Big Blog II: One Last Music-Culture

The time is here--our last Blog entries! I'd like to start out by thanking you for being such a wonderful class this term. Your curiosity in your blogs and your care for each other's work in the comments have been one of the Good Things that has helped me navigate what's turned into an unbelievably busy semester. 

This last blog is (obviously) a Big Blog, and the scope (but not the content) will be the same as the first Big Blog. In fact, let's just copy them here: 

In terms of scope, think of this as a short term paper, but more informal, and with a fair amount of media embedded. As a guidepost, aim for about 1000 words, plus a bare minimum of 4 media selections. You'll need a handful of sources at the end (use full citations in MLA, APA, or Chicago style, rather than just web addresses), but you don't need to include footnotes or parenthetical references (though in-paragraph links are always appreciated!). While a bit of fan-girling is just fine, do remember that you're teaching other people about your chosen topic, and they need to learn about that topic from you. An additional comment about the media selections: most of them need to be actual, auditory music--either video or sound files. We must be able to hear the music you write about.

The content will be quite different from the first Big Blog, though. As we've discussed in class, pick a music-culture that we haven't explicitly covered in class. Let your imagination run wild! You can pick a people, a country, a repertoire, or something else along those lines. The Maori of New Zealand, the Inuit of Alaska, the Tango of Argentina, the country of Madagascar, traditional Bulgarian music, Tuvan throat-singers, Chinese opera, etc. Your goal is to teach the class sort of like how I've been teaching y'all throughout the semester--give us something of a broad overview, but pick some deep pockets to expand on. It will help you if you pick a topic of medium breadth. For instance, "China" is way too big--it's a huge country with many ethnicities and traditions and a much-recorded long history. C-Pop is way too narrow--it's a fairly recent popular music genre without much real variety. Chinese opera, however, comes in lots of different styles has been around for centuries but is fairly contained--it's just right. Smaller countries--like Madagascar--that have much less of a written tradition and are therefore trickier to research are just right all by themselves. 

As before, leave a comment on this blog entry letting us all know what your topic will be, so that everyone doesn't happen to flock over the Chinese opera. Leave your comment with your topic just as soon as you can--I'll be sure to check over the list and try to head off anything that's undoable. 

I've been teaching you about various music-cultures all semester, so I'm not going to provide an example here. But I do have something fun to share! Our favorite Gambian griot, Sona Jobarteh, just received an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Here's her acceptance speech--it's pretty awesome!