21 January 2015 (Wednesday)

Today I had a great turnout -- 12 students, six of whom were new! 

Unfortunately we had bad luck with getting a room to meet + talk in. Our assigned room was double-booked and we were the ones who didn't get to keep it. We moved to a room in the basement of the HUB, but this was not a good place to meet as there was a constant stream of people who were used to the room being empty coming in and wondering why we were there.

I did want to show the new students how the class works, so we watched + talked about a few songs, but we kept class short this week. I hope the new students were intrigued to come back again next week to have a proper music conversation!

To learn about one of the new student's taste in music we watched "Bailando" (video, lyrics, song info) by Enrique Iglesias (info). The student who chose it like the dance and he likes the rhythm of this song. I like this song, too. And apparently so do nearly 700 million people!

Another new student chose the next song: "Joah" (video, lyrics, song info) by Jay Park (info). The video for this song was shot in Seattle! Apparently Jay grew up in Seattle but he moved back to Korea and is a big star over there. 

Apparently "Joah" means "I like you" in Korean.  One of my favorite songs is "I like you" in Spanish: "Me Gustas Tu" (video, lyrics, song info) by Manu Chao (info). This song always makes me happy when I hear it.

The next song was "Young And Beautiful" (video, lyrics, song info) by Lana Del Rey (info). This song is from the movie "The Great Gatsby" (info). The student who chose it likes the melody and loved it from the very first time. 

The last song we heard this short day was "Cleptosaurios" (video) by The Plastics Revolution (Facebook page). This was introduced by our student from Mexico City. I am glad he is sharing about these Mexican bands because I have never heard of them, but I can't remember exactly why *he* said he likes this band and song. Sorry!


I want to thank all the students who came to class last week. I hope you will give it another chance this Wednesday (28 January) at 4:30pm in HUB 337. 

Since we weren't really able to do the planned theme for this class, theme for the next class will again be "Your favorite song in 2014". This doesn't necessarily have to be a song released in 2014, rather the song you listened to the most or the one which describes best what 2014 was like for you.