Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Representative Riffs

Episode Date: November 30, 2024

Music is a very powerful thing. It can invoke a wide variety of emotions and moods.  Particular songs we've heard might invoke memories of when we first heard them. However, there is some music that actually can server as a cultural shorthand. Not even full songs are necessary. Just a few notes can provide a very specific cultural reference. Learn more about representative riffs, what they are, and how they came to be on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Sign up at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to get chicken breast, salmon or ground beef FREE in every order for a year plus $20 off your first order! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Music is a very powerful thing. It can invoke a wide variety of emotions and moods. Particular songs we may have heard might invoke memories of when we first heard them. However, there is some music that can actually serve as a cultural shorthand. Not even full songs are necessary. Just a few notes can provide a very specific cultural reference. Learn more about representative riffs, what they are and how they came to be on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is going to be different. This isn't a topic that you can really find much written about. I had to combo much of this together personally, and what I'll be covering in this episode is by no means comprehensive. The entire episode rests from a minor obsession that I developed about 20 years ago. And it all stemmed from a very common series of notes that I'm sure you're all familiar with.

It's so short that you can't even call it a song. It would be better classified as a riff. Yet, it's appeared in many popular songs, movies, and video games. Here are the nine notes. These notes have become widely used in music to denote Asia generally or sometimes China or Japan specifically. It appeared in the 1980 song, Turning Japanese by the Vapers. It appeared in the 1974 Carl Douglas hit Kung Fu Fighting. Variations of it can be found in the 1983 David Bowie song Little China Girl,

as well as in the theme song to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. On television, it's appeared in Looney Tunes and Pink Panther cartoons as well as The Simpsons. In movies, it was in Breakfast at Tiffany's, accompanying the rather embarrassing portrayal of Mr. Uninoshi played by Mickey Rooney. It was also used in Kill Bill Volume 1 and Team America World Police. It was used in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat video games. And it's been used in countless commercials. I'm pretty sure that all of you thought the same thing when I played those notes.

The thing that obsessed me was, why was this the music used to denote Asia? and where did this music come from? This was, at least at the time, a very difficult thing to research. How does one do a search on nine musical notes? As I said, it was a minor obsession, but I always kind of wondered about it for years. Well, thankfully, I wasn't the only person who was wondering the same thing. About 10 years ago, I came across a story that was published on National Public Radio that answered all my questions.

Those notes have a name, and it's known as the Oriental Riff. It does not come from any Asian music. It is 100% an invention of Western music. The reason why we associate it with Asia and why it was used for that purpose is because the riff's melodic structure is based on the pentatonic scale, which is prevalent in many traditional Asian music systems. The pentatonic scale is a five-note musical scale commonly found in traditional music, from various cultures, including East Asian, African, and Celtic traditions.

Unlike the Heptatonic 7-note scale prevalent in Western music, the pentatonic scale omits semitones, creating a simpler, more open sound that avoids dissonance. During the vaudeville era, the riff began to appear in performances featuring Asian-themed acts. It was often played on instruments like a piano or a gong to introduce Chinese or Japanese characters, usually portrayed as caricatures or stereotypes.

It reached its peak in about the 1970s and 80s, and it really isn't used that much anymore unless it's satire. A team of NPR reporter stationed in Beijing went out on the street and asked regular Chinese people if they recognized the tune. No one had heard of it, and to them, it sounded like Western music, not Chinese music. Sort of how there are YouTube videos that serve Panda Express to people from China, and they do not recognize it as Chinese food. However, learning about the origins of the Oriental riff,

wasn't the end of the story. I began seeking out other very short musical riffs that were used as cultural shorthands. Here's another that you are probably very familiar with. This piece is called the Arabian riff, and it serves a very similar function to that of the Oriental riff. It's a type of shorthand for references to Arabia and or North Africa. The origin of this, however, may actually come from the region. There is no conclusive proof as to its origin, but many musicalists historians think it stems from an Algerian folk song known as Craduzha. When France colonized Algeria, the music may have found its way into French music. There is a French song from 1719 that uses the first several notes.

Its modern origins can be traced to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. There was an exhibition called A Street in Cairo, which had camels and snake charmers. There was used in a song titled The Streets of Cairo or the Poor Little Country Made. The riff typically employs the Phrygian dominant scale, which is a scale that has the distinctively eastern sound to Western ears. It gained widespread popularity in Hollywood in vaudeville during the early 20th century, appearing in many films, cartoons, and performances depicting deserts, camels, or belly dancers. Unlike the Oriental riff, the Arabian riff has been used many more times in modern music, including up to the present day. So these musical stereotypes developed over the years to a point where they,

really have no other purpose other than to represent those regions. They've become so ingrained that you instantly think about it when you hear it. But are there more? Yes. Many of the musical riffs, and again we're only talking a few notes here, not full songs, can be used to identify a country, but they're usually parts of a longer song. In fact, a few identifying notes are so popular that many people never even heard the rest of the original song. For example, what country does this remind you of? That's part of the Mexican hat dance, or as it's known in Mexico, Harabe Tapatio. Harabe Tapatio is the national dance of Mexico,

and the music was written in the 19th century by Jesus Gonzalez Rubio, with the modern arrangement being made in the 1920s. Today, you'll most probably hear this music being played by a Marachi band. Here's another that I'm a music. I'm sure you can associate with its country almost immediately. To be fair, the bagpipes are a big part of what makes these notes recognizable. You could probably play anything on the bagpipes and people will associate it with Scotland. But this is the bagpipe song.

The song is called Scotland the Brave, and it's a rather recent tune. Scotland the Brave emerged in the late 19th or early 20th century, with its melody first published in a 1911 collection called the Scottish student songbook. The song game popularity is a traditional pipe tune and became an unofficial national anthem of Scotland, often performed at sporting events, military ceremonies, and cultural festivals. Here is another riff that you should be able to recognize immediately. The name of this tune, which you might remember from The Godfather Part 2, is Terentella Napolitana. Tarantella Napolitana is an Italian folk dance and musical piece originating in Naples,

and it's often associated with southern Italian culture. Its history traces back to the 17th century, rooted in the belief that dancing the Tarantella could cure the bite of the tarantula spider, hence the name Tarantella. It was thought to expel the venom through frantic movement. Over time, the dance evolved into a celebration of courtship and joy, characterized by its fast tempo and 6-8 rhythm. The riff was also used as the bassist for the 1950 song, Lucky Lucky Lucky Me, performed by Evelyn Knight and the Ray Charles band.

Here is another European country that you can probably recognize immediately. This is from the song Rule Britannia. Rule Britannia was first written as a poem in 1740 and then set to music by the composer Thomas Arne the same year. Rendering a period of growing British naval power, the song celebrates British Maritime Domit. and liberty, encapsulated in the famous refrain, Rule Britannia.

Britannia ruled the waves. Initially, a theatrical piece, it quickly gained popularity as a nationalistic hymn, especially during the Napoleonic Wars and the height of the British Empire. Believe it or not, it actually hit number 10 on the UK singles charts in 2020. There are, of course, some rifts that were designed to be representative of their countries. These would be national anthems. The truth is,

Most national anthems are quite poor and forgettable. However, there are a few good ones out there, or if not good, at least they're instantly recognizable. For example, this one. That is, of course, the Marseillaise, the national anthem of France. It was composed in 1792 by Claude Joseph Roje de Lille, an army officer during the French Revolution. It was written to inspire troops defending the revolutionary cause against foreign monarchies.

The song earned its name when it was adopted by a volunteer soldier, from Marseilles who sang it as they marched to Paris. If you remember my episode on the 1812 overture, those opening bars are a musical reference to France that are used in the composition. I can remember a group of Frenchmen drinking heavily one night in Uluru in Central Australia, and they were all singing the Marseillaise, to which I have to commend them for having a national anthem that you can at least sing while drinking. Speaking of which, that is the current national anthem of the Russian Federation, which uses the same melody as the National Anthem of the Soviet Union but with different lyrics.

Those opening notes have been used to reference Russia or the Soviet Union in many movies or games. But my biggest memory of it is when Nikolai Volkov sang it before his matches in the WWF in the early 1980s. Here's another national anthem you can probably name in just the first four notes. I got to say, Canada has a pretty good national anthem as national anthems go. The song, Oh Canada, was originally commissioned in 180 for the San John Baptiste's celebrations in Quebec. It gained popularity across Canada with several English translations emerging over the years, but the version by Robert Stanley Ware in 1908 became the most widely used. The anthem officially became Canada's national anthem in 1980,

following a century of widespread use, replacing God Save the Queen for that role. And I should also mention a country that, quite frankly, doesn't have a very good national anthem. Australia. Sorry Australia, no one outside of Australia knows what your national anthem is. It's so boring I'm not even going to bother to play it because there's no riff in it that is memorable.

I remember standing for it at the semifinals of the Rugby World Cup in 2011 in Auckland, and I didn't even know what I was listening to. However, believe it or not, between 1976 and 1980, they could use waltzing Matilda at the Olympics for gold medal ceremonies, which was awesome. Thankfully, Australia, you have a very easy solution to your problem. You could adopt a song that is one of the most identifiable riffs in music and is immediately associated with your country,

a song that every Australian would be proud to hear at every sporting event. Australia, that is my gift to you. I want to end this episode by going back to the start of the episode. The Oriental riff is a piece of music used in the West to represent Asia. And that raises the question. What music do Asians think represents the West? Well, a survey was conducted, granted, not very scientific.

And this was the most popular answer. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server.

Links to everything are in the show notes.