And here were are at the end of the semester. We'll do a bit of communal wrap-up at the end of class tomorrow, but I'd like you to all have some sort of final cadence to your blogs. Thus, your final blog assignment:
Answer the following three questions. Give each an explanation, not just a one-word answer.
1. What is something you learned about another culture this term that surprised or intrigued you?
2. What is something that you realized about your own culture through our discussions.
3. What is something that this course has inspired you to learn more about.
I'd like to have these all in by tomorrow (Wednesday) evening, but if you'd like to stage a revolt tomorrow in class and demand a later due date, you can probably talk me into it.
I've really enjoyed this class this semester--you've by and large been great fun to teach, and I appreciate all of the discussions that we've managed to find our way through. Thank you.
Tomorrow's Monday, and that means another round of comments. Same rules as usual: comment on five classmates' blogs and leave a comment here for me with the names of said classmates. Comments are due by 11:00 pm Monday evening. And last week's blogs are fair game: Music and Family and Cool Stuff no. 3.
Also, don't forget that we'll begin in the classroom tomorrow with Jason's grad presentation. Afterwards, we'll hike down to Daniel for Dr. Week's Asian slide show, and then Natasha will talk to us a bit about Sri Lanka. Anyone that wants to is invited to head over to Namaste for lunch (everyone pays for themselves, of course.) Bring some friends if you want! And if you have any final questions about your presentations, tomorrow will be the day to ask them.
...and all that, you know. It turns out that we can't actually have our Amazing Asian Slide Show tomorrow morning after all, since that's the time that the piano tuner will be here. SO, we'll be meeting at the regular time tomorrow (Friday) in our regular classroom, and I'll yammer on about the music of China for awhile. We'll do Dr. Week's Amazing Asian Slide Show in Daniel on Monday morning. (Jason and Natasha, Dr. Weeks assures me that we can fit your respective presentations in on Monday as well. In fact, we'll do the two of you first thing in the morning and then migrate down to Daniel.)
Likewise, it finally hit me at lunch today that tomorrow is the official opening of The Heath, and that some of you might like to be involved in that. If you REALLY want to go ahead and descend upon Namaste tomorrow as planned, we can do that, but it might make us seem like better Converse Citizens if we put off our Field Trip of Yumminess until Monday, since The Heath Opening is an opportunity to garner Convocation Credit. We'll take a straw poll first thing in the morning.
And my apologies for this being so late. But it's not as if many of you are already asleep anyway, right?
Oh, and don't forget that tomorrow is Cool Stuff Friday, round three. Same rules--three items of interest posted on your blog, with explanatory commentary provided by you. The Middle East, India, Indonesia, and China are all fair game. Enjoy!
We've talked about this one a good bit in class, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to you: This week's blog narrative topic is "Music and Family." For this assignment I want you to step out of your own head and into someone else's. Specifically, into the head of someone in your family from an older generation than your own. (You may define "family" as broadly as you need to in order to complete this assignment.)
As we've discussed, you need to interview your chosen family member and discuss with your interviewee what his or her connection with music was "back in the day." For some, you might discuss their childhood; others will want to talk about their teen years or early adulthood. You'll need to ask them between five and ten questions, and please record it if at all possible. (You needn't provide me with the recording--it will just make it much easier for you as you type it up.) You are released from your 500-word limit, as you won't have control over the loquacity of your interviewee. And you may formulate your blog entry as a narrative ("Grandma said that her favorite musician was Lawrence Welk, and that one of the high points in her life was getting to see him live when his train was delayed in Abilene.") or as a dialogue (Me: Who were some of your favorite musicians when you were growing up? Grandma: Oh, I just loved Lawrence Welk--he had such a great show and was quite attractive! And I actually got to see him do a live show when I was about nineteen! You see, his train got delayed when he came to visit Abilene, so they decided to just make the best of it and put on a show. It was so exciting!")
To get the ball rolling, here are the questions we came up with in class. You may use these or others that you formulate yourself:
What kind of music did you listen to as a child?
How did you listen to music, i.e. what technology did you use?
Was there any dancing involved? Why or why not?
What sort of environment did you listen to music in?
How did your parents or teachers feel about your music of choice?
What happened once you became the parent or teacher?
Did you play an instrument or sing yourself? How was that for you?
What was your musical environment like?
Why did you listen to music? Were there any situations that caused you to turn to certain kinds of music?
Were you ever exposed to music outside of your own culture? How so, and what was it like?
You might also want to peruse the final chapter of our textbook for ideas in how to do a field study. The chapter goes far beyond our simple interview here, but it's still quite useful. And remember that you want to avoid leading questions or yes/no questions.
You blog is due Wednesday evening by 11:00 pm. And yes, my Grandmother McElrath really did get to see Lawrence Welk live when his train was delayed in Abilene, Texas. He had such a great show and was quite attractive!
So tomorrow is Monday, which means we have another round of Comments coming up. Same rules as last time: make Helpful Comments on at least five of your classmates' blogs and leave the names of those classmates in a Comment on this blog entry. You may use any blog entries entered since the last round of Comments (Music & Gender and Cool Stuff no. 2).
And please remember that we're now starting class at 8:30 in morning. Tomorrow morning we'll be starting with the Blues. Ah, how fitting for a winter's Monday....
So, have you all enjoyed your snow days? I know we have--sledding, snow angels, and marshmallows roasted in the fire place. But, alas, all good things must come to an end, and life must eventually return to "normal."
As per Converse's edict for tomorrow, classes don't start until noon. So we won't have class on Wednesday. We will most likely have class on Thursday, though, and it will feature Dr. Doug Weeks and his amazing African slide show.
In terms of making up the lost time, Converse has declared that we have the option to meet this Saturday. I'd like to avoid that if I can, though, and I suspect I'm not alone in that sentiment. We could also go ahead and meet those last few days of January as well, but I'm still trying to avoid that if possible (my folks just sold their house, and I'd like to go visit them before the big move.) So I'm prepared to offer you all an alternative: Starting Friday, we could move the beginning of class forward to 8:30 am everyday. I'm guessing that none of you have any commitments at that hour with anything more exciting than your pillows, and the extra half-hour a day would at least get us into the ballpark of making up the time we've missed. The earlier meeting time would mean we could still end class a couple of days early AND not have to meet this Saturday. So think about it, and we'll discuss it during class on Thursday (assuming that we do, in fact, have class on Thursday).
Now, as to the Blog assignment that's on your syllabus for tomorrow (Wednesday). We'd postponed the Music and Family blog until next week, so that you have some additional time to think about your interview. Instead, this week's narrative blog will be Music and Gender. Even though we've all had lots of time to think about such things, I suspect that our minds have largely not been on scholarly topics (personally, I've spent the last two days playing in the snow, cooking stew, and organizing large swaths of my kitchen...ok, I've also been checking Facebook on a fairly regular basis as well...). Thus, let's make this blog due on Thursday, January 13 (by 11:00 pm) instead--that gives you an extra day to think, and we can discuss any questions you have in class on Thursday morning. (Friday's Cool Stuff Blog will remain due on Friday.) And here's the information for your assignment:
As we've already begun to notice, participation in music and the related arts is often proscribed by the gender of the potential participator. For your Music and Gender Blog, I want you all to muse on how music and gender have intersected in your own musical experiences. Were there certain instruments played more by more boys, or more by girls, in your marching band? Did the bass section act differently from the soprano section in your church choir? Did you find that middle school boys and middle school girls tended to listen to different stuff on the radio, or was it about the same? And, of course, do you find that you experience music differently in Converse's almost-all-women environment than in a mixed gender setting?
I'm sure I've told you all the story about my mother-in-law, Karen. She grew up in Dayton, Ohio, in the 1950s, the second of four children. She really wanted to play the drums (if any of you have ever met Karen, this should come as no surprise--she's one of the most physically active folks I've ever known), but girls just didn't do that in Dayton in the 1950s. So she took piano lessons, like a good girl. And her two sisters played the flute, another acceptable "girl" instrument. (Odd-but-entertaining side note: Karen's mother, Isabel, fondly remembers hearing another piano student from a rival Dayton piano studio from the same time period--young Doug Weeks.)
Fast forward to Flint, Michigan about ten years ago. Karen, all grown up, decided it was never too late to live the dream. She found a marimba at a pawn shop and signed up for private lessons at the Community Music School in Flint. Over the next few years she practiced diligently, getting good enough to play on a number of student recitals, use four mallets at a time, and give herself carpal tunnel syndrome. The marimba now lives in their guest bedroom in their home in Asheville, NC, where her granddaughter Tally often gets the mallets out of their bag and bangs out various melodies on the marimba. And no one thinks that this is weird at all. Girls playing the marimba? Or any other sort of percussion instrument? Totally normal! It's the 21st century in America!
So this is just an example from my own world of how gender can affect someone's personal interaction with music, and how that gender/music link can drastically change over the course of 50-60 years. I'm sure that you have stories of your own to tell. So, please, do so. On your blog. By 11:00 pm Thursday evening.
What a Winter Wonderland it is outside! I have stew in the crockpot, a six-year-old who wants to spend all day in the snow, and Converse finally posted that it's closed for the day, thus, WE DON'T HAVE CLASS TODAY.
Your first round of Comments, however, are still due by 11:00 pm today, unless, of course, you lose power or something like that. Leave five comments on five different classmates' blogs; you may pick any of the three blog topics done thus far (Music Autobiography, Music and Religion, and Cool Stuff no. 1). Once you're finished, leave a comment on my previous blog (Cool Stuff no. 1) letting me know who's blogs you commented on. You may, of course, leave more than five comments, and I encourage you to pick at least a few folks that aren't your immediate friends.
We'll see what tomorrow brings as we get closer to tomorrow. Have a wonderful snow day, be safe, and I'll see you all after the white stuff melts. And now, I believe I have some snow angels to go make.
Friday’s topic is “Cool Stuff!” As we’ve discussed in class, your assignment is to roam the web (or make use of a good scanner) and find interesting items that pertain to the two cultures that we’ve studied this week—Native America and Africa. You’ll need to find at least three separate items to post, and they need to be posted in such a way that others can experience them as fully as you have (i.e. any links must actually link, any downloaded pictures must actually load, any musical selections must actually play, and so forth.) Embedded videos and pictures are always preferable to links that take you elsewhere, unless you have a good reason for wanting us to go to that "elsewhere." Also write up a few sentences about each of your items--why you thought it was interesting, what led you to find it, what relevance it has to our class, or anything else that seems interesting and relevant (obviously, the 400-500 word goal isn't in play here). Feel free to get help from anyone you can if you consider yourself technologically challenged.
I'm tempted to post some Cool Stuff of my own, but I don't want to steal anything that you might find! So post away, and if I come up with anything that no one found, I'll include it in a later post.
Well, I've received several emails explaining that Blogger, at least on campus, seems to be having a few issues living up to its purpose of letting you post blogs. Poop. If you're having trouble, email me your blog writing for proof, and then we'll all try to post tomorrow so that everyone else can read your handiwork, ok? This really does seem to be a wide-spread problem, so fret not. Balance and beauty, right?
Your blog topic for Wednesday, January 5, is “Music and Religion.” As we talk about Native American music this week, we'll frequently find ourselves discussing different ways in which the music and religion of that Music-Culture interact. The music and the religion of Native Americans are closely intertwined—song creation is attributed to the Deities, performers will act out the part of Deities (Yeibichai) when singing some of the songs for various ceremonies, and the songs are a most important means of transmitting religious ideas from generation to generation. We'll also discuss ways in which the stylistic traits of their music can be traced back to their religion—the importance of the cyclic-ness of Nature is reflected in the ubiquitous repetitive format of their songs. These are just a few ways that we'll discuss the intersection of music and religion in the world of Native America.
As we go through our other Music-Cultures, we’ll frequently return to this music-religion link. First, though, I’d like you to think about the way that music and religion intersects in your own culture. You should consider the music-religion link under two rather large umbrellas:
1. Use. How is music actually used in religion in your experience? And what is the purpose of that use? What sort of performing styles are expected, and are there any rules that should be followed? Write about the practical and practicing side of music and religion.
2. Aesthetics. In your experience, do the prevailing religions of your surroundings have an influence on what is found aesthetically pleasing in music? Is there any way in which the values of those religions are inherent in the way music is built or experienced?
Yes, I know, these are pretty huge ideas. I don’t really expect you to exploit every corner of this topic, but I do expect you to think about it at length before you start typing. I also realize that many of you have been linked to more than one religion over the course of your life or have led a mostly-secular existence. That's ok--you can define "religion" as broadly as you need to. Take the topic and run with it, and see what happens. And yes, I know that several of you have already touched on the Music/Religion link in your Musical Autobiography blog entry. What I'm looking for here is not necessarily an evaluation of your personal experiences (although some of that is ok, too) but more of a general evaluation of music issues concerning a religion you're familiar with.
