17 April 2013 (Wednesday)

After two weeks of large groups, today only 3 students showed up. I was surprised at how small the group was, but it was a fun conversation nonetheless.

I had been curious to see the new Psy (info) video, "Gentleman" (video, lyrics, song info) to see how he followed up the smash of "Gangnam Style".  None of the the students in class had seen it, either, so we watched is all the way through. We all agreed that it sounded too similar to "Gangnam Style" and therefore is a little boring. But on the other hand, the masses of people around the world are probably generally happy to have another song that sounds a lot like "Gangnam Style".

I remarked to the class that the style of trousers Psy wears in the video remind me of the trousers worn by MC Hammer (info) in his hit "U Can't Touch This" (video, lyrics, song info) from 1990 (23 years ago!).

At this point our conversation left music and we talked a little about tattoos (how Americans seem to have so many tattoos compared with Asian societies) and what are "brave" things that people do in their everyday lives.

One of the students said she recently joined a UW Japanese taiko (info) drumming group as a creative outlet for her mind. As an example of what kind of drumming she now does each week she showed us "O-Dalko" (video) by Kodo (info).

The next song chosen was "Loving You" (video, lyrics, song info) by Minnie Ripperton (info).  Even though it's a very old song the student who chose it said it is one of his favorite songs.

I mentioned that this song would be a good one for a "mixtape" (songs or playlist put together by someone for the girlfriend or boyfriend).  I asked the students if they had ever made or received mixtapes. One student had made a VCD for his high school class when they graduated with pictures + songs  from their time together. That's a very creative, nice thing to do for your school classmates!

The next song was "The Legend" (video) by Faye Wong (info). Faye Wong is this student's favorite Chinese singer.

As we were talking she mentioned that her goal is to learn English well enough to sing "I Was Born To Love You" (video, lyrics, song info) by Queen (info) .

The next song was "Clearwater Stomp" (video) by the local violinist Gil Kiesecker.  He is 97 years old!

To contrast Gil's traditional style of violin I played a clip of one of my friends who plays *electric* violin: Geoffrey Castle (website) playing a Jimi Hendrix song (video, go to 10 minutes).  I also showed a little bit of a clip of Geoffrey playing with Lucy Wu, who plays the traditional Chinese jinghu (info), to show how they combine East and West music (video, go to 3minutes 15 seconds).


With that our time was up for the week. It was a fun conversation!