process will be super interesting to us all.
Leave your answer in the comments.
Search on!
