Beyond the Classroom: Indigenous American and Africa
Unlike the first two blogs you wrote, many of our blog posts this term are going to involve you digging further into music-cultures other than your own. Two of these are labeled "Beyond the Classroom" and two are labeled "Big Blogs." This is a "Beyond the Classroom" blog, and here's how it's blogs going to work: Your job is to think of three things that you'd like to know more about concerning the first three continents we've studied and their music-cultures---perhaps you want to know more about one of the instruments, or a different instrument, or you'd like to delve further into some of the dances, or into a particular musical genre, or there's a certain performer that you've liked and you'd like to know more about that performer, or find another performer in that same vein. Perhaps you just have a question that you'd like to explore. Or perhaps you have prior knowledge of the music-culture, and you'd like to share it with the class. Roam the web and find out more about those three things, and then post what you find on your blog. As with all of your blogs, you'll want to post your findings in such a way that we can explore them fully: videos are great, as are links to whole websites. Pictures can also be quite useful, especially when exploring instruments or costumes. And do make sure that both you and your sources treat the material in a respectful matter. (Hint: if your source seems to be treating the music-culture in a less-than-respectful way, it's probably not a good source.)
A bit about length, content, and sources:
Length: You'll want to make sure that your three things are three different things. Three videos by the same performer = one thing. Many of your three things will essentially be videos, but you'll you need to type up a hefty paragraph (minimum) about each video--100 words per video/question is a bare minimum, but you'll probably need to go over that to explain how you got from your idea to that video. Obviously, if you're not including a video, you'll need to type more. Also, make sure that this post is a single blog post--don't separate it into three different blog posts--if you do that, it's tricky for your commenters.
Content: Your three things all need to be musical topics, or to at least touch on music in some way--for instance, a costume isn't "music," but perhaps it's worn during a specific dance that is danced to a specific type of music. Or perhaps you're curious about a type of story-telling that includes music in it. Please make liberal use of the vocabulary and concepts that we're learning in class. Feel free to reference your notes and the Elements of Music page on Canvas for vocabulary and concept ideas.
Source Citation: You'll need to let me (and your other readers) know where you get your information from. If you wish to use traditional bibliographic citations at the end of your blog (using MLA, APA, or Chicago style--all are acceptable here as long as you're consistent), you're welcome to do that (like I've done for my Paul Simon sources below). Blogs are less formal than written essays or term papers, and more media-rich, though, so there are several other ways you can provide us with your sources. You can simply work it into the text ("I found myself googling Navajo Competitions and came upon this great website called Navajo Competitions are Awesome"), or you can provide a link as part of your text (like I've done with the Miss Navajo Nation Pageant below). If you're including a Youtube video (or similar thing), you don't actually need to give me a further citation--a simple click on the video will take me back to Youtube, where I can see whatever source info exists there.
For this specific blog, you're going to be digging deeper into the music of Indigenous American and Africa. In other words, the musics (and cultures) that you dig into need to be connected to the descendants of peoples that lived in the Western Hemisphere or Africa before people from Europe showed up (c. 1492). As we'll be talking about this week, there's lots of music that is syncretic--that is, it combines aspects of music from two different cultures. Syncretic music is just fine, as long as it includes aspects of music or culture from Indigenous Americans.
It's important that you go beyond what we talk about in class. For instance, don't just give me a summary of the powwow, or describe what traditional Native American singing sounds like--we did that in class. You could, however, pick a specific style of dance performed at powwow (hoop dance, anyone?), or a specific singer, or a type of song that we didn't cover.
Remember, you'll need to post three different things on your blog, but here are two from me to give you an idea of what I'm looking for:
1. We talked about and watched a few different videos on the powwow and the dance competitions that are such an important part of those gatherings. It made me wonder if there are other types of competitions that might be important in Native American culture. Knowing that the Navajo tribe is one of the more active and organized tribes, I found myself googling "Navajo Competitions" and came across information on the Miss Navajo Nation pageant. Then, I went looking for clips from the Pageant and found this wonderful video, which is a TED talk featuring Jolyana Bitsui, Miss Navajo Nation 2001/02. She speaks both English and Navajo during her talk. I think you'll find that she touches on many of the themes of community and heritage that we've discussed in class. Towards the end of the talk, she sings a song in her native Navajo that includes several of these same themes and makes use of vocables.
2. As you'll learn when we get to our study of the music of South Africa, I'm a die-hard, life-long Paul Simon fan. His first foray into the music of other cultures was his seminal (and syncretic) album Graceland, for which he traveled (famously and controversially) to South Africa to work with musicians there. The follow up album to Graceland was Rhythm of the Saints, for which he travelled to South America and worked with a variety of musicians there. He mostly worked with musicians from Brazil (this was in 1990). The first song from the album, "Obvious Child," was conceived of by Paul Simon after hearing an Afro-Brazilian drum group, Olodum, that specialized in a heavy drumming style suitable for the samba. Paul Simon wrote the lyrics of the song to match the rhythms of these drummers and then recorded the song and subsequent video with them. Their music is sort of analogous to "Me Gusta la Leche," an Afro-Ecuadorian san juan that we'll listen to in class, in that, while the drummers are descendants of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, the music has obvious rhythmic ties to Africa.
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