6 November 2008 (Thursday)

8 Students today, 1 of whom was new.

Before I recount the discussions from today, a couple of notes about upcoming events we will be doing as a class:

* Friday, 14 November we will go for traditional Turkish dinner at Meze (location) in Kirkland. We will meet at the regular classroom at 5pm and drive together to Meze. Dinner will cost about $15. If you want to come with us, email me!

* Tuesday, 25 November (the Tuesday before Thanksgiving) a group of us who are over 21 years old will go to the flamenco performance at the Capitol Club on Capitol Hill in Seattle. It starts at 9pm. There is no cost to enter, but it is expected to buy two drinks (that's how the club makes their money). More details about how we will organize rides to/from Seattle that evening, but if you are 21 years old or older and want to come with us, mark your calendar. It will be fun!!

* My friends in the band Children Of The Revolution (see videos of them I have uploaded) will be playing on Friday, 16 January at the Triple Door in downtown Seattle. The early show (7.30pm) is open to all ages while the later show (10pm) is 21+ only. Every time I have taken my students to see COTR they have *loved* the show and I highly recommend you come see them play! The shows will sell out, so reserve tickets as soon as possible! This will really be a GREAT show and I hope a lot of my students will attend. Now to today's Language Of Music discussion: I started the day by asking if anyone attended any musical events this past week. No one had.

I asked if they have already talked a lot about the US presidential election in their other classes. They had.

Someone asked if I had in the end put on a Muppets costume for Halloween last week (see previous posts for that whole saga...). I hadn't. I said that my strategy was to just go to the party late when everyone else was already too drunk to notice that I wasn't wearing a Muppets costume ;-)) . I mentioned that I only stayed at the party for a short while before going to Beth's (reviews) to get a late-night breakfast. I was especially hungry from "hash browns" (pictured here) that night.

At that point we started talking about food for a long time. Someone said I should consider re-naming the class "The Language Of Food." Actually, it's a good idea for a conversation group! As many people are food fanatics as there are music fanatics!

As we talked about food and drink I noted that in America we have a strange separation of ages at which you gain responsibility:

• 16 years old you can drive a car.
• 18 years old you can vote and you can join the Army (i.e. go die for the country)
• 21 years old you are finally allowed to drink alcohol legally. But no one waits until 21 to drink alcohol -- it's a big national lie that people don't drink until 21.

Why not be honest about it and make the legal drinking age 18, the same age as you can vote and go to the army?!?

It was finally time to talk about music a bit! I asked the new student what kind of music she likes. She hesitated a bit but then told us she plays the Gu Zheng, a traditional Chinese instrument (info). We watched this video to see what the instrument is like. I found particularly interesting how the woman moves her arms so fluidly while she plays.

Ozlem said that this instrument reminds her of a traditional Turkish instrument. We watched this video as an example. Unfortunately I do not know the name of this instrument. I see a big difference between these instruments in that on the Chinese one the woman bends the strings with her left hand, while on the Turkish one the strings are static. I asked if this kind of music is popular in Turkey and Ozlem said it's mostly listened to in traditional settings and usually a lot of Raki (info) is drunk while listening!

Diego said they have a traditional harp instrument in Colombia and choose this video to illustrate it. Note that the video includes this band's phone number, in case you want to book them for a wedding or party ;-) .

Since we were on the topic of harp sounds, I mentioned that I am going to a concert this weekend featuring the kora (info), an instrument from West Africa that sounds like a harp. I've been talking about this for a few weeks already, so just quickly showed a minute of this video.


Ok, enough of harp music! Time for a change of pace!

One student said that the music and fashion style "Tecktonik" (info) is very popular in South Korea. To show an example we watched "A Cause Des Garcons" (video, lyrics) by Yelle (bio). Our student said she would like to learn to dance like that, but can't yet. She then showed us a video of a Korean university student spontaneously(?) doing a Tecktonik dance in class! Someone has posted a lot of videos of this dance in public places in Korea!

Tecktonik is a mix of "techno" and "electronic" music. As an example of electronic music we watched to "Satisfaction" (video, lyrics) by Benny Benassi (bio).

Thinking of techno music, I asked if anyone has heard of the Loveparade (info) which originated in Berlin and has now been replicated in other places. Here's a video of some scenes.

Someone said DJ Tiesto (bio) is the best DJ in the world. We watched "Traffic" (video). Note, he also played Loveparade 2006 (video).









One person mentioned that they don't much like that this kind of music is pure beat, with little melody. I agree. I like music which makes you sway from side to side, not just jump up and down. To give an example of music which makes you sway, I showed a bit of Aretha Franklin (bio) doing Chain Of Fools (video, lyrics). [Note: just this week Aretha Frankin was voted the greatest singer of the rock era by Rolling Stone magazine. I agree -- I *love* that woman's voice!!!]

On the subject of dance, we watched a video of tango dancing.

Finally, one of our students, Candy, showed a video of herself dancing: a waltz and a jive number. It was great, but the videos are linked from her Facebook page, not YouTube, so I can't link to them.

I mentioned that if she or other students want to go dancing the Century Ballroom in Seattle (location, not far from where the flamenco show takes place very Tuesday!) has dancing, including lessons (info).

Someone saw that there is Salsa dancing (info) there and I said one of my friends, Vassili (the lead singer of Children Of The Revolution), is a professional salsa dancing teacher. I showed a clip of COTR playing "Isla Margarita" (video) -- at the end of the song is a long salsa dance. If you like that song, buy tickets to see one of their shows 16 January!!

To end the class we agreed on a date to go as a group to see my friends' weekly flamenco performance: We will go Tuesday, 25 November -- the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. As a little taste of what to expect there I showed a clip of them doing flamenco at a concert earlier this year.

Until class on Thursday and Turkish dinner on Friday!