Music & Us

 It's been fun in this class to learn more about what music in different cultures sound like, and but also to see their similarities and differences. It definitely made me have more of an open mind after taking this class and now every time I listen to music, I pay more attention to it and I am able to enjoy it more. This "playlist" was so exciting to make and I hope you enjoy listening to!

For this first culture that I picked, I am going to talk about Brazil (shocker) for one last time. Brazil is located in South America, but its songs has nothing to do with the other South American countries that we learned about it in class (it's better of course). In the modern world, Brazilians like to take songs and remix them into a Funk beat. This type of songs are played a lot in clubs and in the night out in general, and there's no instruments to it, it's mainly the beats made by the DJs equipment. This kind of song is definitely not what I used to on a daily day to day normal life, but something I will always listen to when I want to get hyped up! "Pump it" by DJ GBR is a little "older" but it's still so good and it's one style of song I love to show it to my friends in the US.

Next up, the country that I pick is Jamaica. This country is located in the Caribbean Sea and West Indies and it's filled with mountains, and beautiful beaches. Jamaica is the birth place of reggae music, so of course I am going to talk about Bob Marley.  Marley started of playing the ska, which is one of the traditional instruments, along with mento. The reggae has a "chill" and I tend to listen to it sometimes when I'm very overwhelmed and need to calm down. Along with reggae, dancehall is another thing important in the Jamaican culture, with energetic performances and a street level voice to the international stage. Hawaiians listen to a lot of reggae songs, and this song by Bob Marley reminds me so much of Hawaii. 

This next country I picked is South Korea. This country is located in Asia, and its know for having heavy military boarders, specially the boarder with North Korea. South Korea however, is know for its k- pop, which is a dynamic industry with pop, hip-hop, R&B and electronic styles. The boy band BTS is very famous and they have been breaking Korean music out for other countries. Traditional South Korea music is known as gugak, a rich expression of the country's history, emotions and natural beauty. It includes Pansori- a dramatic story telling, samulnori- an energetic percussion ensemble featuring four traditional instruments. I attached bellow a video of a woman singing where she includes the Pansori- so her singing is a story telling!

For my last country I chose Greece. TRaditional Greek music is rooted in ancient history, with instruments such as bouzouki, lyra, and santouri, and styles such as ratiko, a soulful urban fold genre. Fold dances like syrtaki and kalamatianos often accompany lively melodies. In modern days, Greek music fuses these traditional sounds with global genres, and have famous artists like Sakis Rouvas, and Helena Paparizou. For this example, I chose a song that also brought a lot of the traditional dance as well as traditional music.

Like I said, it's fun to see how similar and different at the same time the songs from different cultures are. I think the Greek music might be similar to some Italian songs and also mentioned how the Jamaican music are just like the Hawaiian songs. It's fun to see how unique they are at the same time, Koreans traditional songs are filled with emotion and very interesting to see!