Wrap up

1. What is something you learned about another culture this term that surprised or intrigued you?

 I'm not really sure what to say. I was actually surprised by a lot of things in this class. I was raised listening to mostly western classical music, so there were a lot of things I've never really heard before. 
But my favorite is probably African music. I always loved instruments, so when I saw the thumb piano, I was so thrilled! I have never heard or seen an instrument like that. You just play it with your thumb, but it's so cute and fun! (I really want one.)
I also loved Dr. Weeks' presentations. There were just so many things I never knew about Africa, and each slide told different stories about the culture and the music.  I really want to go there and experience everything firsthand.

2. What is something that you realized about your own culture through our discussions.

This class made me realize how much western music heavily relies on harmony to create different effects to be pleasing or dissonant to the ear, but so many countries uses different methods to please and entertain. I realized that music from different countries have so much different meanings to the people. Although I knew monks sang prayers all the time, I wasn't really sure what they were talking or praying about or to who, until I started researching for my group project. 

Sure the music is really different, but its nothing bad at all. I found that each countries' music had a unique characteristic and was still pleasant to listen to.

3. What is something that this course has inspired you to learn more about.

I feel like so many doors have been opened to me after taking this class. I really want to travel the world and experience the culture and the music firsthand. (Ethnomusicologist doesn't  sound bad :D) 

 Even if I don't become a ethnomusicologist, I am definitely keep music from around the world on my playlists. 

Thank you so much! I really loved this class.

Cool Stuff Take 3

Last year, I remember when a group of Chinese dancers came over to Converse, and performed in Twitchell. It was so amazing! As a little tribute to that, I decided to look up Chinese dances, and found this really cool one.

I did a little research on this dance, and found out that the dance is suppose to depict Guanyin who received 1000 arms to help aid those in need.

Did I mention I love Chinese instruments as well as the music?
 Here's one of my favorite Chinese instruments, the Er hu. I just love how it sounds.

Finally, last but not least, one of my favorite Chinese composers, Tan Dun! He's written so many amazing pieces.
Listen to this water concerto for example. This piece, uses water as a percussion instrument to create many different effects while accompanied by an orchestra. Although it is very entertaining to watch, you can hear many Chinese musical elements incorporated into the music.

If you would like to listen/watch the full version here's a link

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8277196859502376813#

(Enjoy!)

Music and Family

For this week's topic, I interviewed my mother. Until I interviewed her I did not know how much our family has been influenced by western music.
When I asked my mother what kind of music she listened to as a child, she told me that her life was always filled with more  western classical, and foreign film music rather than Japanese music. She stated that she always listened to Japanese Children songs and Minyo (folk songs) as a child, but in elementary and middle school, aside from  traditional Japanese songs, she learned a lot about western music. Her teachers would frequently test them on naming pieces and identifying composers from their pictures. Then one day, she came upon The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss, and she fell in love with it. After that, my mother told me all she listened to was classical music.
In middle school, she started watching foreign films and musicals. She loved to watch the musicals and would frequently sing along (which helped her learn a little bit of English) It was also during her middle school years that she started spending her allowances to go see ballets, jazz, and brass band concerts.
Her environment was very positive. As my grandfather realized that my mother loved film, classical and jazz music, my mother told me that he would frequently go out and buy tapes and LP records of famous composers and groups. She frequently listened to Tchaikovsky, but she also loved to listen to Glen Miller.
When I asked if my mother played a musical instrument or sang, she told me that she tried to learn how to play recorder in elementary school, but it never worked out. However, she told me that she loved to sing. She loved to sing during her music classes and at home with her tapes and LP Records.
I was very surprised after this interview to find that my mother who is very religious and believes in keeping the traditional Japanese culture alive, to absolutely love western music. It's very hard to believe that her favorite music consists of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty to a Mahler Symphony as well as American pop and jazz. (But then again maybe not, when you see her always listening to the classical music channel on TV)

But now we know where I get the love of western music from.

More cool Stuff! (#2)

As you can see from my last "cool Stuff" blog, I really love instruments, so here are some more! The video doesn't exactly introduce each instrument by itself, but it shows a variety of Brazilian instruments performed in the ensemble, accompanied with some dancing.

 

 As quoted from Youtube.com;

"The show presents the musical instruments and the cultural universe of Brazil. They are presented by the cordel poetry (typical of the northeast region, with a different metric and sound), the instrumental live track (vocals, wind, string and percussion), cartoon projection of the instruments, and performances of Brasílica Dance (language of dance inspired in popular, classical, modern and contemporary dance)." 

 

This next video showcases some of the instruments we learned today in class. It's a unnamed group performing Inca music in Korea. Music sure does travel far. eh?

 '

Can't get enough of Latin American instruments? I found a video about the Quena and the basics of the instrument.

 When someone says tango, the first thing that pops in my head is Astor Piazzolla. (One of my favorite composers ever!) So for my last link enjoy some exciting music by Piazolla (Libertango) performed by  Yo-Yo Ma.

Music and Gender

I think this is actually a very complicated topic, but only if we were to dive into the human psychology and the many factors that influence us such as the culture. Lets leave that to all the professionals and researchers.

I remember when I went to my band class in middle school for the first time ever. All the flute players were girls, the clarinet players were a mixture of boys and girls, and the majority of the percussion and brass players were boys. I didn't really think too much about it, until I transferred to a different middle school. There was one boy who played the flute. He was very good on it, but unfortunately he quit because many of my classmates made fun of him for playing such a “girly” instrument. It was like an “unspoken law” in the band room that girls should stick with the smaller soprano instruments and that boys should play the bigger and louder instruments. Although you got to make the choice of what instrument you wanted to play, it was like a internal rule about what instruments a middle school student should play. In high school, we all played whatever instrument we played in middle school, but when occasional students decided they wanted to join band it was a mixture. As our maturity grew too, students who joined or wanted to change instruments, just went with the instrument they wanted to play, whether it was a tuba or an oboe. Nobody would say anything about it.

In the 8^th grade, my violin teacher thought that I should join PYO, the youth orchestra the Alia Lawson Pre-College offered until recently. I remember that majority of the violins were made up of girls, but there were always one or two boys. The viola section was made up of mainly boys, but there were some girls in it. The cello section was a complete mixture of both genders, but the basses were all boys.

It really seemed as though the bigger and louder the instrument, the more likely that males are to play that instrument, but if we were to emphasize the cons and pros of each instrument I think we can destroy the “unspoken rule.” I mean I have found that female horn players or male flautists to be proficient at what they do.

Please don't take this personally as I only took this from experience, and I think anyone can be good at their instrument as long as they practice :)

Cool Stuff Friday #1(yay)

I thought this might be a hard blog to do, but wow, this was a really fun blog to do! There were so many things I found on the internet that I couldn't possibly post them all. So I picked out my favorite ones from the bunch.



I wanted to see if they had a live video of the Ghana Post Office, but this was the closest I could find.
They are singing something different, but its still a Ghana work song with lots of stamping and beating.
It's still a great way to pass the time!

This link is really interesting too. It leads to a gallery of musical instruments from around the world. If you look under each sections you can find many Native American, African as well as many instruments (with pictures included) from around the world.
As a string player, I find the the harp and string instrument section really fascinating. My favorite African instrument under that section is probably the Chipendani, it looks like a shooting bow, but no its an mouth bowed instrument with one string.

http://www.asza.com/ihm.shtml

Here is a video of how the Chipendani sounds.

Well that's enough of the African music culture. Here is a gorgeous piece by Carlos Nakai. It's called the "Four Sacred Mountains" performed by Nakai, himself.

The description for the video on Youtube explained that the title of this piece derived from the belief that the Creater placed the Navajo between four sacred mountains. (Blanca Peak in Colorado, Mount Taylor in New Mexico, the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, and Hesperus Peak in Colorado. )-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8UGp-s7Auo

Music and Religion

My religion is both Buddhism and Shintoism, but I'm not really sure what to say about it.  Although my family practices both religions, I was never immersed in many of the culture and traditions since I grew up in the US.
The only thing I experienced between music and religion was probably when I dug through my father's recordings of some monk prayers (explained in the post before) and when I went to a temple in Nagoya, Japan. My family and I went to the temple to pay our respects for the family members who had passed away. We sat down on our knees in front of a huge altar and a monk started “singing” a prayer. Every couple of minutes the monk would ring a small bell in front of him.
Like in the post I wrote before, the prayer was very long and tiring, but unlike when I was a child, I actually did hear the differentiating rhythms and the more musical aspects of the prayer.
Actually, now looking back, I recall some other things that I have been to. Every summer, the Japanese School I use to go to sponsors the Bon Odori Festival in Charlotte. It is believed that your ancestors or spirits come back (Like the Day of the Dead) for a couple of days in the summer, so to honor them, the Bon Odori was created.
The Bon Odori Festival is really fun with lots of food and games, but the most important part is the music and dance.
Drummers on a stage beat and pound on the taiko drums providing the rhythm and beat. People would then sing and dance around the stage to welcome the spirits. Although the dance is about honoring and welcoming your ancestors, it is also to be a fun time to celebrate the life you have now.  
It really is a celebration worth going to and experience, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you do so make sure to go! 

Musical Autobiography

I grew up surrounded by music. It filled up every corner of the house, whether it was on the stereo, TV, or even someone playing. The music was usually some well known classical piece, but in rare occasions there were some old Japanese folk song, or even some children's song playing.

The children's songs sounded like any other song a child would sing in their early years in the US, but the traditional folk songs were a bit different. I remember when I listened to one of the pieces there was some kind of strange instrument playing in the background. I learned that it was a shakuhachi (Or bamboo flute) and I decided I wanted to play it. Of course there was no way my family could get our hands on such an instrument or get me lessons, so that's probably one of my reasons to take flute in middle school.

I started digging through the cassettes in my house and found many Japanese music. The music ranged from monk prayer song to instrumental pieces for traditional instruments. Each genre of music I heard were very different. I didn't even know that the monk prayer song was actually a song until my father told me. The “song” sounded like chanting and people murmuring, with an occasionally ringing of a small bell which went on for quite a while. It didn't sound a least bit musical at all, but my father told me how the prayer itself was sung in a certain rhythm and tempo to help the monk or person remember the whole prayer easier.

Compared to the prayer song the instrumental pieces were much more musical sounding and familiar to me. The instrumental pieces varied from solo to ensemble performances, and the instruments ranged from a relaxing sound of a plucking shamisen to the polyrythmic taiko beating.

The influence of Japanese music on me didn't stop there. When my family started getting Japanese channels on TV, they started watching this weekly show where well-known Japanese singers were invited to perform. The music ranged from rock to classical, but one stood out the most. It was enka, Japanese style of singing which is still mysterious to me. I am really not sure how to describe this style. At first it just sounded really wavy with lots of vibrato, but now I find the style rich in tone and colors. Its a style that I still can't imagine how the singers sing like that, but is something I enjoy listening to even today.

Although Western music is something I enjoy more, I can say for sure that the music I listened to growing up has had a profound effect on my life. It has given me a more broad view of different styles, and instruments that musicians can work from.