Happenstance

Check it out:

Dancing to the (African) Beat - Jaime

Each tribe in Africa has its own song. If you go to Africa to visit a tribe, you better be ready to dance and (at least try) to sing along with their songs. The music is full of energy and is most often used as a greeting or welcome, or for tribal and ceremonial rituals. The countries and regions in Africa have many different languages using many different tones. These tones will reflect in the kinds of music you hear as you travel around Africa.



If anyone has ever heard African music being played, or participated in making the music, you know there is a lot of beat. Percussion instruments, along with voices, are the most widely used instruments in Africa. They use all kinds of drums, rattles, bells, horns, conch shells, friction sticks, and of course their voices. Their music is not written down, but there is much tradition and lots of singing all the time so it is easy to remember.

Where there is such great beats and music, there has to be dancing. African’s use their music much in the same way as they use dance, for celebration and unity. Dance styles also vary from region to region. Dances are preformed for both spiritual and social purposes, and it is hard to differentiate between the two, sometimes the purposes combine. There are often masquerade dances preformed to symbolize nature, the dead, or spirits. In this next video we find a traditional African dance done by some men.




There is some African music that may sound familiar to us. An example of African music I am sure we are all familiar with is in the beginning of “The Circle of Life” from “The Lion King:”
“Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba Sithi uhm ingonyama…” This is not a greeting they use, but they are taking about a lion coming. One of my favorite bands, Dispatch, wrote a song called "Elias." In this song there is an example of a typical greeting, "Coz e wah he" which in Zimbabwe means, "Are you strong?" The reply to this is, "I am strong if you are strong."

Music is an Important Part of Life

Ben Headrick

I am at a point now that I can't ever even to start falling asleep until I listen to music for about an hour.  My body cannot rest completely until the music has put my body to rest.  I really liked what Summer had to say because music really does have the power to put us in a certain mood.  

I wanted to talk a little bit about why music is so important in each one of our lives.  First off music is a common language.  While I lived out of the country in Brazil they would listen to all the popular American music even though they couldn't understand they could connect through the beat of the music.  Very cool!  Music is also used to inspire. Think of the Rocky soundtrack or similar songs like that. Those songs get you so pumped up and if you were thinking you couldn't do something you are able to do it now.  I personally can't lift weights without loud music ringing in my ears to pump me up.  Are you guys like this too?  It also can inspire learning.  If fact, so much that in the testing center has a specific room with classical music to help you get a better grade on your test!

Another aspect of music is how it affects our spiritual side.  The church hymns have a huge impact on all of us.  The beautiful words and melody can invite the spirit to be with us very quickly.  This is a really neat thing if you think about it.  I have heard people say that you should sing all verses of every song because it is like a prayer you are giving up to the Lord.

The bottom line of what I am trying to get across is that music is a magical thing in our lives.  It influences us in every possible way it can.  It allow us to express ourselves in anyway we want to which is one of the greatest things in the world.  Without the power of music in our lives we would miss out on emotions.  Lets be honest who hasn't listened to a song and either cried because of the words or made you smile and laugh.  It makes me think of a powerful movie I saw about this which is August Rush.  If you guys haven't seen it you should definitely check it out! Speaking of the power of music if anyone hasn't seen this clip you need to watch it. Click here

This was a one crazy night out on the town, my sister and I went to a concert and the band name was Velour. Sorry the pictures are not that great! But they are real!!

This is another great picture, this was the guitar man doing his thing!! YEAH!!

This picture is my pride and joy. Last year Beyoncia came to Boise and my hubby and I went, It was so awesome!! We got great seats because my hubby worked for a person who knew a person, wink wink..

Music

Summer Dornon

Music! Ah! Good old music! We all love that past time of setting in our car at that red light listening to our favorite song, heck some of us might even get down with our bad self. Music can take on several forms, from informational to just exploring new emotions. On this blog moment I would like to take the time and talk about four different aspects I see in music; these are sharing of emotions, informational, advertising and lastly message sending.

We all know well too much that we can turn to music and find a piece that fits our present emotion. Classical for homework time, rock and roll for working out, pop music for a bad day with the hubby and the list continues. But then we can turn around and find music that can change our present emotion. A great example is when you are mad; those love songs can always get ya and make you start crying!! So listeners beware!!

Informational? Yes, I know what you are thinking, but just stop for a moment and think to yourself. Did you learn something in someway by listening to that song? I think country music holds the most information, with talking about war and history facts but then again you can again street knowledge if you listen to some of that rap music.

I think that music is also well known for its advertising. I think it was that new song that was advertised women’s jeans, the line in the song went something like this…”with her apple butt jeans..” oh yes, I looked it up and back east there is a big name brand jean line for women called apple bottom.

Message sending can be done in several forms, but the most popular is to write it in a love song, right? Well, music does a great job in sending message of all kinds from love to importance of money. This is the most essential part of music in my eyes, because if you are sending out the wrong message then what are your listeners thinking? As you can till music is a very powerful tool and unless used correctly and with appropriate wording things can become very sticky if ya know what I mean..

PS...Can you hear the theme song for my picture??

In the Beginning

This here is an awesome blog created by Summer, Ben, and Jaime. For our Comm 140 project, we are creating a music blog complete with videos, photos, articles, and of course lots of music. If anyone finds this and wants to add some new music, or other interesting things they've found on the web about music, e-mail us and we'll put it up.