MUH6515: Musics of the World Listening Journal (von Jena)

"Muting duandi" ("A Shepard's Flute") - He Luting Performed by Yuja Wang China Piano "Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus" - The Power of the Pentatonic Scale Bobby McFerrin Voice I have included two videos this week in my post. The first is of "Muting duandi" ("A Shepard's Flute") composed byHe Luting and performed by Yuja Wang. This video shows a young performer performing an authentic Chinese piano composition that uses the pentatonic scale. This is very common in Chinese music. The second video is of Bobby McFerrin demonstrating the pentatonic scale, and having the audience participate in performing an improvised melody using this scale. As Campbell (2004) says, "students can compose from a very early age and with even limited training" (p. 197). This video show that, while adults, anyone can create a melody with a very basic introduction to it. I think that an excellent extension to a...

This week's reeding focuses on authenticity. We read Koops's (2010) publication "Can't We Just Change the Words?" This is something that as a vocal teacher, I encounter all of the time. When I say to my students that we are going to perform or listen to something in another language, I always get some eye rolls or sighs because it is so different for a lot of my students. I always think it is important to perform a piece as it was intended to be perform. I try and provide as much contextual background and assistance in students accessing the material so it does not seem as daunting as it once did. In fact, most students end up loving the experience. That being said, I think that while I can convince students to step out of their comfort zone in the safety of my classroom, most will not on they own time. Here is an example: not too long ago, I witnessed a group of students singing this summer's "hottest song" "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi feat....

This is a traditional dragon dance from the 2013 Chinese New Year celebration in Hong Kong, China. The piece is performed by Kwok's Team. The peace features dancers, as well as mostly percussion sounds (some wind and string as well). Dance and musical structure go hand in hand. In the Chinese dragon and lion dances, the music is focused on percussion. The different rhythms are assigned to different movements, and tell the performers what they will be doing next in the dance. In a way, the music tells a story of how the dragon should move and change throughout the performance. In this example, although the music is not performed live, the team changes movements when the rhythms change in the music. The dancers also rely on the sounds to stay together for a flawless performance. This music is designed to accompany a dance, and the two go hand in hand.

In my 7th and 8th grade chorus classes, we are working on a version of Jingle Bells that switches time signatures almost every other measure (focusing on 6/8, 4/8, and 3/8). I chose this arrangement because I wanted to challenge them to understand a sense of time outside of a single three or four beat pattern. Most of the music that my students listen to falls within the four-beat pattern, so it is difficult for them to access music outside of that classification. As we know, music (especially in other cultures) is not solely classified into groups of four or three (or even a single steady beat pattern in a piece). When preparing to teach this piece to my students, I immediately had flashbacks to my undergrad world music class when we were learning South Indian Tala  and Solkattu  and bouncing around different beat patterns back to back. We also read about this in chapter 3 of the Wade (2013) text. Although I have not approached my students with the solkattu  syllables ...

This is my listening journal for the Musics of the World class at UFL! As we are beginning this course by reflecting on the world music experiences we incorporate in our own classrooms, I thought I would share a video from my classroom. In my school we offer Mandarin as a foreign language, so there is a lot of outreach to the Chinese Culture. The performer in this video is Professor Yue Yuan from Bryant University. She came in and did a vocal demonstration for all of the music classes and performed several Chinese Folk Songs. I cannot remember the exact title of this piece, but you will hear her describe the piece at the beginning of the video. This video was recorded in February of 2015. I believe that experiences like this are so valuable to our students as they are not regularly exposed to authentic world music experiences. Unfortunately we can not always bring in outside musicians to our classrooms on a regular basis, but this does create an opportunity for students to connec...