..must come to an end

So here it is, my last blog post. An entire day late, yes.. but here nontheless.

And here are my responses to the questions:

1) Something I learned about another culture that suprised or intrigued me...
One thing I learned does not pertain to just one culture, but rather many of them: the role of community in the music production and performance.
The first cultures we learned about were those of the Sioux and Navajo Indians. Their music was very communal. Everyone participated either in the music-making (playing on the drums in a circle) or by dancing along to it.
This is similar to the group drumming (or, Agbekor) of Africa. In Ecuador, simply the playing of an imbabura harp is communal in itself since it requires two people to play it.

2) Something I realized about our own culture...
Our music is a melting pot of music from other cultures. Yes, we do have original stuff, but with each culture that we visited, their music reminded me of something in our own music. The most obvious example of this is the use of the sitar in the Beatles and Rolling Stones music.

3) Something I am inspired to learn more about...
Blogging.  No, really. This has been fun: it's just an online journal where anyone can read your thoughts (and comment on them too!). I also heard that if you pick a really good topic to blog about you can make money off of it. Imagine that... making money off of your own thoughts!

Okay, but as far as something "Music of Diverse Cultures"-related that I am inspired to learn about: Women and music of diverse cultures. What role do women play in other cultures? Are there differences in how women or men can participate in music? Why is this? We learned a little bit about the role of women in other cultures in this class, but there is so much more to discover on this subject.

Gender differences have always facinated me. Why do women get to wear pants but men can't wear skirts? Why does my little brother get away with so much more than me or my sister did? I don't have an answer yet for any of these questions and may never have the answers either, but I am determined to learn more.

The End.

Music Videos are Cool

For this final installment of "Cool Stuff Fridays", I decided to focus on music videos from some of the cultures we are studying. I haven't seen many music videos in my lifetime, but after perusing YouTube for this blog assignment, it seems that they all have a pretty similar format: they're dramatic and have something to do with love. Here are a few of my favorite music videos that I found. Enjoy!

This first video is by Haifa Wehbe, a singer, actress, and model from Lebanon. The two minutes of this video takes place at the Coliseum in Rome where she seems to be a woman gladiator and kills her opponent. Next, she's in some river singing about some guy who broke her heart, left her, and decided to come back again. 

Next is a video by Sherine, an Egyptian singer and actress. Once again, the song is about love and relationship issues (many relationship issues) and the video depicts the couple having many quarrels which leave the woman crying.

And for a change of pace, these guys call themselves Fahrenheit and are a band from Taiwan. They kind of remind me of the Jonas Brothers a bit... Here they're singing about how much they love the smell of their significant others. How sweet!

It surprised me how similar all of the music videos  are to each other. The languages were different, but they all sound very much alike having similar instrumentation, harmony, vocal sounds, etc. They sound and look like American music videos. With all of our technology and ability to travel, it makes it very easy for music to spread.

My Oma's Musical Autobiography

For this blog I decided to interview my grandmother on my mom's side of the family, who we all call Oma.  I was really looking forward to this interview since I rarely get to see or talk to her (she lives all the way out in Texas), and was very interested to learn more about her background and musical experiences growing up.

In preparation for this interview, I came up with many questions I wanted to ask Oma. Little did I know that all I would say was "I have this class assignment and would like to interview you about your experiences in music growing up" and Oma would give me all the information I needed :)

The following is my Oma's musical autobiography in a nutshell:

"It all begins with my grandparents. They both sang, specifically religious music such as hymns. They had a pump organ in their house, and friends and family would come every weekend to play country western music. Pampa [my Oma's grandfather] received his first fiddle when he was 6 or 7 years and it only had two strings. But that's what he learned on and he could play any instrument with strings. He played the guitar, the fiddle, the bass fiddle. If it had strings he played it. I never saw him play the banjo. But he played the rest of them and played mostly country western and hymns. Pampa loved hymns. He wrote songs which were about God and Jesus. And of course I grew up with Daddy [this is my fiddle-playing great-grandfather with the dog who would sing along with him] who had his own country western band."

"I don't ever remember listening to music on the radio. Of course, we didn't have a television until I was in.... high school? Yeah, I think high school. And Dad only listened to music and quiz shows. He didn't care for the movie-type things. And of course Pampa, if it weren't Hank Williams or something like that, he'd say 'Turn it off!'"

(Hank Williams)

"And I took piano lessons for years. I started when I was in the third grade, I think. And I took until I was..oh, about ninth or tenth grade. And of course the music I took was classical. And they decided that I would like it better if I took more modern music. So I took music from a man who had a School of Music. He would take songs and write the chords in, and it would be mostly fast rhythms. And that's the music we had and we grew up with."

"My brother was born probably more musically inclined than I am (or was... or is...). He played the piano, he played the slide trombone, and he played the drums in Daddy's band if Daddy could convince him to. He had good rhythm, he had a good ear, but that just wasn't his thing."

Wire Recorder

"We had a record player and a wire-recorder [see image above] and a cousin of mine gave me for graduation a set of Beethoven, Chopin, and something else records. I would love to know where they ended up... of course my dad didn't care about that and Opa [my grandfather] doesn't really care for classical music so I quit playing it when he was around. About the most he liked was 'Let's go Fly a Kite'. He told our associate pastor that he wanted to play that for his funeral, and [the pastor] said, 'well, then you can't have your funeral in our church. The preacher won't allow that'."

                                                                 Let's Go Fly A Kite

"I taught piano. First, just for a neighbor girl. And then for one of her friends. And then my music teacher let me take her beginners. I put the kids [my mom and uncle] into piano and paid for their lessons by teaching the teacher's beginners. Vycke [my mom] enjoyed it, but Johnny [my uncle]... every step of the way there 'I'm not going, I'm not going' and every step of the way back 'I'm not going back, I'm not going back' is what he said. In Germany, they took from Dino, a Christian pianist who studied at Julliard. But then the colonels [they were living on a military base at this time] realized what talent Dino had and made him move into the officer's club and play piano for their dinners.

Dino Kartsonakis

"But the kids really didn't enjoy playing piano and that was about the end of it for them. Like I said, it wasn't until I was in the ninth grade that I got brave enough to tell Daddy that I wasn't interested in it anymore. Of course it wasn't too long that I got interested in Opa."

"That about sums up our music in a nutshell"

My mom's side of the family at my sister's wedding two summers ago.

My Oma is the beautiful woman on the left in the blue dress :)

Women are Cool

Our previous blog topic on music and gender really sparked my interest. So, I decided to devote this week's "Cool Stuff" to women making cool music.


First: LA Salsa Divas. They're an all-women salsa band from Los Angeles. And they're pretty cool. I actually never realized that the trombone is a traditional instrument used in salsa music... and there's a woman playing it!

This next video is for Erica Lane. On one of Erica's blogs she mentioned not having any female jazz saxophonists to look up to... well, here's a bunch of them! I haven't heard of any except for Candy Dulfer. I actually listened to her growing up... my dad was a huge fan. So, it's not that women musicians don't exist.. you just have to look at little bit harder sometimes.

Even though we haven't made it to India yet, here is Suphala, a female tabla player. Apparently Suphala was the first female musican (really, the first musician) to play in Afganistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2005. She's pretty cool, so hopefully I'll get a chance to re-visit her when we talk about the music of India :)



And, finally, I discovered this video earlier this week and knew that I wanted to post it, so I've been racking my brain since then to figure out how to relate it to all of this.. Well, all I can come up with is that you don't have to be male, female, black, white, or even human to appreciate and participate in music :)



Music and Gender

As I ponder how gender differences play a role in music, my mind is teeming with various thoughts, questions, and memories of personal experiences. I barely know where to begin. Gender plays a huge role in how a person experiences music (whether they are a performer or listener).

As an instrumentalist, I have seen firsthand that girls play certain instruments while boys play others. Throughout middle school and high school, the high woodwind sections (and the french horn section) were comprised mainly of girls while boys occupied the low woodwind, brass, and percussion sections. (Sounds kind of like the Converse Wind Ensemble…full of flutes and clarinets but lacking in brass.) I think this is partly due to our culture’s need to label things as either “masculine” or “feminine”. A smaller instrument considered “feminine”, while the larger instruments (or instruments that produce a large sound) are considered “masculine”.

But as for me, I am a female and I play the clarinet. However, I chose the clarinet not because I thought it complimented my “femininity”, but rather as a matter of convenience. My aunt had a clarinet for me to use, so that was what I played. It was the same situation for my older sister. Our dad played the tenor sax and still owned it, so it was convenient for my sister to play the tenor sax. Soon after beginning the clarinet, I picked up the tenor sax so that I could join the jazz band and even marched tenor sax in high school.

Playing the tenor sax in marching band while playing clarinet in my high school wind ensemble gave me two totally different experiences. The sax section had only guys (except for me) whereas the clarinet section had only girls. In marching band, the other saxophonists seemed to respect me perhaps because I was the only female in a male dominant section. (Or, it could’ve been because I was actually a better player than them…) In the wind ensemble clarinet section there was quite a bit of competition, We were constantly challenging each other and there was always a power struggle going on.

Being at an all-women’s college I definitely notice things like the ratio of men to women in a professional orchestra or the number of women composers on a particular program. Right now I am busy preparing for my senior recital (February 18^th!) and just recently realized that all of the music I am playing was composed by men. In fact, I don’t actually think I have ever played a solo clarinet piece written by a woman. (Although I almost did this great piece by Libby Larsen: “Dancing Solo”… look it up. It will knock your socks off)

I do think these trends are changing, though. Women now have equal opportunities as men to perform and compose, and I think young musicians are beginning to realize that you don’t need to be a girl or boy to play a certain instrument. Rather, you simply need to love it.

Cool Stuff

I think a lot of stuff pertaining to music (and especially music of different cultures) is pretty cool, so I had a difficult time narrowing my "cool stuff" down. I was most interested in learning more about the popular music of different cultures.

The first item I found: Congotronics. (Also known as Konono #1 but I like "congotronics" much more)
Congotronics is essentially electronic african music. The singing style is very similar and it uses many of the same traditional instruments (notice the thumb pianos and the gankogui, and barrel drums). However, there are a few modern instruments such as the snare drum.

Next I discovered "Afrobeat"

Afrobeat is a type of African-Funk music and was created in the 70s by Fela Kuti. Fela died in 1997, but his music is kept alive by his sons, former band members, and other musicians who have adopted this style.

Here is a music video made by one of Fela's sons, Feti Kuti. The instrumentation is pretty modern (includes saxophones, trombones, and snare drums) but the music is jazz-like in nature with much improvisation. Pay attention to the dancing and you'll notice what is called "traditional aesthetic booty dance". I did a wikipedia search on that type of dancing to learn more, but the first 100 results only provided links to more videos of this "booty dancing". If anyone knows more about this dance.. please enlighten me.

I also discovered this guy from West Africa, Abdoulaye Sylla (also known as Abou Sylla). He's a super-good African drummer and dancer and has toured all over teaching others about traditional dance and drumming. This video was taken when he was visiting NC. My favorite part is where he plays "Happy Birthday" on the balafon.

And finally, this last video is related to the one we watched today in class of the 2-year old playing the jali and balafon. I'm sure many of you have seen this, but it just goes to show that despite the geographical and cultural differences, we have a lot more in common than we realize :)

Music and Religion

Music is powerful. The Greeks figured that out, parents have figured it out (and therefore discourage their children from listening to heavy metal-screamo-death music), and everyone here at Converse is quite aware of how much music impacts your life. Many religions have also figured out how powerful music is. And, thus, music is a big part of many church services.

Growing up, my family attended a Methodist church. Methodists love music and love to sing. In fact, they love it so much that whenever they sing a hymn, they sing every stanza. Yes, including the seven stanzas of “Amazing Grace”. For them, singing is a big part of worshipping. Singing not only re-iterates the sermon, but also brings the congregation together. It’s fun to sing and helps the congregation to become even more emotionally involved in the service and with each other. I can’t tell you the number of times our family went into church angry with each other because of something that had happened that morning. (There was always some sort of catastrophe Sunday mornings.) However, as we sang the first hymn of the service, the tension from that morning melted away from us and whatever had gone wrong was forgotten.

The Methodist churches we attended over the years didn’t have too much instrumentation either. Usually it was only a piano which served as a simple accompaniment to the hymns, establishing the key, and helping the congregation to sing the correct melody. The music was simple yet lovely nonetheless. This allowed us to focus on the text rather than be distracted by excessive accompaniment and ornamentation.

In addition to hymn-singing, there were often performances (such as vocal solos, or an ensemble of bells) during the service as well. These performances were always so beautiful, but for some reason nobody ever applauded afterwards. I never understood this. Maybe because they were performing it for God? Or would the clapping interrupt some spiritual connection that had been formed? I really don’t know. I always thought that we should acknowledge the fact that those people had just made beautiful music.

In my opinion, church music should be fairly simple. The congregation singing together is what makes it even more beautiful. It should also be used to help us reflect on our own spirituality and provoke us to think deeper into the meaning of the sermon/text. I also think that the hymns that are sung should be traditional ones; hymns that people of all generations will recognize and be able to appreciate.