Diverse Cultures and their Musics Spring 2021

   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. 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 nature and initially connected to underprivileged communities.  So, first, select your speci...

 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: Try to go beyond what we talk about in class. If you're just dying to explore further the tradition of the griot, or South Africa Isicathamiya, try to post new significantly new information, or present the topic from a different point of view. Yet More Scope: You can consider any music...

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 indica...

  While we’re together in class, the bulk of our discussions will involve cultures that are probably not the main personal touch-point for most of you in our class. So for a few of our blog posts, we’ll take the light of observation and shine it back on our own, personal cultures. Just as we’ve spent some time discussing how music and religion are interconnected in various Native American cultures, for your next blog post you should shine that light back on your own culture to explore connections between religion and music in your own backyard, so to speak. When we discuss the connection between music and religion in any given culture, we tend to cover two basic areas— use  and  aesthetics.  For instance, many Native American groups  use  a good amount of music in their religious ceremonies and teaching. Song creation is attributed to the Deities, and performers will sometimes sing the part of those Deities (Yeibichai) in their ceremonies. To...