17 January 2008

(Apologies to my students for posting this entry almost a whole week after class...)

We had a great turnout today: 18 students! I was pleased to see that a lot of the students from last week returned and there were a lot of new faces, too.

Because we had a lot of new students today, I did a very quick overview of the class again and everyone introduced themselves (name, country of origin, favorite music style) again.

Then we lept right into the music: I asked if anyone had a song they wanted to hear. Everyone was quiet and looking around at each other. Finally a student said he would like to hear Boney M (bio) "Mary's Boy Child" (video, lyrics). The class found the old 70's style amusing.

When I asked the student why he chose this song he replied it is because he is Buddhist and is interested in Christianity. From the lyrics he asked what Bethlehem is and why it's called the Holy Bible, rather than just "the Bible". I had never thought of this question before: it's so common to hear the Bible referred to as "the Holy Bible" that I had to search for an explanation. The best I could explain is that it is called holy (definition) because it is the word of God.

I now asked if anyone had a song to suggest that reminds them of Seattle. One student suggested Nirvana (bio). I asked which song. He said "You Know You're Right" (video, lyrics). I was impressed that he was suggesting something other than the usual "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (video, lyrics).

When I asked why he chose this song the student said it feels powerful to him. When he needs to energy it helps him.

Another student said he doesn't like the song because the lyrics don't make sense. I pointed out that it sounds like Kurt is very desperate. Indeed, he committed suicide just a few months after the song was recorded...

One student seemed kind of bored so I asked her what her favorite song is. She deflected the question and said she wanted to hear the favorite song of her friend, another of the students. He chose Dragonforce (bio), "Through The Fire And Flames" (video, lyrics).

The student told us that the guitarist for Dragonforce is from Hong Kong and is the second fastest guitar player in the world (I wonder who the fastest is?...). It is quite a contrast that this student, who has a quiet demeanor in class likes this really loud, fast music style of music.

I finally wanted one of the women in the class to choose a song so asked one of the Russian students to pick a song. She chose "Yak" (video) by Zhanna Aguzarova (bio).

I asked why my student chose this singer and song. "Just because," was the answer. "She's crazy; she says she's from Mars."

This made me think of "crazy singers" as a theme and I asked the class if anyone knew of another crazy singer. A student from Korea suggested Vitas (bio) singing "Opera #2" (video).

I was surprised to see the video has subtitles in Chinese and to read in his biography that he is particularly popular in Asia. The student who suggested the song said he had heard about the singer/song on a humor website and that's how he found it. But now he likes the song!

Another student in the class, who is from Vietnam, studied for some time in Russia. When he was living in Russia his roommate played this song every morning. He has a very bad memory of this song! The class laughed a lot about this story.

No one had any more crazy singers to suggest. A student said he had heard a lot about a book in Japan called "Norwegian Wood" (info on Amazon) which was inspired by the Beatles song (video, lyrics) but the book actually analyzes why so many people used to commit suicide in Japan in the 60's.

At this point it was 5.30pm and I said that I understand if some people have to leave, but I offered to stay longer if some people wanted to keep going.

Before I let people go I announced a concert happening on Friday (the next day) by a local Latin music group called Correo Aereo (Myspace, website) at a mall near to Bellevue Community College. I have only seen the band one time, but I was very impressed and bought a CD from them.

The concert is at a mall called Crossroads Mall (website). I am generally not a fan of malls, but I actually I like this mall a lot: it is in a neighborhood full of immigrants and it has lots of interesting cultural events (calendar). When I used to come home from Europe to visit Seattle I always made a special trip over to Crossroads Mall to eat and see what is going on there. Now it is just down the street from where I work, at Microsoft.

Since we were on the subject of local Latin music, I had to mention that my friends, Children Of The Revolution (MySpace, website) play flamenco every Tuesday evening at the Capitol Club (website) in Seattle. It's a great show! I offered to take my students who are over 21 years old (because it is a bar...) to the club some Tuesday.

For a taste of the flamenco show I played a video of Encarna dancing, then their video for Isla Margarita with the whole band and salsa dancing at the end. The students seemed impressed and I assured them that I have often taken students to COTR shows and my students always love the concerts. I look forward to taking some of these students to the flamenco show at the Capitol Club some time!

Some students left to go home, but some stayed so we watched a couple more videos. I returned to the Japanese student who earlier had deflected her choice of a song to her friend. This time I asked her to play a song *she* wants to hear! She choose "Kimi Wa Tomodachi" (video) by Ken Hirai (bio).

She said she chose this song because the video is cute. And that becaus Hirai has a good voice. But she said he isn't very good looking. We discussed a little about how white people are often seen as pretty in Asia while in America Asians are often considered beautiful and exotic.

The last song was "Dream On" (video, lyrics) by Depeche Mode (bio). The student who chose this song says she has every Depeche Mode single and album. I asked if she prefers the "old" Depeche Mode or the "newer" Depeche Mode. She said she likes *all* Depeche Mode (which I suppose is obvious, if she owns *all* their records).

She said she likes this song because it has a dreamy feel to it. Reading the lyrics I mentioned that I think this song is about drugs, but from the perspective of an ex-drug user. The singer's problems with drugs are well documented and now that he is clean I think this song is a reflection back to when he used to take drugs.

It was interesting to note that the video for Dream On features him driving in a car, much like the older video for "Never Let Me Down Again" (video, lyrics), which is *definitely* a song about drugs (his "best friend"). I wonder if the new video (Dream On) takes place in a car to update the idea of driving, but now not any longer on drugs.

With that class was over: see you all on the 24th!