Wrap Up!

     One of the many things that intrigued me in this class was the music of the people in Ecuador. Listening to the imbabura harp, and the way they structured their melodic lines was so fascinating to me. I could have listened to the first piece we listened to for quite some time before getting bored. I was also intrigued by the music of the Arab World. I love the way that the maqams are used, and I find the theory completely fascinating. I would love nothing more than to get to study maqams far more in depth, and I intend to acquire an oud so that I can really delve into that field of study. It is just so cool to think about.
     I think that up until this class, I took harmony for granted. It never occurred to me that that was a very Western thing to do, musically speaking. It has always been a big part of the music I've listened to and performed, especially being a choir kid, and it never occurred to me that we were somewhat unique in that aspect. It was also eye opening to think about the fact that we, as a culture, view music differently than other cultures do. It makes sense, but that's not something that I had even considered before hand. It's interesting how closed minded I can be sometimes, just because it doesn't occur to me how different some things can be from culture to culture. That's part of the reason I like courses like this one so much, because it offers an opportunity to be aware of what the rest of the world is like, and it forces me to think outside my own little bubble. and for that I am grateful.
      This course has inspired me to learn more about Arabic music. I have always had a fascination for the Arab world, and through my political studies and Model Programs, this interest has only intensified. I knew before this class that I enjoyed the aesthetic value of Arabic music, but I had no idea how complex and intriguing their music theory was. Now that I know, I feel compelled to really study the music theory and get to a point where I understand it. I think in some aspects it will be easier than Western theory, because harmonies aren't really a factor to consider and all of the maqams are locked into specific pitches. However, there are, I believe, something like 72 different maqams, and they are so interrelated and specific as to their formation, and these are all essentially scales, making the music so incredibly complex. I am completely fascinated. Also I have decided that I need to own an oud as well as a doumbek. I also need to study abroad, partly because I think that would be the most efficient way to learn, but also because I would love nothing more than to go to the Middle East. This was just really exciting to learn about.

Cool Stuff!

This first video is an example of Aboriginal dancing. I chose this video because it showed a good example of the clapping sticks we discussed in class, and I liked how it was not a group dance, but tended to be done by different individuals. I chose the second video because I thought it was really cool that someone did traditional Bollywood dancing for a Miss America pageant. I think that's a good example of how America is a melting pot of cultures, and it was refreshing to see that. I really enjoyed this last video because all of the dancing was centered around one woman, Geeta Kapoor, and it was really interesting to watch. I liked the group aspect of the dancing, and I loved all of the different costumes. It was very exciting to watch.

Music and Family

Grace: When and where did you experience music outside of your home growing up?

Mom: Probably when I was either in the church choir when I was little, and what I really remember was being exposed was when I was in kindergarten or first grade.

G: What sort of music were you exposed to at home?

M: You know, it was just the regular, I mean grandmother listened to music on the radio, we listened to KVIL, just the regular everyday 70s music. It wasn't the hard rock, but just regular modern music.

G: What music were you not allowed to listen to at home?

M: Growing up, they wouldn't let us listen to trendy music in the car. We were allowed to listen to it in our bedrooms, but not in the car. Not Cindy Lauper or Led Zeppelin, they didn't want to hear that.

G: Did you ever learn music on your own?

M: I guess in 7th grade when I played flute in the band.

G: Is there any family tradition of musical performing?

M: No.

G: How often did you go to concerts, and what concerts were they?

M: We didn't go to concerts unless it was for school or a field trip. That was one thing we just didn't do. We went to concerts at Six Flags in elementary school, because we had passes, but it was only if your grandparents liked whoever was playing. I went to concerts when your dad and I started dating. Dad and I went to Edge Fest, and went to festivals and stuff. We went to bars to listen to bands play.

G: Did you ever use music to pass the time while working?

M: Yes. We played music at the office, yes.

G: Was music incorporated into your daily life?

M: Generally, it was just listening to it on the radio.

G: Was there a time when music comforted you?

M: Oh yeah. If I broke up with a boyfriend, we'd listen to sappy music. I remember being at the roller rink and them playing sappy music because somebody broke up with somebody.

G: What type of music did you dance to?

M:  Just pop music. Whatever was popular at the time.

G: Have your listening preferences changed over the course of your life?

M:  Yes. Well now I listen to a lot of jazz and big bands, and country, and some contemporary music, but I'm not really into contemporary music. I don't necessarily enjoy classical music, but I do listen to it to calm myself.

G: Do you feel your listening preferences influenced other areas of your life?

M: No, because MTV and all that wasn't big until I was in junior high.

G: Did anyone/anything ever discourage you from listening to your music?

M:  Oh, your grandparents. They just didn't like what we were listening to, it just wasn't allowed. I just snuck it and listened to it in my bedroom.

"Cool Stuff"

The first video is an example of traditional belly dancing. I themed this "cool stuff" blog around dancing styles, and belly dancing just seemed like an obvious choice to me. As I watch this woman dance, I am just amazed at how she can move like that. I wouldn't even know how to begin to try and recreate that myself. I'm highly impressed by how she is able to shake the way she is. The second video is an example of the salsa, which is a Latin American dance. I chose this video because that girl is awesome. She is so incredibly flexible, and she is so graceful about her movements, that I can watch this video over and over again. It's performers like her that make me wish I knew how to dance like that. It's mesmerizing. The last video is an example of the tango, another Latin American dance. Evidently I had forgotten how passionate and sensual the tango is, because that became incredibly clear to me while watching various other videos. I chose this one because I liked some of the talking at the beginning (although it's not necessary to watch all of the talking), and the dancers were just so in sync with each other, and there was so much passion in their dance that I felt I needed to share it.

Music and Gender

          When I first looked at this topic, I had a really hard time thinking about what exactly I would write. This was never anything that really occurred to me, aside from knowing that boys sang male roles in musicals and girls sang female roles, and being severely disheartened that I couldn't play Tony in West Side Story. However, when I thought a little further, I remembered the choral set up at my high school. I attended the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts, which was founded in the early 2000s by the Texas Boys' Choir. As you probably guessed from the name, TBC was a male only choir, meaning that all of the females had to be in a different ensemble, which was the Singing Girls of Texas. This separation was always very normal to me, and I didn't really think anything of it. That's just the way it was. I knew that my friends at different high schools were all in mixed choruses, but it never bothered me to be in a women's ensemble. To this day, the only experience I've had in mixed choruses has been through my church or through the chorus to a musical or opera.
           However, all of my directors throughout my choral experience have been almost exclusively men. Aside from the director of my choir in elementary school and the director at a church I attended, all of my other directors have been men. This is a little bit interesting to me, seeing as I've been almost exclusively in women's choruses. I remember during high school, our director left to pursue a job in a different city, and we had to go through the process of hiring a new director. They allowed the interviewees to guest conduct our choir to get a feel for how we interacted with them, and out of all of them, there was only one woman, and the choir collectively decided we wanted a male director, to off set how much estrogen was in the room. I don't think that there is necessarily any merit to that argument, but that was the agreement throughout the entire choir at the time.
          Although I've had almost exclusively male directors, I have only had female private teachers. That is not very weird in the grand scheme of things; there are a lot of women who teach private voice lessons, and it makes sense that I would have found myself only having female teachers. However, that does beg the question of why there are so many females who teach private lessons. Also, is that trend exclusive to vocal training, or does that permeate through other instruments? These are things that I hadn't really ever considered, but I think it would be interesting to look at statistics for this, and analyze the potential causes for any sorts of trends that were obvious.
         One last aspect to music and gender that I have experienced has been this: throughout my study of music, I have been surrounded by mostly females. At my high school there was about a 4:1 ratio of girls to boys. I think I had 10 boys in my graduating class of 51. I was very accustomed to being surrounded by women even before coming to Converse. Obviously, being at Converse, that has only been amplified. Aside from the occasional male graduate student and male professors, I am continuously surrounded by women. I personally enjoy that kind of learning environment, and I think this is a good setting, but I would be interested to know if there is actually a difference in learning environments from single gender to coed.

Cool Stuff!

          This first video is an example of a traditional Cherokee dance at a Powwow. I chose to look up Cherokee dances because I have some Cherokee heritage, and I was interested to see how this differed from what we've seen in class so far. I loved the yellow in the costumes a lot, and I loved that they used such bright colors.
                                  This second video is an example of a Zulu wedding dance. We haven't seen as much African dancing as we saw Native American dancing, and I thought it was cool to see the different gender roles in this video. The music in this video really lined up to the qualities that we've seen in the other African music we've studied. I loved watching when the woman and the two men were dancing in front of the drummer. It was a very athletic event, and I thought it was impressive.
                                     The last video shows two different dances. The first one was cool because the dancers have some sort of beading around their ankles, giving the dance itself a percussive effect. There were also specific gender roles, which was fun to observe. The second dance was very similar to step dancing that girls in my junior high did, which was fun and sort of nostalgic. I thought it was interesting that the title of this video included "gumboot," which it turns out is the dancing that was done in the boots. That type of dance is native to South Africa.

Music and Religion

Music and Religion

           

          I grew up in a Methodist church in Arlington, and from an early age, I have been quite exposed to the music of the church. When I was little, my family and I always attended "big church" in the sanctuary, where we sang traditional hymnals, and there was always an organ playing, and it was the type of music that comes to mind when you think of church music. These hymns were used at various times throughout the church service, and during different times of the liturgical year, the hymns would vary. The texts would be indicative of whatever point of the liturgical year we were in. Sometimes the hymns would coincide with the topic that our pastor would be speaking about, and they would reinforce those same ideas. Sometimes the hymns were just about praising God, or something of that nature. Other times, the hymns would serve almost as a filler during longer parts of the service, such as communion. We have some hymns that we pull out for special occasions, such as baptisms. In the Methodist church, the music serves as a communal activity that the congregation can participate in that serves the worship experience as a whole. I believe it is meant to enhance whatever else is going on in the service. We also always have some choral group perform during our offertory time, and, although that serves more as pleasant entertainment, the songs still coincided with the liturgical year and the topic of the sermon. The music has always been used, in my experience, as a way to help center those who are there to worship and to offer another outlet in which to connect with God. 

          In some of the churches I have attended, there has been a pretty significant emphasis on contemporary Christian music to be used in worship. These songs usually followed the same practical patterns as the hymns did, but they really changed the atmosphere of the service. In almost every service that I've experienced that has used contemporary music instead of hymns, almost everyone attending the service has been younger. Contemporary music has not been accepted by many church goers as acceptable for a formal worship service, but it is becoming a lot more widespread, and I find it fascinating. While I don't think it necessarily changes the theological aspects of the worship service, I think that incorporating contemporary music changes the way that music is perceived for some people. In high school, I was a part of our youth group's band, and that was an incredibly fulfilling experience. There was a new added level of intimacy and passion in our youth group as a whole when we used music that was more similar to pop music. In our youth services, the music served as a tool to get the youth group excited to worship, and then to focus and center their minds on the sermon that was presented by our youth minister. Although we did not always achieve our goal of centering people, it was astonishing to see how well it worked when it worked. I think that was a really good example for me of how music can truly manipulate peoples' emotions and actions, and that was always really cool to experience. It makes sense that music is used heavily in religion, in my experience, because it is such a moving force, that it really adds a whole other dimension to the worship experience. 

          As far as aesthetics are concerned, I know that many people find hymns to be incredibly beautiful and comforting, and so they do have some effect on what is found aesthetically pleasing. However, the contemporary music kind of coincides with whatever popular music sounds like at the time it is written, so I'm not sure how much that influences aesthetics outside of the church. 

My Musical Autobiography

My Musical Autobiography

          I was born and raised in Arlington, Texas. Growing up in Texas put me in a position to be exposed to a lot of mariachi music, and that is something that I associate with home when I hear it. Many of my experiences with music from different cultures happened in my hometown. 

          For example, when we were in high school, my friends and I enjoyed spending an occasional night out at one of the many hookah bars near our homes. Our favorite place, Narah's, plays a lot of pop music from the Middle East, and it plays the music videos for these songs on television screens, which is highly entertaining. One time when we were spending an evening there, some of the restaurant goers all jumped up and participated in this elaborate line dance to one of the songs, and that was really exciting to watch.

          Another area of music I was exposed to in high school was Latin American pop music. Growing up in Texas, I took Spanish as my foreign language, and my Spanish teacher would play pop music for us that was in Spanish. This led to a phase in my life when I listened to a great deal of Latin American pop music, because it's quite entertaining. 

          My choir director in high school was originally from Hong Kong, and one year he had us do a set of five Chinese pieces. That was a really fun experience. He taught us the Chinese diction necessary, and we spent a while talking about the melodic structures that were present, since it wasn't what we are used to in Western music. 

          One other encounter I had with music from other cultures was my run-ins with Irish rock music. My favorite type of music to listen to and enjoy is alternative music. Every year in a town close to my home, there's a huge alternative music festival called Edgefest, and a lot of bands show up, and it's a fun time. I went two separate years, and before I went each year, I listened to some of the music from all of the bands that would be there. One year, one of the bands was Flogging Molly, which I did not think I was going to enjoy. However, that led me to spending a good while listening to a lot of different Irish rock bands, and enjoying the differences in the rock music from that region as opposed to what I was used to. 

          The most exciting encounter I've had with music from other cultures happened the summer of 2011. My choir in high school got a chance to participate with the Festival of the Aegean, a summer music festival that takes place on the islands of Greece, specifically Syros. We spent two weeks on this island preparing a large chunk of music for a few different concerts that we were participating in, and one of the things we learned for one of our concerts was a group of Greek folk music. That was such an exciting experience, because some of the organizers of the festival, who were from Greece, were the ones who taught us, and it was magical to sing Greek folk tunes as a large group in an amphitheater in Greece. Unfortunately, we didn't have any sort of written music for these folk songs, so I no longer have them, but I'll always remember how much fun it was to learn those songs.