24 April 2008

Theme for the next class (1 May): Love songs! (although, since it is May 1st, we *should* do "work songs"...)


Only 10 students today -- a relatively small class for this quarter... Coincidentally the students who often go to the evening English conversation group at a church in Kirkland after our class on Thursday afternoons were all gone -- was that church trying to take my students?!?! ;-) . Well, the 10 of us (including one new student) had fun anyway!

I arrived at class tired after a long day at work. I mentioned to the class that I wish I could take a "cat nap", which means a short nap where you don't fall into a deep sleep. The concept of napping started a short conversation about napping habits of people around the world. For example, where some of my students are from people sleep on buses and on trains, sometimes even standing up. One student from China said it is common to take a cat nap after lunch there -- I have to say that every day after lunch I get really drowsy and would like to take a short nap. But I never have the time for that!

I asked the class if anyone had any musical stories or adventures in the past week. EJ, one of the new students from Korea, mentioned that she feels like she needs to buy a violin so she can play. She asked if I know of a good violin store to recommend. I asked one of my musician friends who suggests Kennelly Keys (website), which has a store in Bellevue Square (map).

Naturally I wanted to ask the new student to introduce us to his musical taste, but first I mentioned to Pinar that there is an exceptional a capella vocal group called "Le Mystere de Voix Bulgares" coming to Seattle on May 27. This group became very famous in the late 1980's, but apparently still tour a lot. To show what the music is like I did a quick YouTube search and found this clip.


After showing the song I mentioned that the guy introducing the band in the clip is one of the most famous American television personalities of all time, Johnny Carson (bio). Every American over the age of 30 knows who Johnny Carson is!

Inspired by the Bulgarian a capella group one of the students showed a clip of an a capella group from China. This song is apparently to ensure a successful hunt.

Finally I asked the new guy -- another student from Colombia -- to choose a song. Inspired by the conversation about the violin he chose "Tabaco Y Chanel" (video) by Bacilos (bio). The violin intro to the video version of the song isn't the full intro he wanted to hear, so he played us the full intro through his iPod.

He said he's loved this song since he was in 4th grade. The song is about longing for a girl. The melancholic feeling of it has always spoken to him. Interestingly, the band is based in Miami and is made up of musicians from different Latin American countries.


At this point I had to show a clip of a great violin player from Seattle, Geoffrey Castle (website). Geoffrey plays often with my friends Children Of The Revolution. But his solo stuff is really good, too. To show his talent I played a live clip of his: "Float Downstream" (video).

I noted that he was creating layers of sound by recording a bit, then looping it and playing new bits on top of it. In this way he sounds like a whole quartet (or maybe quintet)!

To show another example of this layering technique I showed my favorite example of it: KT Tunstall (bio) doing "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" live on French TV (video, lyrics). My brain could not keep track of that layering!




Todays theme of songs was "Children's Songs" so I asked who had a children's song to play. Pinar had a whole list! She chose "Mozart - 12 Variation "Ah, vous dirai je, maman" K.265" (video) aka "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" played by the Turkish pianist Fazil Say (bio).

At this point we asked around the room who of the students play instruments. In the class we have pianists, a violinist and a couple of guitarists. It was suggested to make a band out of the musicians in the class. It would be great if the musicians would bring instruments with them to show their talent to the rest of the class ;-) .

Jorge, the new student from Colombia, showed us that he carries a harmonica with him as he is learning how to play it. We asked him to play a song and he obliged. He's good!

Back to children's songs: Dave, who is from Vietnam but studied in Russia, choase a Russian children's song (video). Apparently it's a song about smiling, but neither of our Russian students was in the class today so we couldn't ask for a translation...

The conversation moved to the topic of melancholic songs. A melancholic Turkish song "Ask-i Kiyamet" (video) by Emre Altug (bio) was chosen.








At this point I mentioned seeing a movie a few months ago about music in Turkey. The movie is called "Crossing The Bridge: The Sound Of Istanbul". I showed the movie trailer. The film is a great introduction to music in Turkey. It can be reserved and checked out from the King County Library (www.kcls.org).

Someone asked how big the Ottoman Empire was at its height, so we looked at a map of it.

Remember, the musical theme for the day was children's songs, so the next songs chosen was "Doraemon" (video), the theme song for a famous Japanese children's show.

Somehow -- I don't remember now exactly *how* -- we got onto the subject of animal sounds in different languages. We went around the table making the sounds of the following animals in each of our native languages:

• frogs
• roosters
• dogs
• cats

and more...

There was a lot of laughter around the table! How can different cultures hear the sounds of animals so differently?!?

Suddenly someone played one of my personal favorite children's songs on the screen: "Mahna Mahna" (video). More laughter in the room! (Here is a whole article just about this song!)




At this point I *had* to show the Swedish Chef: "making donuts". I don't think the class quite got how funny the Swedish Chef's style of talking is in English. But they did laugh about his method of making holes in the donuts.

I tried to explain that when the Swedish Chef talks he doesn't really make sense in English, rather it's just kind of funny sounding. In the US we call his talking "bork bork bork". Here's a full explanation of the Swedish Chef's charms.

I showed that you can choose "bork bork bork" and many other made-up languages for your Google interface. For example, click here to see the "bork bork bork" interface. Here is the "Elmer Fudd" interface. There are many other options in the "interface languages" list on the Google preferences page.

To end the day Jorge played a Maroon 5 song "Sunday Morning" (video, lyrics). With that we decided to make the theme for next week's class "Love Songs" -- it's been 2 1/2 months since Valentine's Day, after all!

Speaking of Maroon 5, I showed the class a website where can find a lot of (legal!) downloads of live concerts, including Maroon 5 and Smashing Pumpkins. The site is www.archive.org and it has a list of all bands with live recordings on the site.


See everyone on Thursday, May 1st -- be ready to play us your favorite love songs!