20 November 2008 (Thursday)

Today was the last class of the quarter! :-((

9 students attended.

I started class with a non-music topic: I know that a lot of my students like shopping at the outlet malls and I mentioned that close to BCC there are a couple of places to shop for fashionable clothes cheaply:

• Nordstrom Rack (map Bellevue store, map Seattle store) is where they bring all the clothes that didn't sell in the regular Nordstrom stores. But most students seem to already know about The Rack...
  
• Loehmann's (website, map) is very close the Nordstrom Rack at Factoria Mall and has even more high-end fashion labels, but a smaller selection. But I find some pretty unique stuff here.
  

Ok, now on to the regular topic of our conversation, music! Everyone was pretty tired today, so we needed some energetic music. Nayoung had an excellent suggestion: The Extreme Crew Show (video). The dance is super modern, but includes some traditional parts to it, like the flute player. Wow, what athleticism!! I've never seen someone do one-arm push ups supporting their whole body weight! A very impressive spectacle! No wonder they won the Battle Of The Year breakdancing competition (info). Here's another video where you can see their amazing moves more closely. Check out their website or their MySpace page for tons more videos.

Nayoung knows these guys personally. She says they are nice guys and they have great bodies. She said they are performing in New York right now -- they should stop by Seattle and perform on their way back to Korea!

I don't remember anymore exactly how we got from Extreme Crew to Nil Karaibrahimgil (bio), but next we watched her song "Pirlanta" (video). Nil is a big star in Turkey and Ozlem likes her especially for her feminist attitude.




Next we watched a song "Muhabbet Bağına Girdim Bu Gece" (video) by another Turkish singer, Pamela (bio). (Actually, if you read her bio, she's not really fully Turkish, rather British/American/Turkish born in Germany...)

Then Ozlem told us that the Pamela version is an update to a more traditional Turkish song. We compared it to the traditional version (video). I love comparing different versions of songs!


We still needed upbeat music to raise the energy level in the room. So we watched The Peace (video) by a "band" called Morning Musume (モーニング娘。) (bio).

But Morning Musume isn't isn't really a band, rather it's a "brand" where the members change regularly; it's part of the "Hello Project" (bio) which creates the music and directs all the activities. The girls are all under 20 until they "graduate" to other projects under the Hello Project umbrella. (It's fascinating to me to learn about these Asian groups that I had no idea existed!)

Apparently there is a similar group in Korea: Girls' Generation (소녀시대) (bio). We watched their song "Kissing You" (video).





Surprise!, there's *another* Korean girl group!! Wonder Girls (원더걸스) (bio). We watched "Tell Me" (video) which features one of the members turning into Wonderwoman (info) to scare away a flasher.



All this talk of manufactured groups reminded me that New Kids On The Block (bio), a boy-band from the 80's, is doing a big reunion tour (coming to Seattle this weekend) that is a big nostalgia trip for a lot of people my age. However, most of my students weren't even born when the band was popular so I didn't think they would know any NKOTB songs. I tried out "Step By Step" (video, lyrics) on them. Nayoung recognized the song, because it was remade this year by a Korean band boy band called Battle (배틀) (bio) (video).

Last week Hugo had gone to see High School Musical On Ice (info). He said it was good and that he is a fan of Vanessa Hudgens (bio), who sang in the original High School Musical. We listened to her song "Committed" (video, lyrics).

This inspired a bunch of songs related to musicals for the rest of the class. First was "All That Jazz" (video, lyrics) from the movie "Chicago" (info).







Next we played "El Tango De Roxanne" (video, lyrics) from the 2001 movie "Moulin Rouge" (info). This is an excellent, creative version of the song "Roxanne"! I don't think most of the class knows the origin of the song "Roxanne", so I played a clip of the original version (from 1978!) by The Police (bio) [featuring a very young, not-yet-famous singer named Sting (bio)].

Back to the Moulin Rouge film (which I have actually never seen!), I played another song from the soundtrack that I like "Lady Marmalade" (video, lyrics).

Someone asked if I like the song itself or if I like the video and I replied that I have been a fan of that song since the 70's! I showed how old the song is with a clip from the 70's by original singer Patti Labelle (bio). I like both the old and the new versions!


Still on film music, remembered that I had watched the film "O Brother Where Art Thou" (info) this weekend and I decided to play a song I was sure my students had never heard: "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow" (video, lyrics). Note the singer is George Clooney (bio)! (The song is a traditional American folk song, but I can't find a link to the original version.)


The last song of the day -- and therefore the quarter! -- was "Falling Slowly" (video, lyrics) from the movie "Once" (info).



With that we all went our separate ways for a few weeks. Well, the students will still see each other at their regular BCC classes until the end of the quarter. And some of us will go see the flamenco performance in Seattle on Tuesday night. And we plan on doing another dinner together (Japanese?) in December, so hopefully we will gather again before January.