Week 6

Title: unknown (African children clapping games)
Performer(s): African children in Liberia
Origin: Africa
Orchestration: hands, voice

Role play is important in children's lives. It is good for their mental health and in developing social skills as role playing is a social act. By role playing, children act out a role different from their own and develop verbal and non-verbal communication skills. Through role playing, children learn how to socialize and cooperate with their peers (Kiddy Charts). This is also true through children's musical games. As we can see in the video, the children are interacting and socializing with each other while doing these clapping games. These particular games can help in developing fine motor skills, such as hand-eye coordination. Furthermore, by performing these clapping games, children can develop vocabulary and language skills through the singing, as well as collaborative and listening skills (Kiddy Charts).

Reference:

n.a. (n.d.). The importance of pretend play/role play for young children. Retrieved from https://www.kiddycharts.com/behaviour/the-importance-of-pretend-play-role-play-for-young-children-2/

Week 5

Title: unknown (Scottish street music)
Performer(s): Clanadonia
Culture/Origin: Scotland
Orchestration: bagpipes, tribal drums

Chapter 6 of the Campbell (2004) text is about creating world music. Clanadonia is a Scottish group that creates new world music. The bagpipe is an instrument that many people associate with Scottish music, and it is very important to Scottish music. Clanadonia combines the traditional bagpipe of Scottish music with tribal drums to give an authentic sound of tribal Scottish music (Clanadonia). As Campbell (2004) says, "People make music meaningful and useful in their lives when they are at liberty to express themselves in original ways" (p. 191). Furthermore, Campbell says that "the creation of new music allows the dual aims of listening and the intellectual internalization of sonic structures to be achieved and demonstrated" (p. 191). As we can see in the video, this music is very meaningful to the performers and still maintains its authenticity as Scottish music. The musicians are performing from memory, so they are both listening and internalizing the music. From my experience, traditional Scottish music is always performed from memory, thus Clanadonia continues the "preservation of the musical practice" (p. 192).

References:
Campbell, P. S. (2004). Teaching music globally: Experiencing music, expressing culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Clanadonia. (n.d.). Clanadonia - Scotland's greatest drum & pipe band export. Retrieved from www.clanadonia.co.uk

Week 4

Title: unknown (Dubai Hindi Music)
Performer(s): Dubai Traditional Indian Music Group (Vento Entertainment)
Culture/Origin: India
Orchestration: sitar, tabla, flute

I recently attended an international festival hosted by one of West Virginia's largest universities, Marshall University, which is located about 45 minutes from the university (WVSU) that I assist at. I was there to observe the Japanese musical performances for my fieldwork project. In addition to a representation of Japanese culture, they also had representation of Indian culture there, among others. Furthermore, our state is home to Prabhupada's Palace of Gold, which is located in the northern part of the state. I make mention of the palace as I visited it last year and it got me more interested in Indian culture, and in particular, the music, which is why I decided to choose Indian music for this week's blog.

Looking at the models presented by Koops (2010), what we see in the video here would fall under "Authenticity as Continuum" as it represents absolute authenticity of Indian music. Not only are the performers (who are Indian themselves) playing on traditional Indian instruments, but they have also dressed and performed in a genuine traditional manner. However, as Koops mentions, authenticity is a challenging concept and absolute authenticity is not really possible in a classroom setting. As Koops' explains "teachers must evaluate how far on the continuum a musician can go without negating potential educational benefits of teaching in the music classroom or distorting the music in a disrespectful way" (Authenticity as Continuum, para. 1). When we teach world music, although we may not be able to have absolute authenticity, we need to ensure that the music is authentic enough that it does not disrespect the culture from which the music originated.

References:
Koops, L. H. (2010). Can't we just change the words? Music Educators Journal, 97(1), 23-28. doi:10.1177/0027432110376892.

Week 3

Title: "Backatown"
Performer(s): Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue
Culture/Origin: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Orchestration: trombone, guitar, bass guitar, tenor saxophone, drum set

Chapter 5 in the Wade text talks about improvisation in regards to structure. With Dr. Kang's permission, for this week's blog only, I have chosen jazz music, as improvisation is an important component to the structure of jazz. Although jazz originated in America, it is performed all over the world by different cultures. 

Improvisation allows the performer(s) the freedom to compose new melodies and rhythms on the spot within the given material, such as chord progressions. Often times, improvers will borrow bits and pieces of melodies and rhythms either from the current song itself, or other songs as an homage to other performers and composers. With the addition of improvisation to jazz music, it allows for individual creativity of the performer(s) (Wade, 2013). The typical structure of jazz music is that it begins with a chorus (or the head), which can be followed up with more choruses, and then an improvisation section (where either one or more performers will improv for any length of time), before closing out with a repeat of all or part of the head (Smith, 2008).

Trombone Shorty and his band Orleans Avenue have been making a name for themselves in the world of today's jazz music. The song "Backatown" is the title track of Trombone Shorty's 2010 album, and represents the culture and neighborhood of his hometown of New Orleans (Hansen, 2010). At about the 2:00 mark in the video, you can hear Trombone Shorty begin the improv section of "Backatown". Now I gave you where the improv section is, but can you pick out where the choruses are? If so, how many?

I have actually gotten the privilege to have seen Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue perform live twice. The first was during my undergraduate studies in the spring of 2011 when they performed a concert at my university. A few of us even went out to dinner with the bassist in the video. The second time I saw them live was about a couple of years ago as part of our town's annual arts festival called Festivall. If you like jazz and Trombone Shorty is playing in your town, or close to, I highly recommend going and seeing him.

We've talked a lot about access points for students into different musics. I believe Trombone Shorty is a great access point into jazz music. His music includes elements of music that students would listen to on the radio while still maintaining its roots as jazz music.

References:
Hansen, L. (2010, May 1). Trombone Shorty: 'Backatown' New Orleans funk. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=126443793

Smith, S. (2008). Jazz theory (4th Rev. ed.) [PDF document]. Retrieved from http://www.cs.uml.edu/~stu/JazzTheory.pdf

Wade, B. C. (2013). Thinking musically: Experiencing music, expressing culture (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Week 2

Title: "Swallowtail Jig"
Performer: Katy Adelson
Culture/Origin: Ireland
Orchestration: fiddle (with added East West plugins for sound effects)

Maybe it's the Irish in me, but I absolutely love Irish music, especially jigs. They make you want to get up and do a jig, and I'm not even a dancer or one who likes to dance in public. This particular jig is called "Swallowtail Jig" and it's a well-known fiddle tune that was composed in the nineteenth century during the Irish immigration to the United States. As jigs are, it is meant to be a dance, and this jig is sometimes called "The Dancing Master" (Barra, 2016).

Classification systems are useful as they help with easily identifying what type of music you are listening to, as well as what instruments are being used, in this case, a fiddle (which is also a style of playing a violin or other instruments in the violin family). A distinctive feature of Irish jigs are their subdivision of beats. Irish Jigs are in duple meter, but the beats are divided into three equal parts. During performance, the beats are stressed musically so that they can be easily felt (Wade, 2013, p. 79).

References:
Barra, M. (2016, February 25). Swallowtail jig. Retrieved from http://www.violinadventures.com/2016/02/25/swallowtail-jig/

Wade, B. C. (2013). Thinking musically: Experiencing music, expressing culture (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Week 1

Title: "Sakura Sakura"
Performer(s): Swinky (vocals), Kyoko Yoshioka (shamisen), and Matsuda-san (shamisen)
Culture/Origin: Japan
Orchestration: voice and two shamisens

In listening to "Sakura Sakura", which is a traditional Japanese folk song based on a poem, I could imagine myself peacefully sitting in a field or under a tree with cherry blossoms blowing in the wind. Translated, "Sakura Sakura" means cherry blossoms, and the song depicts the season of cherry blossoms: spring. The work features a voice accompanied by two shamisens, which is a traditional, three-stringed Japanese instrument. On their own, the shamisens can be a bit jarring, especially if you're not used to that type of tuning, but as accompaniment to the voice, it meshes well together. The study of ethnomusicology would inform us that the sung melody uses a scale called Hirajoshi (flutopedia), which is a tuning scale adapted from shamisen music (Harich-Schneider, 1973, p. 520). Further study would inform us that in the Japanese culture, this is a popular children's song that has been well-known for over a thousand years, and that the song belongs to a genre titled Min'yo, which means folk song (Gen'ichi).

Translation:

Romaji (romanization of Japanese)       English translation

sakura sakura                                         Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,
noyama mo sato mo                               In fields, mountains and villages
mi-watasu kagiri                                      As far as the eye can see.
kasumi ka kumo ka                                 It it mist, or clouds?
asahi ni niou                                            Fragrant in the morning sun.
sakura sakura                                         Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,
hana zakari                                             Flowers in full bloom.

sakura sakura                                         Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,
yayoi no sora wa                                     Across the spring sky,
mi-watasu kagiri                                      As far as the eye can see. 
kasumi ka kumo ka                                 Is it mist, or clouds?
nioi zo izuru                                             Fragrant in the air.
izaya izaya                                              Come now, come now,
mini yukan                                               Let's go and see them!


References:
Gen'ichi, T. (n.d.). Sakura. Retrieved from https://www.komuso.com/pieces/pieces.pl?piece=2106

Harich-Schneider, E. (1973). A history of Japanese music. London: Oxford University Press.

n.a. (n.d.). Sakura Sakura - Sheet music for Native American flute. Retrieved from http://www.flutopedia.com/song_Sakura.htm