Diverse Cultures and their Musics Fall 2020

 Final Cool Stuff Blog of the semester! Same ground rules apply here as in all the Cool Stuff blogs: three separate lines of inquiry, two of which must be explicitly about a musical topic; each item needs to include a hefty  paragraph (at the very least) of description/explanation; you need to let me know where you got your information from. And, obviously, you can choose from any where in the Arabic and/or Indian world. Here is my (just one line of inquiry) contribution. As we've gone through the world of Arabic music, you've heard me make reference a couple of times to Tariq Jundi. He's the oud player whose music we listened to in class, and he's truly a force of nature in the music scene of Jordan. He's also a great teacher--the Arabic music theory lesson I had with him was just a little over an hour long, but it was priceless in terms of my understanding of Arabic music. I do try to keep up with what he's doing over time, and not too long ago I found this wo...

 OK, ok. I know that it looks like I skipped a blog here (as per your syllabus), but hear me out. It's that point in the semester when things start piling up, so I'm going to make an adjustment in the blog schedule: This week: No Blog Next week: Music and Family Following week: Cool Stuff Middle East and India Sound ok? So, about Music and Family. This will be our final blog where your turn the gaze of ethnomusicology back around your direction. You're not doing this one alone, though, which is why I'm giving you an extra week. Most of us have our first musical experiences with our families, and you can often give credit for some of your personal musical taste to those experiences--whether you share those opinions or rebel against them. Too, one of the Big Points of this class is to explore how music and culture are interrelated, and cultures are built out of families. So for this blog, you're going to find out more about how someone in your family relates to music....

 Time for some serious  bloggin'.  For this blog, rather than exploring one of our class cultures further or turning the ethnomusicological spotlight back on your own experiences, you're going to select a unique topic, do some research on it, and create a blog post to teach your classmates about it. Here's the catch: your Big Blog no. 1 needs to be on a genre (or sub-genre) of American Roots Music. In Dr. Mr. Vaneman's lecture about the blues, he pointed out that one of the unique aspects of American-born musics is that they inevitably well up from the bottom rungs of society before spreading across the globe. As he showed, the blues were born from the very poorest of Southern American society and, by birthing such genres as Rock, Country, and R&B, has basically conquered the world. This, in essence, is what American Roots music is--kinds of music that were born on American soil, musics that are almost always syncretic nature and initially connected to underprivileg...

 Time for another Cool Stuff Blog! This time, we're going to Africa. A few quick parameters for  this week's blog topics: All the rules from the last Cool Stuff blog are still in play--three separate lines of inquiry, two of which must be explicitly about a musical topic; each item needs to include a hefty  paragraph (at the very least) of description/explanation; you need to let me know where you got your information from Scope: You may go anywhere in Africa for your topics as long as you are South of the Sahara Desert. If you're just dying to dive into, say, Morocco or Egypt, don't worry--we'll consider those places when we get to Arabic music in a few weeks. More Scope: You can consider any music of sub-Saharan Africa that you like. It can be traditional, modern, vocal, instrumental, formal, informal, and from any part of sub-Saharan Africa that you like. Wondering what goes on in Madagascar? Go find out! Wondering if they have any aerophones? Go find out! Want t...

  As we’ve already begun to notice, participation in music and the related arts is often proscribed by the gender of the potential participator. For instance, we've noticed that drumming in Native American music has traditionally been performed by men, but in recent years women--especially younger women--have begun to drum as well. And, though we didn't talk about it much, I've never seen a video of a traditional Andean harpist who is female--though we did see several female singers. We'll observe more of these disparities as we go on.  For your Music and Gender Blog, I want you all to muse on how music and gender have intersected in your own musical experiences. Have different genders listened to different types of music, or been expected   to listen to different types of music? Within the style of music that you like to listen to, does the media treat different genders differently? If you've had experience in any sort of music ensembles yourself, have you noticed ...

  Time for more Cool Stuff! This time, we'll be traveling to South America. Yes, our focus there has been mainly in the Central Andes, but for purposes of this blog I'm opening it up to all of South America. (Note: for this assignment, we're keeping to South  America, rather than Latin  America. South America is just the continent, and the northernmost point is southern Panama. You'll have the opportunity to explore the music of Central America, Mexico, or the Caribbean later on in the course, if you wish.) A few gentle reminders. You Cool Stuff blogs should include: Three separate lines of inquiry--things you want to know more about. These can stem from our class discussions or readings or from other areas of your knowledge. Only one of those lines may be about the culture in general. At least two of the lines of inquiry must have some connection to music . Each line of inquiry must be accompanied by a hefty paragraph of info from you.  You need to indicate where yo...