Diverse Cultures and their Musics Fall 2024

 As we've been work our way across the globe, we've often observed 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 by telling us about some of your own experiences. Here are your guidelines: Your blog should be at least 400 words long. Your blog should include a minimum of two media selections--videos, pictures, sound files, links, etc. More is better. Please embed your videos, rather than just link to them. At least one of these selections must be music that we can hear. As always, keep your language respectful. Keep this blog centered around your own experiences and observations. All writing ...

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'll talk about potential questions in class and question lists will be available on Canvas. If possible, resist the urge to email your mom a bunch of questions and have her send the answers back to you--I'd like for this to be a conversation between you and your intervi...

In this blog you'll be exploring the intersection of music and gender. We've already noticed some gender norms in the cultures we've studied. While African griots are both men and women, it's rare for a female griot to play an instrument--they usually just sing. But Sona Jobarteh breaks that mold! Too, it's uncommon for women in Africa to play the drums. But both men and women in Africa sing and dance in groups. As you study The Blues, you'll discover that, while many of the earliest blues musicians were men, it was blues women that really brought the genre to the general public, becoming famous singing the classic blues on records and in music halls. In future units we'll discover other instruments, styles, and roles that are typically assigned to specific genders. 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...

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 to a s...

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 weekly 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 (avoid texting lingo unless it serves a specific purpose). 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 you...