I agree that there is most likely an intended audience for the gospel music, and that knowing more about the people creating and listening to the music could make me be more open to/get more out of listening to the music.
At this point in the semester all of my classes are kicking it into high gear, and I know that I'm not going to start researching the artists and their histories to get a better understanding of music that as of yet, I'm not fond of if it is not required. Perhaps looking at the artists the same way we did with Jazz and Country music before listening to the playlists, would have made me more open-minded upon going into is. In all honestly even if the music just wasn't called gospel music I may have been more open-minded. (I grew up in a house were my parents' religion was pretty well forced on me until leaving for school this fall and thus have a hesitance/general dislike for overly religious things.)
Friday, December 01, 2006
Open Mic Night!
Last night was another open mic night put on by CAC concerts. I was at swing until about halfway through it, but I was able to catch the end of the open mic night. If any of you haven't been to one of these nights yet, I would strongly advise checking it out (the next one is January 25th and they usually run from about 9:30-11).
There's a lot of variety offered so it's probable that if you enjoy the audio arts at all, you'll find something you'll enjoy. Last night I saw several people playing guitar and singing, listened to a story about the sun burning out/apocolypse, and heard a couple of poems. It was a marvelous showing and the fullest (crowd-wise) that I've seen for the mic nights so far (this was the third of the year, I've made it to part of each of them). A couple of the performances that stick out were(I don't know everyone's names but I'll point out the ones I do know): the hobo song by a guy named Tyler, the Howard Dean song by Mary Ellen and someone else, the last guy's song about sleeping for a thousand years, and John Hanson's song "You're as pretty as a twig in the moonlight, twig in the moonlight. You're as pretty as a bat." (He played this song at the first open mic night too and people danced along to the chorus.)
Anyway it was a wonderful time and I saw a couple of you there. Hope you all had a good time as well and that the rest of you check it out in January!
There's a lot of variety offered so it's probable that if you enjoy the audio arts at all, you'll find something you'll enjoy. Last night I saw several people playing guitar and singing, listened to a story about the sun burning out/apocolypse, and heard a couple of poems. It was a marvelous showing and the fullest (crowd-wise) that I've seen for the mic nights so far (this was the third of the year, I've made it to part of each of them). A couple of the performances that stick out were(I don't know everyone's names but I'll point out the ones I do know): the hobo song by a guy named Tyler, the Howard Dean song by Mary Ellen and someone else, the last guy's song about sleeping for a thousand years, and John Hanson's song "You're as pretty as a twig in the moonlight, twig in the moonlight. You're as pretty as a bat." (He played this song at the first open mic night too and people danced along to the chorus.)
Anyway it was a wonderful time and I saw a couple of you there. Hope you all had a good time as well and that the rest of you check it out in January!
Jamboree
Well I made it out of bed and over to Oyate bright and early on Thursday to man the table at nine in the morning. This in itself is a huge (personal) accomplishment. Needless to say, there were few others out and about at 9, other than people from other classes who also were standing at their tables. Basically no one stopped by the table during my half hour there to do anything other than ask what was in the food (provided by the 3 o'clock section) so there wasn't a whole lot of good conversation happening then.
I stopped by the table again a little before our section started (at noon) and traffic looked like it had picked up a bit. Audience participation in the swing dancing took a while to arrive, but by about halfway through our section we were getting a decent number of stragglers to join in for at least a few minutes. Teaching the Charleston seemed to be what actually got people to come start in a little bit. It definitely helped once we had most of the class participating rather than standing along the wall. People also seemed to enjoy watching and (some) trying the floor spins.
All in all, the Jamboree went better than I expected after my early morning arrival where there was no one! It was nice to harrass some friends and get them to join in the dancing and just to see what the class had learned from the crash course of sorts that Christina and I gave them over the last few weeks in addition to what some of the class learned from actually coming to swing club.
If anyone is still interested in learning more swing dance moves, they should come by swing club. We're done for this semester, but will eventually be starting up again around January/February and we'll be continuing with lifts. Also there is a Jazz dance next week Saturday, December 9, that a bunch of people from swing are planning to attend.
I stopped by the table again a little before our section started (at noon) and traffic looked like it had picked up a bit. Audience participation in the swing dancing took a while to arrive, but by about halfway through our section we were getting a decent number of stragglers to join in for at least a few minutes. Teaching the Charleston seemed to be what actually got people to come start in a little bit. It definitely helped once we had most of the class participating rather than standing along the wall. People also seemed to enjoy watching and (some) trying the floor spins.
All in all, the Jamboree went better than I expected after my early morning arrival where there was no one! It was nice to harrass some friends and get them to join in the dancing and just to see what the class had learned from the crash course of sorts that Christina and I gave them over the last few weeks in addition to what some of the class learned from actually coming to swing club.
If anyone is still interested in learning more swing dance moves, they should come by swing club. We're done for this semester, but will eventually be starting up again around January/February and we'll be continuing with lifts. Also there is a Jazz dance next week Saturday, December 9, that a bunch of people from swing are planning to attend.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Gospel Music v. Other Playlists
The question was posed as to why I prefer the other music that we have listened to over the gospel music that we recently started listening to. Well...since I know very little about the technicalities behind music I tend to focus mostly on rhythms and lyrics (if they are decipherable) or just the over all melody. The gospel music has pretty clear lyrics and I'm not a huge fan of religious music in general bacuse it makes me feel as though I'm being preached at. Some of the music we listened to before had songs that I couldn't understand the lyrics in at all and I liked that better because I focused on listening to the voice to try to understand what the singer was feeling, but I had no desire to feel what the musician was saying while listening to the gospel lists. In addition to that I just related better to some of the other songs that we have listened to. I suppose if I were to listen to these lists in full (I only made it half way through the second list because it wasn't working properly and I had spent over an hour there already) perhaps I would enjoy the music better, but from my taste of the gospel music, it's just not in my realm of enjoyment.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Gospel Music Listening..or trying
So I tried to listen to the second gospel music list today, but it's not streaming so well. It keeps having to stop to load the music and once it does load, it has been playing songs over each other (two songs playing at once) so it's pretty difficult to decipher which songs are which. Thus far I'm not a fan of this playlist. I probably won't make it through the whole list because it isn't playing right, but a lot of the music so far reminds me of church music but more peppy.
I liked the first list quite a bit better, but as a whole I like the other music that we've listened to in class much more than the music of late. The last list had a few songs that were familiar to me such as "John the Revelator" and "Rock My Soul." "Yonder Come Day" (2nd list) is one song which I'm actually kind of liking. The clapping and the main voice make for a good rhythm and melody to the song and the back up voices just fill out the song nicely.
I liked the first list quite a bit better, but as a whole I like the other music that we've listened to in class much more than the music of late. The last list had a few songs that were familiar to me such as "John the Revelator" and "Rock My Soul." "Yonder Come Day" (2nd list) is one song which I'm actually kind of liking. The clapping and the main voice make for a good rhythm and melody to the song and the back up voices just fill out the song nicely.
Weekend Festivities
It was quite the weekend for artistic performances on campus. My roommate is in danceline and participated in the play-in-a-day so I went to both to show some support. I missed out on the jazz show this weekend, but it was really good the last time they had a concert and I'd assume that they kept it up this week. The dance ensemble had several different types of dances. The variety was nice so that if you didn't like some there were probably still at least a couple of dances that were interesting/fun to watch.
The play-in-a-day was wonderful. I was impressed by how well together everything seemed to be despite only having 24 hours of preparation. I used to do stage crew for plays in high school so I appreciate the fact that not only did the actors memorize their lines and blocking, but there was even some tech involvement. I knew several of the ac†ors and writers from improv, swing, and seeing them around in the dorms. After something like seven hours of practice the actors showed us what they had gotten together. There were three separate plays which each lasted about 10 minutes. Each had been written by a different playwright and had its own director and cast. All in all they did a fine job of creating over the 24 hour period that they were given and were able to pull together quite the show!
Any of you who haven't gone out to see the festivities on campus should definitely start checking some of them out! I would strongly suggest going to the play-in-a-day next year and trying out the jazz and dance shows if you get a chance.
The play-in-a-day was wonderful. I was impressed by how well together everything seemed to be despite only having 24 hours of preparation. I used to do stage crew for plays in high school so I appreciate the fact that not only did the actors memorize their lines and blocking, but there was even some tech involvement. I knew several of the ac†ors and writers from improv, swing, and seeing them around in the dorms. After something like seven hours of practice the actors showed us what they had gotten together. There were three separate plays which each lasted about 10 minutes. Each had been written by a different playwright and had its own director and cast. All in all they did a fine job of creating over the 24 hour period that they were given and were able to pull together quite the show!
Any of you who haven't gone out to see the festivities on campus should definitely start checking some of them out! I would strongly suggest going to the play-in-a-day next year and trying out the jazz and dance shows if you get a chance.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Tuesday Swing
This Tuesday one of the guys from Swing Club, Alex, is going to come to Louie's Lower Lounge to practice with us. He should be helpful in helping us teach the guys their footing and some of the moves (since I tend to want to follow rather than lead it makes it difficult to show many of the moves). He hasn't been to Swing Club the last couple of week so he won't know some of the moves that those of who have gone learned, but he knows the stuff that we learned the first couple of months. Alex is also planning to join us at the Jamboree.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)