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.