Diverse Cultures and their Musics January 2024

This will be our final "Music &" blog: "Music & Family, " but it's going to be a bit different from the last few, in that it's going to be entirely personal. 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. Specifically, I want you to pick someone that's at least one generation older than you and interview them about their relationship with music. You might talk with them about the music of their childhood, or as teenagers, or what they listen to today, or all three. We talked about potential questions in class and I posted them to Canvas. If possible,...

    Time for some  serious  bloggin'.  For this blog, rather than exploring the way music intersects with some other aspect of society, 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. 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 we'll discuss, the Blues were born from the very poorest of Southern American society and, by birthing such genres as Rock, Country, and R&B, have 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 in nature and initially connected to underprivileged communities.  So, first, select your specific type of American Roots to research ...

 This blog is going to be a lot like the previous one, but this time you'll be exploring the intersection of music and gender. We've already noticed several gender norms in the cultures we've studied--in Native American music, dances are generally segregated by gender, with men dancing the more flamboyant dances. In the music of the Andes, men generally play the harp, but often they'll be accompanying a woman who might be both singing and playing the part of the  golpeador.  And we've seen how gender norms can change over time--the Gambia has its first professional female kora player in Sona Jobarteh, and young women are starting to be seen at Native American drums.  I'm sure that, if you stop to think about it, you've noticed gender expectations in the music you've experienced. 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 ...

 As we been work our way through the music of both Native American and Andean cultures, we are  observing music created for various  rituals . Weddings, funerals, religious ceremonies, holidays, and various other gatherings almost always include specific kinds of musics. This, of course, is hardly surprising to most of us--we've been to weddings and funerals and other gatherings ourselves, and those rituals have almost always included specific music. For this blog, you're going to explore this relationship between ritual and music. You can talk about your own experiences or the ways that music is used in rituals in other cultures, or a combination. Here are your guidelines: Your blog should be at least 400 words long. Your blog should include a minimum of three media selections--videos, pictures, sound files, links, etc. More is better. Please embed your videos, rather than just link to them. At least two of these selections must be music that we can hear. Please don't ju...

 Our first blog posts are going to have several purposes: 1. To get you into the habit of writing about music, 2. To prompt you to figure out how to use certain tech aspects of Blogger, and 3. To let us get to know something  about each other's musical experiences and preferences. And, if we're lucky, you'll all get to learn about a music that you didn't already know about but find yourself enjoying! Here's your blog topic. I want you to write about the types of music in your personal world and specific pieces or artists that you find especially important. Specifically, I want you to tell us three things: Share with us an example of music that is your current go-to. Something that you might throw onto Spotify (or equivalent) for any reason that you care to share. Basically, something that you like  right now,  for no other reason than you just  like it. Share with us an example of music that is personally meaningful, and has been for awhile. It can be attached t...

  Welcome to Diverse Cultures and their Musics! I'm glad that you're here--both in the class and on my blog, which you'll be visiting quite a bit during the semester. Our class blogs will be places to explore, teach, and learn--they're some of the most fun parts of the class. Blogs serve a few different purposes. They're primarily written journals, so you'll want to use your best writing skills while remaining your own personal self. Unlike pencil-and-paper journals, though, they also allow you to share a variety of media. You'll be including pictures and videos and sound files on your own blogs throughout the semester, and you'll need to make sure they all upload and are easy for your readers to access. Finally, blogs do all of these things in a public forum, which will allow you to learn from each other, because learning just from me gets really old really quickly. Because they're public, though, you need to be sure that you conduct your typing as ...