Music of Diverse Cultures

WRAPPIN' IT UP  1. Tell me about something you learned about another culture this term that really surprised or intrigued you. One thing that really surprised me was how much each culture had influences on each other. Particularly Africa and Native Americans. The culture I enjoyed most was the African culture because my cousins were adopted from there and it was intriguing to learn more about the music from that part of the world. It was cool to see how much influence African music and instruments have influenced so many other culture's music.    2. Tell me about something that you realized about your  own  culture through our discussions. I realized that my culture is very similar to other cultures. Meaning, we all listen to music for the same reasons. We use music to celebrate, socialize, feel a certain way, and many other things.  3. Tell me about a couple of things you really liked about this class, and a couple of things you...

COOL STUFF 4    THING 1: My uncle met his wife, my aunt when he was deployed in Japan so I wanted to look into Japan's music culture. Traditional music in Japan is varied and rich. Furthermore, a lot of their music and culture came from China. A cool instrument that came to Japan from China is the koto. The koto is a large wooden instrument with 13 strings. The body is curved and the pitch is adjusted by moveable bridges underneath the strings. It is played similarly to playing a guitar by using a pick and fingers. FUN FACT...the koto is the national instrument of Japan.     THING 2: Southeast Asia is known for its music festivals. As I have said in a previous blog I really enjoy going to music festivals and love what they intel. There are at least 20 large music festivals happening in 2020 in Southeast Asia. These festivals form communication that helps with cultural and language barriers. EPIZODE is one of the biggest techno music festivals intern...

Music Interview with my Mom (Mary Pettus) F or this blog I interviewed my mom who was born in the early 70’s. I wanted to interview her because I have heard many stories of concerts in her past and we have a lot of the same music taste currently. I learned a ton about my mom’s upbringing with her music and music background. It was very enlightening to hear what my mom grew up listening to and how her music inspiration has changed over time. Here is the transcript of me interviewing my mom. I was home with her when I did this so I got to see her reaction in person. We did the interview in the car, which is ironic considering that is where my mom has listened to most of her music and learned a lot from being in a car. What genre of music did you grow up listening to? Mom: I mainly listened to rock and roll and R&B music. When I was really young I listened to Queen and Stixx and some Journey. This was because of your Uncle Bill (who is older than her.) A...

COOL STUFF 3       THING 1: I am always intrigued by rap or hip hop music so I did some research on rap music in India. I found that the first Hindi rap album was "Thanda Thanda Pani" by a guy that goes by Baba Sehgal. This song is a remake of "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice. Over 30, 000 copies were sold! Baba Sehgal actually was an engineer in his everyday life but also loved to create music. Check out his remake: THING 2: Who has ever been to a music festival? If yes then you know how exciting they are if not then I highly recommend going to one in the future. Every year in the city of Goa on the Indian coast has a festival called Sunburn Music Festival. Artists from all over the world come to play music and put on a show. It started in 2007 and has been a big hit since then!  THING 3: When I was researching more about Arabic music culture I wanted to see what their culture has brought to America. I stumbled across a video of the Michigan Arab Orches...

COOL STUFF 2 - Black America and South America        THING 1: I have always loved the way Blues music has sounded, especially using the instrument the banjo. I wanted to do more research on Blues/Jazz music in Asheville, North Carolina since it is in the proximity to Spartanburg. I learned that there are many bars in Asheville but there was a bar called Tressa's Downtown Jazz and Blues bar that just closed down after 22 years this past year. Everyone said there was always good food and great music. While reading articles on this club the people who opened the club 22 years ago wanted it to feel like an elegant small private club in New Orleans. Now a couple bought the building the club was in and are renaming it to Asheville Beauty Academy which opened in Septemeber. They said they are going to keep the same atmosphere as Tressa's and have the main live music on the main level and the private jazz upstairs.  Jazz/Blues music being played live at Tre...

Music a n d Gender  Here's a gender stereotype video that I thought would be funny to start off with...      Growing up my family did not play any instruments and neither did I. Do I wish I would have learned to play guitar and piano, yes but I was involved with a lot of other extra activities and most likely would not have stuck through in the instrument department. Luckily enough I can say I was apart of our church choir and my middle school's chorus for all three years.  Granted I was in the church choir when I was five to about eight years old so I did not see much gender differences there because some of the girl's voices were lower than the boys at the time.            However, when I was in my middle school chorus I did notice a few things with gender and music. At my middle school, you either had to be in band or chorus. The first thing I noticed was more guys wanted to join the chorus than be in band class. ...

Cool Stuff (Native American and African Culture Music) AFRICA             I know we talked about more of Sub-Saharan Africa, but I have some interesting information from a country called Ethiopia in the “horn” of Africa. The horn is located in the Eastern part of the continent and Ethiopia is landlocked.   The reason this country is so interesting to me is that my two cousins, Elizabeth and Katie, were adopted by my aunt and uncle from Ethiopia when they were four and six years old. When they got to America they did not know a single word of English. When we would communicate with them they always were shy and timid but they always seemed to be singing. Eventually, when they were comfortable with us as their new family they would sing to us all the time. As they would sing they would use anything around them to create sound. Since we studied African culture’s music I did more research on Ethiopian music be...