Today was the first sunny day in what seemed like forever: I wondered how many students would come sit inside as opposed to hang out outside, soaking in sun. I was very surprised that 15 students showed up, 5 of whom were new!
To start with I asked one of the new students for an example of what kind of music he likes. This student is European and I have to say that led me to not being surprised when he chose "Map Of The Problematique" (video with lyrics, song info) by Muse (info).
If I remember correctly the student who chose this song said he uses this song to wake up to in the morning. I decided to ask around the room about the students' morning routines:
1/ What time does their alarm go off,
2/ How long after the alarm goes off do they actually get up!
It seems like most of the students are good about not over-using the snooze feature of their alarm clocks!
For the summer quarter I have a second European student in the class and I asked him what his favorite Muse song is. It is "Super Massive Black Hole" (video with lyrics, song info).
I like the riff + melody of this second song more than "Map Of The Problematique". But Muse lyrics are not about relaxing, are they?...
I mentioned to the class that Muse is one of those bands which are very popular in
Europe, but not very well known in the US. I have found that most of
my Asian students are not familiar with them, either. But there are some band who are stars in the US and totally unknown in Europe. As an example I gave Dave Matthews (info) [who is originally from South Africa but actually lives in Seattle now] and played my personal favorite song of his (which was his first big hit many years ago) "Crash Into Me" (video, lyrics, song info).
Dave Matthews plays for a weekend at the Gorge Amphitheater 2.5 hours away from Seattle at the end of the summer every year. Attending one of his concerts there would be a really typical American experience, if any of the students has a chance to go over there for a day or even the whole weekend.
The next song chosen was "I Won't Give Up" (video with lyrics in the notes, song info) by Jana Kramer (info).
This song made me think that if someone like's Jana's music they would probably like local Seattle singer Brandi Carlile's (info) music, too. I know I have been telling my students about Brandi a lot lately, but really, she's one of the best musicians to come out of Seattle in recent years. As an example of her music I played the song "The Story" (video, lyrics, song info).
My students were pretty shy about choosing songs today so when I asked for another suggestion I just heard crickets (yes, there were crickets in the classroom). One of the European students chose a song to reflect the summer day called "Himmelblau" (video, lyrics, song info) by the band Die Ärtze (info). This band is a punk band from Germany so I had to ask if the positive message of the lyrics is meant honestly or if it is sarcastic (as punk lyrics often are). The student who chose the song said he thinks that in this case the song has an honestly positive message.
Since the last song was sung in German, and because I wanted to avoid hearing the crickets again, I decided to show the class what "typical" German singing sounds like. Of course there is no "typical" because there is a lot of variations, so it was more of an excuse on my part to play a song by Rammstein (info), a band from Germany which is very popular across Europe and which is famous for all the fire in their live concerts. As an example of Rammstein I chose the song "Du Hast (live)" (video, lyrics, song info), though I realized while playing the song that it didn't really show a lot of German language, just the title of the song repeated over and over. But I can tell you from personal experience that even non-German audience (ex. in Spain) love singing this song along with the band.
I guess the heavy music from today's class was starting to influence the song choices: next song was "Kryptonite" (video, lyrics, song info) by 3 Doors Down (info).
I asked the class how many of them know what "Kryptonite" (info) is from the Superman comics. Some recognized the name, but not all of them.
The next song choice slowed things down a little bit: "The Letter (김광진)" (video with lyrics) by Kim Kwang Jin (sorry, I can't find information about him in English). The lyrics of this song are a letter written by a guy whose girlfriend left him. The lyrics are almost unchanged from the original text written by the heartbroken guy. Wow, that's powerful!
That theme made me think of the song "Dear Boy" (video, lyrics, song info) by Paul McCartney (info) where he wrote a song to the previous boyfriend of his wife; basically Paul was telling the guy "You didn't realize what a great woman you had, what great luck you had!"
The next song chosen was back to a hard rocker: "Walk" (video, lyrics, song info) by Foo Fighters (info).
Since this song features the chorus "I never wanna die!" I went around the class asking to which age the students want to live. I was surprised to find some say "70 is enough" but most seem to want to get to 80 or 85. To me that is still young -- I want to get to 100! Well, as long as I am healthy and can live independently. That seems to be the same opinion for the students, too.
One of the students in the class speaks French as his native language so I asked him to explain to the class how French spoken in Canada sounds different from French spoken in Europe.
I think the Apocalyptica concept of playing heavy metal music on cellos is very interesting. The student said he actually prefers the Apocalyptica version of this song to the original. Here is the original Metallica version of the song (video, lyrics, song info).
We had time for one more song. A student chose "Marry You" by Bruno Mars (info). A couple of months ago a video on YouTube became very famous where a guy proposed marriage to his girlfriend by making a video of this song with his friends. (This actually was done in Portland, OR!) Some people in the class hadn't seen that video, so that's the version of the song we watched: "Marry You" video, lyrics, song info.
With that our time for this week was over. Due to the 4th of July holiday next Wednesday the next class is July 11th.
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