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Calypso Music In Trinidad And Tobago

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Trinidad and Tobago are two islands in the south-eastern Caribbean that have cultural and ethnic influences from West Africa, France, Britain, India, and more. These combined cultures helped form what is now their most important form of music: Calypso. After gaining popularity in the early 1900s, Calypso has influenced so many parts of the world and although it is not as popular today, its impact still stands.  Origins:  Calypso originated from mostly West African culture after slaves were brought over to Trinidad and Tobago by European colonizers. The slaves were forbidden from communicating with one another, so they decided to use song as a form of communication instead. The songs were taken from the African folk genre called gayup, but were also heavily influenced by cultures from Spain, France, and Britain. After slavery has ended in the mid 1800s, the former slaves began to spread their newfound style through the islands during the French Carnival season. Calypso began t...
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Music And Family

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 After learning about this assignment, I immediately knew I was going to interview my mother. My mother was born in 1971, which meant that her childhood consisted of music from both the 70s and the 80s. I learned from her that these two completely different decades would take her through different phases in her life, but would also be the heart of what she still loves today.  I said hello to my mom as she showed up on my laptop's FaceTime camera. I told her that I was ready for the interview and pulled up my interview questions from my notes. I smiled as I prepared myself for the musical journey that was about to happen.  "First question," I said...... "How do you remember being first introduced to music? What type of music was it?" My mother, like most people, was introduced to music by her parents as a small child. In the early 70s, both of my grandparents were into hippie culture. My grandmother was really into folk artists like John Denver and Joan Biaz, as ...
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Cool Stuff: Arabic and Indian Music

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Snake Charming I have always been interested in the "snake charm" kind of music because it always sounded very cool on the clarinet. I even played a snake charmer once in a school play and got to play my clarinet on stage (fun times!) Besides that however, I actually ended up finding out how unethical it is and why it is endangering snake species.  First of all, what is snake charming? Snake charming is more common in India, but is also seen in African Arab countries such as Morocco. In Morocco, it began around 500 years ago by the Aissawas. Snakes were used primarily for medical and healing purposes back then, and the "charmers" would set up stations in markets to use these snakes on people who needed help. Of course, in order for the snakes to be used they had to be "charmed". Nowadays, snake charming has become more of a tourist grab used to pull in money from foreigners.  Before a snake can be charmed, it must be caught. Aissawas would hunt for snake...
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American Roots: Salsa Music

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 Origins and History Salsa is a genre rooted from multiple latin genres from countries such as Cuba and Puerto Rico. The musical styles of origin range from the Cuban son to the mambo, to the bomba and plena from Puerto Rico. These musical genres were syncretic themselves, with influences from Latin America, Spain and Africa.  African slaves that were brought into the Caribbean outnumbered their white counterparts significantly more than they did in the United States, making their culture have a bigger influence on the countries they resided in. In a similar way to how the Blues were created, it took a mixture of oppressed cultures and identities to create a new style of music in the Caribbean. Thus, the Afro-Cuban styles of son, mambo, plena, etc. were born and alive in Cuba and Puerto Rico.  Here is an example of a Cuban son. The video itself focuses more on the dance than the music, but listening to it you can easily pick out instruments such as the guitar and African ...
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Cool Stuff: Sub-Saharan Africa

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The Gambia Academy  I really loved hearing about Sona Jobarteh and The Gambia Academy that she created, because as a music education major I feel like we have a similar goal of using music to teach children and help them have an opportunity for education. The Gambia Academy   was created by Jobarteh in 2015 as a way to create paths for young African children who have been marginalized and pushed away from their culture. This Academy is a celebration of African roots and history, but also a progressive way to build a standard education for Africa's youth.  We now know how and why it came to be, but where is it now? Today, the Gambia Academy is in a state of expansion. Jobarteh is purchasing more land to create more space for her students, meaning that she will be able to have a larger number of children under the academy at once. The project is also starting to expand globally by reaching out to students overseas as well as in Gambia. Most of the funds are sourced fr...
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What Is It Like To Be A Female Musician?

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 When students begin playing instruments, it already becomes clear which instruments have "assigned" genders to them. Once in the professional field, it then becomes clear which gender is preferred in which musical jobs. In this post I'm going to explore how gender correlates with specific instruments, but I'm also going to touch the lack of women in many musical fields.  Instruments And Genders For my band/orchestra friends, think of your current and past ensembles that you've been in. Were there many boys playing flute or clarinet? Were there many girls playing tuba or string bass? If the answer is yes, then you had a very rare experience. In fact, studies show that women take up high percentages in flute and violin and 95% in harp, and men are around 91& in bass and 95-97% in trombone, tuba, and trumpet.  Now why is this? I found my statistics above in an interesting article   on bsomusic.org that focuses on this question. According to it, brass instrumen...
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Cool Stuff: Indigenous Music In The Americas

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The Siku/Pan Flute: How It Is Made And Played  As a wind player, I found myself to be very interested in the South American wind instruments. I find the siku to be very interesting because it has multiple different holes to blow through, much like a harmonica almost. I wanted to find out more about how they are made by using only natural materials, and how they are played by Andean musicians.  How They Are Made According to discover-peru.org , the siku originated in the Andes surrounding Lake Titicaca. The pipes of the siku come from a reed material called songo, which grows on the banks of the lake. These pipes are then arranged in 2-3 rows of 6 and wrapped together with a string.  More interesting information I found about this instrument is that the term siku is actually used to describe a medium-sized pan flute! There are other sizes with different names, with malta being the smallest and the toya  being the largest. In between are the ika, siku, sanka, and sem...
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