A few ground rules to get us off and running. All your Blog entries must be in grammatically correct Standard English. Capitalize your "I"s and spell out Y-O-U. They don't charge by the letter here, and I'm not Vanna. There's a spellcheck that comes along with your blog--please make use of it. You might want to consider actually typing out your blog entries in Word, checking through it all, and then pasting your text into your blog. As you type, please remember that Blogs are available for everyone to see--your classmates, your professors, your Grandmother, your preacher, potential dates, and potential employers--and you should conduct your typing accordingly. Your blog entries should be between 400 and 500 words long (again, you can check this by using Word) and are due by 11:00 pm on the days they are assigned. (You can work ahead to a certain extent on some of the topics, but don't attempt to post until I've written about it here on my own blog so that you'll know more of what I'm looking for.) Oh, and email me your Blog address (mine is kmvanemandcm2010.blogspot.com) immediately upon setting up your blog. I'll post links to everyone's blog on my blog so that you can access each other's blogs easily. (Once we get started, you might find it easier to post the class's blog addresses on your own blogs.)
And here's your first Blog Topic: Your Musical Autobiography. Yes, I know most of you fell in love with your instrument/singing when you were a wee tot and have practiced diligently every single day ever since. That's not what I'm looking for. What I want to know is all the ways that you've interacted with music outside of the typical Western Art canon. Perhaps your grandmother used to the sing you songs from her native Ireland, or your third grade class visited a Cherokee reservation. Does your roomate dig all things Bollywood? Or do you really love the background music at the sushi restaurant? Think, think, think, and then type it all up. By 11:00 pm on the first day of class, Monday, January 3, please.
I'll post more information about your next blog topic soon. In the meantime, just to get you started, here's my own Music Autobiography:
I’m just a bit older than most of you, and I’ve managed to have many, many run-ins with non-Western Art music. I grew up in West Texas, and my hometown of San Angelo had a sizable Mexican-American population, so we heard a lot of Mariachi music growing up. In fact, several years ago I was having dinner with my parents in a Mexican Food restaurant in Helen, Georgia (truly a deeply weird town if there ever was one—go check it out, if you haven’t already) when a Mariachi band started to play for the diners. They came over to our table and my mom asked them to play a specific tune, since it was my grandfather’s favorite—up until that moment, I had no idea he had liked that sort of music!
Another kind of music that was abundant in my home town was really old time Country Music—think Hank Williams Sr., not Jr. My uncle Al was a member of a group of older folks that got together once a week to eat potluck and sit around and make music. Many years ago I returned to San Angelo to play with my high school orchestra and got invited to one of the Country group’s sing-alongs. I had my oboe along with me, and they insisted that I get it out and play along. Some of those old tunes have trickier chord progressions than you might guess!
Perhaps my biggest experience in this field, though, was playing in a rock band in New York. We lived there for a year after finishing college, living near the very last stop on the A Train (yes, the one that you take “if you want to get to Harlem.”) There was an ad in one of the local papers wanting an oboist and a cellist for a newly-formed lo-fi band, and I called up the lead singer—she went by Ashley Wilkes, which couldn’t possibly have been her real name, but I never did find out what her real name was—and got the gig. We’d get together in our guitarist Artie’s apartment (he also worked as a taxi driver) and work through new songs—they’d strum and sing and I’d improvise a quasi-descant-back-up-singer-like- line along with them. We played in a lot of clubs in Manhattan, especially down in the Village, and at a few area colleges. I was simultaneously working in the music department of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (the really big one across the street from Rockefeller Center), which offered its own variety of music, especially when various Irish groups came over to play.
And then, of course, I’ve been teaching World Music since I was hired here at Converse almost twelve years ago. The first year I just taught two days of World Music within a different course (Introduction to Music Technology and Research, if you must know). Within a couple of years there was a World Music Component in Music History II, and finally the course you’re now taking was created and then required of all music majors. I’ve gotten to know music from all over the world through this course—not only the music from the cultures I’ve taught, but also the music from the cultures that the students have presented in class. It’s been a great ride, and one that I hope to stay on for a good long time to come.
I could go on about World Music I’ve Heard in My Favorite Restaurants or Cool Music Stores in Asheville or even Stuff Heard at the Spartanburg International Festival or World Music in Pop Music, but I’ve already hit 566 words in this Blog, and I want to leave stuff for all of you to write about.
Another kind of music that was abundant in my home town was really old time Country Music—think Hank Williams Sr., not Jr. My uncle Al was a member of a group of older folks that got together once a week to eat potluck and sit around and make music. Many years ago I returned to San Angelo to play with my high school orchestra and got invited to one of the Country group’s sing-alongs. I had my oboe along with me, and they insisted that I get it out and play along. Some of those old tunes have trickier chord progressions than you might guess!
Perhaps my biggest experience in this field, though, was playing in a rock band in New York. We lived there for a year after finishing college, living near the very last stop on the A Train (yes, the one that you take “if you want to get to Harlem.”) There was an ad in one of the local papers wanting an oboist and a cellist for a newly-formed lo-fi band, and I called up the lead singer—she went by Ashley Wilkes, which couldn’t possibly have been her real name, but I never did find out what her real name was—and got the gig. We’d get together in our guitarist Artie’s apartment (he also worked as a taxi driver) and work through new songs—they’d strum and sing and I’d improvise a quasi-descant-back-up-singer-like- line along with them. We played in a lot of clubs in Manhattan, especially down in the Village, and at a few area colleges. I was simultaneously working in the music department of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (the really big one across the street from Rockefeller Center), which offered its own variety of music, especially when various Irish groups came over to play.
And then, of course, I’ve been teaching World Music since I was hired here at Converse almost twelve years ago. The first year I just taught two days of World Music within a different course (Introduction to Music Technology and Research, if you must know). Within a couple of years there was a World Music Component in Music History II, and finally the course you’re now taking was created and then required of all music majors. I’ve gotten to know music from all over the world through this course—not only the music from the cultures I’ve taught, but also the music from the cultures that the students have presented in class. It’s been a great ride, and one that I hope to stay on for a good long time to come.
I could go on about World Music I’ve Heard in My Favorite Restaurants or Cool Music Stores in Asheville or even Stuff Heard at the Spartanburg International Festival or World Music in Pop Music, but I’ve already hit 566 words in this Blog, and I want to leave stuff for all of you to write about.
And here's a video to get you in the mood for the rest of your month. Enjoy!
