When different musical cultures meet
Icelandic folksongs and Eastern music

 
 
I have in the last ten years travelled to the Middle East and Eastern-Europe to study music and instruments from this area and I´ve taken lessons in Iran, India, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece and Morocco.
 
I´ve been very active as a musician in Iceland and I´ve been in some cases the first Icelander to introduce these instruments and music to Icelanders. Five years ago, I decided to mix together these Middle-Eastern and Eastern-European tonalities with the Icelandic folksong.
 
In 2017 I released Two Sides Of Europe on which I collaborated with some of Turkey´s finest musicians, the folksongs in odd meter, new tonalities and exotic instruments, all vocal on these albums are in the hands of one of Iceland´s finest female voice, Sigridur Thorlacius. In the fall of 2018 I released Travelling Through Cultures, on which I collaborated with the famous South- Bulgarian Thrakia Ensemble along with guests from India, Greece and Austria.
 
The last album of this trilogy will be released early 2020 and is a collaboration with Iranian ensemble and will be called The Persian Path. This book is the final for my master´s project but the book is divided into two parts, first part are notes and arrangements from these three albums and the second part consists of teaching methods I have learned in the past ten years of my travels.

 

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In this book I will teach three most important element of Eastern music which is ornamentation of notes, scales and rhythms of Eastern music.
 
In the book there are examples from the recordings,  methods of how to use these things and also a suggestions of how students can use them in their own way. It is my hope to give students new and fresh material to play at concerts and exams and to learn about new music styles combined with their own heritage of the Icelandic folksong.
 
 
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Ásgeir Ásgeirsson
2019
asgeirja [at] simnet.is
Advisor: Berglind María Tómasdóttir