This weekend there is a two-day festival of Turkish culture (Turk Fest - www.turkfest.org) in Seattle and I asked one of my Turkish students, Ozlem, if she knew this event is happening. She already knew about it. I might be in the neighborhood of the festival (it is down by the Space Needle) on Sunday and might stop by.Ozlem has been in Seattle for 4 months now but she has started complaining about the weather compared to Turkey. I taught them the word "gloomy" (definition), which can apply to both the weather and a person's mood.
I started the music part of the class by mentioning that one of the UK's biggest stars, Duffy (bio) is playing in a club in Seattle Friday night. To give a taste of Duffy's music I played two songs: Mercy (video, lyrics) (which has 22 million views on YouTube!!) and Warwick Avenue (video, lyrics). I noted that Warwick Avenue refers to a London Underground/Tube station (info, Tube map).The general opinion among the students was that they like the song "Warwick Avenue" better than "Mercy": they said "Mercy" is too "old" in style. But that "retro" style is what is so popular these days.
Indeed, Duffy is the good angel of the current retro music style in contrast to Amy Winehouse (bio), "Rehab" (video, lyrics) (note this song has 30 million views!!).
Keeping with the retro music style I played a song by Eli "Paperboy" Reed (MySpace) who is opening Duffy's concert on Friday. I played a live version of "(Am I Just) Fooling Myself" (video) to show what a good voice he has. It'll be a whole lot of old style soul going on in Seattle Friday evening! But I don't think the music appeals to my students. Plus tickets are a fairly expensive $30. So I am guessing none of my students will be going to the show...At this point one of the students said she would like to hear each person in the class say "subway" in their native language. So we went around and heard all the variations -- it was interesting! The conversation morphed into talking a little about linguistics (ex. the influence of Chinese on modern Korean and Japanese) and then into the awful lack of public transportation in Seattle (which applies to the US West Coast in general, though Seattle is a particularly poor example of public transportation.)
As we talked about public transportation and travelling Ozlem told the class that there is a website that enables cheap travel: Couchsurfing.com . She explained that the site matches people who offer a couch to sleep on with people who are looking to stay overnight in a city on the cheap. It's a good idea for adventurous travellers, but it definitely requires a strong element of trust!
Time for more music. I asked Taku to pick a song and he chose a song by the Japanese band "Bump Of Chicken" (bio). [SZ note: the name "Bump Of Chicken" makes no sense to me in English...] He chose a song about stargazing (video).
I mentioned that the singer's clothing style reminds me of a Finnish band from the 80's, Hanoi Rocks (bio). Here's an example of how they looked: "Don't You Ever Leave Me" (video, lyrics). My favorite Hanoi song was always "Taxi Driver" (video, lyrics). (Hanoi Rocks was a big influence on Guns N Roses -- GnR bought the rights to all the old Hanoi Rocks albums and re-issued them in the late 80's. I remember seeing Alice In Chains play Taxi Driver once in a club in Seattle, too.)
Now Diego from Colombia chose a song: "Pensando En Ti" (video, lyrics) by Mago de Oz (bio). This song is a re-make of Dust In The Wind (video, lyrics) by 70's band Kansas (bio), but Diego told us that the lyrics in Spanish are about love and missing a person rather than the original lyrics about human insignificance. Mago de Oz must have liked the melody to the song a lot but found the lyrics too depressing. The song clearly inspires them -- it's a good re-make!
The next song chosen was "Open Book" by Tahiti 80 (bio), but it was one of the very few songs we couldn't find on YouTube!
The last song of the day was "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys (bio). But the student didn't want to hear the orginal version of the song -- she wanted to hear *this* version (lyrics)!At the end of the song I tried to explain the American concept of "political correctness" ("PC"), but I don't think they got it.
With that everyone went their separate ways for the day. The big question is, how many will show up next week?!?
2 comments:
The concept of PC is really hard to understand.
Even I read the chinese explanation, I couldn't get it.....
That class was GR8... I will go to the next one. (o;
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