Hi, everyone. Please check out my arrangement of “Cold Duck Time” by Eddie Harris. Seeing as this website treats the topic of the links between text and guitar music, the video’s absence of vocals may puzzle you. But fear not; for me, there is always an intellectual obstacle to be tackled! Perhaps the expressive value of this video could be assessed through the very lack of explicit emotional content.
Just as important as the long history of plucked-string music’s relationships to various forms of less abstract language, the Spanish vihuela was one of the first respectably established movements in purely instrumental music. With the seven vihuela books of the sixteenth century, guitar music without text was on its way to becoming a significant mode of personal and collective expression.
So I ask a simple question: what sort of sentiment does this rendition of “Cold Duck Time” bring to your mind? How does it make you feel, and/or how do you perceive the expressive goal of the composition, arrangement, and performance? Any and all answers are valuable in many ways! Thanks in advance for your input.