Side Show

Introduction
On Thursday April 17, 2010 at eight p.m. I went to see Side Show at The Johnson Performance Hall. Side Show was written by Bill Russell in 1997 and was nominated for a Tony award in 1998. The musical is about two twins, Daisy and Violet Hilton, who go from being the main show at a small side show to big time stage performers in the 1930s. The play is based on the true story of the twins. Some notable actors were Robin Clayton, playing Daisy Hilton, Emily McCoy, playing Violet Hilton, Ruben Rosales, playing The Boss, Bryan Thompson, playing Jake the Cannibal King, Davis Rogers, playing Buddy Foster, and Terry Connor, playing Lakshman Kashyap Manjunath.
Music
The music throughout the play goes from being dark and epic to light and Jazzy. The opening piece “Come Look At The Freaks” was very dark with many membranophones and aerophones. The main chorus brings up a strong harmony from all of the “freaks” singing. The performers were able to create a really strong harmony since there was a large amount of them. A few pieces later the song “The Devil You Know” was very jazzy and even had an electric guitar playing. There was a strong piano playing the harmony. This piece seemed to bring up the thought of the Vaudeville they wanted to go to. In the Vaudeville, the musical numbers had a much faster pace. Some pieces such as “One Plus One Equals Three” had a very 1950s big band sound. They had a bunch of aerophones and were very fast pace.
Performers
The main two performers playing Daisy and Violet had to make sure that they stuck together at all times. Even through dance numbers the two were always stuck together. The attire each character wore seemed to fit their personality. The two also had to make sure they could stay on the same note as each other even when hitting very high notes. Buddy seemed to be the more reserved and this was reflected through his attire. Terry Connor on the other hand, seemed very egotistical and his clothes showed his flaunting style. The performers did a lot of interacting with the audience. At the start of the play many performers started off right next to the crowd. Jake the Cannibal King even ran into the audience at one point in the play.
Audience
The audience of the night was very respectful of the play besides for a few people clapping out of turn. There audience was very diverse with people ranging from upper teens to the elderly. They were very generous with their applause both during and after the appearance. When the play started and the performers were right next to the audience, some members on the edges seemed to be frightened to find performers right next to them.
Time and Space
Since the play was on a Thursday night on the second week of its performance I had expected to find a small crowd in the Johnson Theatre. I found quite the opposite though; in fact just about every seat was occupied. I also expected the audience to be rather reserved since it was the end of a business day but they were full of cheer. The room was very dark which made it easier to focus on the stage. It was also had a lot of acoustic settings which made it easier to hear the performers.
Conclusion
The musical had many interesting elements based on 1930s music yet incorporated other types of sounds in the play. The cast was able to use many different sounds since they had a band behind the main stage.

Works Cited
"Side Show: The Musical - Comet Calendar." Home Page - The University of Texas at Dallas. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. .

The Gullah Islands

After viewing the videos about The Gullah People and their ancestors, the first thing I noticed about their music is that they use a lot of membranophones. They focus a vast majority of the music on the rhythm. Even the dance strongly corresponds with the rhythm. Another thing is that the music culture makes sure to involve many different people of the society just as the African society does in its ceremonies. They women were very colorful dresses and some were what seem to be costumes. The singers tend to stretch out syllables over different notes. The songs' lyrics are very detailed as showed in this Gullah Song. One performance by a man seemed to be somewhat of a slam poem. These performances involve many church performances as well as anti slavery rallies. The overall ceremonies seem to be mostly based on celebrating their freedom from slavery as well as celebrating their rich heritage.

University Idol

Yesterday I attended UTD's University Idol. The contestants covered a wide arrange of talents including dance and singing. The stage was dressed up to look like Woodstock and even the host had costumes resembling Janis Joplin.
The third place winner, Sirus Badiee, did a dance that took up the majority of the stage. He was very energetic yet precise in every one of his movements. The audience was able to get involved in the song as well.
The second place winner, Andrew Previc, played and sung Blackbird by The Beatles. He was very focused on his playing the chordophone, or acoustic guitar. His voice leads the melody while he played the harmony on his guitar.
The first place winner, a man known as Ping, played Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles.He was very energetic and was even able to get the audience to clap and sing along with him. The audience seemed to enjoy this alot and it helped make the performance seem more "concert like."

Another notable performance was a student who sung Bridge Under Troubled Waters. He had no background music or instruments. He had a very wide range of notes that he sung and was able to sustain notes for a long period of time. He most often used disjunct motion but also used conjunct motion for different parts of the song.

Performance Report

Introduction

On March 31 I went to Denton to see The Chinese Invasion Tour. The show featured three bands, P.K. 14, AV Okubo, and Carsick Cars at Hailey’s Bar. The three bands were classified as Chinese Punk Rock bands. The three bands have made a very big impact in the Beijing music scene. Carsick Cars has even played with bands such as Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Ex Models and These Are Powers.

Music

This type of music most reminds me of nineties alternative bands such as The Toadies and The Pixies. There was a lot of feedback from the instruments. The guitars would usually make the harmony and every now and then they would play a melody. Usually the melody would be in the introduction and then come back up in the verse. P.K 14 and AV Okubo both had an electric piano where they would often use to loop a drone. All of the bands used many loops to play different noises. Carsick Cars had a much more trance like sound like one of there biggest influences The Velvet Underground.

Performers

While on stage, all three bands were very energetic. AV Okubo especially seemed to have energy flowing out of every performer. The clothes they wore were very flashy. The singer of AV Okubo wore a sailor’s hat while the bassist wore white girl’s pants. Although they moved around a lot they had to be aware of their surroundings because they were on a relatively small stage. P.K. 14 did not seem to have as much energy and seemed to be having some technical difficulties with the equipment. One thing I noticed was when one band was performing the other two were in the back watching the others.

Audience

The audience consisted of about twenty to thirty people. Most of them seemed to be from twenty to twenty-six. The majority of them were dancing on the dance floor while there were a few passively listening from the bar. The crowd was consuming a vast amount of alcohol which was made apparent by the increasingly awkward dancing they were doing. The clothes of the audience seemed to be from the eighties. The women were wearing loose torn shirts while the men were wearing leather jackets and tight jeans. The audience was very appeased with the concert. Although the audience was rather small, it seemed as though they could not get enough. This allowed the bands to feed off of their energy.

Time and Space

The concert was relatively small because the bands had played in Dallas three days before. Another contribution to the small size of the audience was that it was on a Wednesday night. The bar was on a dark side street and could be pretty hard to find if you were not from that area. The inside of the bar almost looked like a cave and could have affected the acoustic settings of the instruments. The majority of the listeners were listening at a very intense level because the majority of them are from The University of North Texas, an art school near the area. Most of these students have an art major and music is a very big part of their life.

Conclusion

This type of music had elements I was familiar with as well as ones I had never before heard. The music was loud chaotic with many harmonies and melodies playing off each other. As well the musicians were very chaotic and full of energy. They had tons of flow and were in a constant flux. I have never seen such a small audience possess so much energy. Overall this band was marked by their overdriven and distorted use of electrophones.

Rossini

During my free time I watched Rossini's "The Thieving Magpie" arranged for a flute quartet. It was a very light hearted song. It almost reminded me as birds singing. The melodies are very soft and have a fast tempo. The piece constantly travels from high to low notes. There are two separate moods happening at once. A very relaxed, happy mood while a lesser heard sad or jealous mood occurs in the background. Almost as if there is one person laughing at another sad person. This song appears in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" which is just that. A story about a man looking down and laughing on the weak and helpless. The song has a very strong membranophone piece. It has a very strong introduction and then calms down but starts to pick up after a few minutes. The melody would best be described as conjunct motions. Unfortunately, I could not get blogger to upload the video but I did add a link on the post. I would say although Gioachino Rossini is not as well known as Mozart or Beethoven he is able to hold his own as a composer.

Conclusion

You need to remember what this music culture means to you. The audience rarely sees how this music was made but rather how it is performed. People go out to these shows to have a good time and really nothing more. The majority of them will disperse out to the restaurants and bars afterwards and discuss the show. Then the next week they will do the same thing. I ask you to visit The Granada Theater, the same as me. It is the center of the Lower Greenville culture and it is where you will be able to take in all of the area.

What to own

This type of culture does not really require much. Since Yo La Tengo and Times New Viking are not main stream, the majority of listeners are ardent music listeners they would say that it is absolutely necessary to have an iPod or some other type of MP3 player able to hold a massive amount of music. Restaurants are very important to the Dallas scene so being able to splurge on fine dinning is always good. There are many famous restaurants around The Granada Theater such as Dodie's Seafood Café and St. Martin’s Wine Bistro. If you are of age it might also be necessary to have a good knowledge of alcoholic beverages and bars.

Genre, Influences, and everything you need to know

The two bands have many different types of influences. Yo La Tengo was influenced by Velvet Underground, Soft Boys, and Arthur Lee’s Love (Alias Records.) The type of music they play ranges from Garage Rock to New Wave to Experimental. Garage Rock originated in Canada and the United States in the late sixties. New Wave started in the mid to late seventies and started in the United Kingdom and the United States. Both of these types of music have roots in early punk rock. Experimental rock was started by different bands such as The Beatles, Velvet Underground, and Pink Floyd. This type of genre was most often associated with the drug culture of music. The majority of The Beatles songs that are classified as experimental were during the bands period of heavy drug use, LSD being the most used drug. New Times Viking’s sound has the same Experimental Rock and Garage Rock sound as well as a Grunge sound that was made popular manly in Seattle by bands like Nirvana as well as Dallas by bands like The Toadies. The lyrics of many Yo La Tengo songs do not have a real meaning but are more abstract. However, some songs such as Autumn Sweater are very descriptive about small events or relationships. These bands rarely ever write songs with political undertones. Times New Viking writes all of their own material with Adam Elliott and Beth Murphy doing the majority of writing for the vocals. Yo La Tengo started as a cover band and still does many versions of musicians’ songs. They have also started to write many of their own songs since they became more popular in the mid nineties. The average audience of this type of music is middle class youth. Although it is a very welcoming community, outsiders often stay away because they don’t like this type of music.

The Final Report

After experiencing this type of music culture as well as interviewing someone who has done the same, I feel that I have found out what the true ideas of this music culture are. The first thing about this culture is that it is almost purely for entertainment. People go to these concerts in order to relax and have fun. Second, it is a way for all types of different people to come together over a similar music taste. In Dallas, music can be played anywhere and still be appropriate; in the car, at a restaurant, in a garage, or at a concert. These different shows and concerts are very casual and as long as you have the twenty dollars, you will be allowed in the show.

Thanks to the internet these bands can be found anywhere. They are all over the internet as well as iTunes, but unfortunately do not get much radio play. The best way for people to find out about these bands are from friends. Whenever I am at a friends house or in the car with my friend and they play music which I haven’t heard, I try to remember it so I can download it later. The performers make a decent living off their music but are by no means considered rock stars or millionaires. One of the greatest things about this music is that it is open to everyone. Often times there are the stereotypes that country is only for white people or that rap is for African Americans but anyone would be welcome to enjoy a show at The Granada Theater.

After interviewing Aaron Blankenship I learned a lot more about the valued qualities of this culture. He said that it is important to have good quality music but just as important for the performers to be passionate about the music. Yo La Tengo and Times New Viking did a great job of this. You could tell they were just as into the music they were making as the crowd was. Pearl Jam, unlike Yo La Tengo, made great music but have been criticized for creating it just for fame and money.

Research

Completing the research proved to be much harder than I originally thought. Once I made it to the concert it was very hard to see my notebook and was not able to write anything down. As soon as I got out of the concert on the ride back home I tried to write down as much as possible. It was easy at first to take notes about the room itself because I had plenty of time to look around before the concert actually started and the lights were still on. Once the show started, there was too much movement around me to keep out my notebook. After I put my notebook up I had to make sure that I was still keeping notes in my head.

Meet the Band, Meet the Stage

On the last day of January this year I went and visited The Granada Theater in Lower Greenville in Dallas, Texas. The concert hall reminds me of an old movie theater. It has the big vertical sign that lights up every Friday night and has the set list of bands that have letters which have to be set up by hand instead of electronically. The first thing you see when walking inside of the theater is a bar where tons of people huddle around before the show actually starts. Inside the actual concert room there is a general admission area closest to the stage, and about two hundred feet past the stage is an upper deck with seating. Overall the theater is very small in comparison to other centers such as the Yellow Pages Center or the Pepsi Center.

At the show there were two bands playing. The opener was Times New Viking. Times New Viking is an up and coming new band that joined Matador records early 2008. Their main type of genre is low fidelity which is known for a lot of technical flaws such as distortion and background noise. This gives the band a sort of grunge sound.

The second band to play, the main act, was Yo La Tengo. Yo La Tengo is an older band that has been around since 1984. The band consists of husband and wife, Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, as well as James McNew. The band uses many different sounds and often goes from types of songs that are subdued and relaxed to types of songs that seem to scream and make as much noise as possible.

Completing my music ethnography

This past week I have been devoting the majority of my time to completing my music ethnography which is due this upcoming Thursday. I was planning to go to a concert this past Friday for Aaron Weberg but was not able to because other plans interfered. Fortunately, I was able to go to a Yo La Tengo show back on January 30 at The Granada Theater. I am interviewing a fellow attendee of the concert, Aaron Blakenship. The hardest part of this project was conducting the interview. Coming up with different questions that will help fill in the gaps as well as looking at a different perspective of information I already had. The paper itself is rather easy once all the resources are gathered. Writing one thousand two hundred words become very easy when the topic is something you are interested in. I will have plenty of time over the next two days to make sure I can double check my project and be ready to turn it in on Thursday. After the successful turn in of my paper I will be able to relax and enjoy my Spring Break.

Aaron Weberg

My post for this week will be about my musical ethnography project. For this project I am interviewing Aaron Weberg a musician and student of The University of Texas at Dallas. Aaron Weberg plays in the North Dallas areas such as Plano, Dallas, and Richardson. One of the venues he has played is The Door in Plano, Texas. The Door is where many local musicians come to play as well as musicians that are on tour. He has also played at the comet cafe in The University of Texas at Dallas for Acoustic Tuesdays last semester. Aaron usually plays acoustic guitar as well as sings. He also writes all of his own lyrics and guitar pieces. Often times he is accompanied by fellow musician Nick Leal who does the backup singing. His songs can be described as uplifting with a fast beat. In many of his songs there is a climax where he changes up the rhythm and brings in a new verse. Mr. Weberg hails from Duncanville, Texas where he graduated from high school and first began to perform at venues. Seeing him live in concert was a great experience and I hope to see him in concert again soon.

Japanese Noh

For this blog I listened to a Japanaese Noh performance at the Tokyo Sendagaya Hatomori Shrine. The hayashi, or musical ensemble that accompanied the noh drama, consisted of three men playing membranophones and one man playing an idiophone in the background. The idiophone is most likely to be the nohkan. There were a few other people to the right the seemed to be just bowing down to a man dressed up in a white mask and colorful robes. Although at first the music seems to have a beat, the drumming patterns constantly change and do not have any real beat. It makes it very hard to listen for just one of the drums because it's beat is always changing and sometimes another drum will take its place. Each of the musicians movements are very subtle. While watching you notice that the drummers hit their instruments the same exact way every time very distinctly. The singer seems to be shouting and chanting instead of saying any real words also known as kakegoe which is usually done by the drummers. The men that are bowing on the side are actually singing together and it makes a type of harmony for the piece.

Pandit Jasraj

Today for my Understanding World Music blog about Hindustani music I listened to Pandit Jasraj's Bhajan. The most prominent sound is an idiophone and the harmony which is played by an membranophone. The idiophone and the singer share the melody by singing at different times which leads me to believe it would be classified as a polyrhythm. The song instantly starts to speed up at about two minutes and thirty seconds in. This is called tans and causes everything to be happening much faster than it seems. The first time I listened to the song it almost startled me because I was not expecting it. These scalar runs usually happens in the vocal genre, khyal, which is very prominent in Hindustani culture according to the Music of the People of the World textbook. Another very intresting thing is how long some of these songs last. Some of these songs will last up to thirty minutes such as Govind Damodar Madhavati, another song by Pandit Jasraj. Each song seems to focus mainly on the lyrics while there is a simple harmony and the background. The idiophone in this song seems to take over the melody whenever Pandit Jasraj runs out of breath.

Googoosh

Today, I watched the Youtube video of Googoosh's Do Panjereh. The first instruments are all chordophones. Then an idiophone holds the rhythm. All the instruments seem to be native to the Persian culture besides for the second insturment to come in, which seemed to be a violin. The music seems to be heterophony with multiple instruments playing one melody while others play the harmony. Her singing almost becomes a yell at some points in the song. The Irani music that this song most likely sounds like is tasnif. Faegheh Atashin was the soloist. Her words seemed very poetic which made me think of this kind of Irainian music. There was a definite meter mainly made by the idiophone.

The hardships the Faegheh Atashin are amazing. Although I agree with the author, Nilofaar Mina, that it was right for Faegheh to stay in Iran even after the 1979 revolution. Being able to stay in Iran helped her keep in tact with her culture. Her earliest work was most likely in sync with her Irainian culture. She would do arcrobatic tricks along side her father.

After listing to this music I find it very pleasing and have to say I like it more than the African music.

Music Faculty Concert

Last Friday I went to the Fortieth Anniversary Concert in the Conference Center. My favorite piece was La Mento. The music was very upbeat and exciting with a jazzy guitar. A pulsatile beat was made from the drums. The guitar played the melody while the piano played the harmony. The motion of the melody was conjunct motion. Unlike many rock concerts were musicians focus on the crowd, the performers of the night seemed very concentrated on their instruments as if the crowd was not event there. The audience was very engaged in the music and very courteous of the musicians. It was almost as if I was at a movie theater with people making sure not to distract from the film. The atmosphere of the conference center was very relaxing and cool. Even in the back rows I was able to see every movement and hear every note the musicians played. The pieces of the first musicians seemed to switch from making a song feel much longer than it really was, to hectic violin playing that made everything feel as if it were happening at extremely fast speeds. The pieces from the next musicians was very fast pace and made time to go by much faster.

Music Ethnography

Whenever I think of the music culture in Dallas I always think of one place, The Granada Theater. Maybe it is because I grew up just minutes away from The Granada, but the music culture in Lower Greenville has always revolved around The Granada Theater. Unlike many concert stages such as the yellow book center, The Granada Theater has kept a much more retro look. The outside design looks like an old theater from the 1950s while the inside has a nice cool acoustic room. The society around it is mainly older restaurants that have a very retro look and restaurants with a very modern look. This weekend I am going to go see Yo La Tengo and am going to observe the behavior of the crowd. There is a two bars in the theater and people tend to get quite drunk while listening to music. Also Lower Greenville tends to have a lot of people experimenting with illegal drugs. It might get pretty weird but with a band such as Yo La Tengo there will most likely be a very diverse crowd between people going there just for the music and people going for sort of a party scene.

Indie Folk

Although I can not give an absolute reason, the music style known as Indie Folk has definitely influenced me more than any other music style. Indie Folk has always been able to amaze me by all the different albums that bring their own unique sound, such as Beirut picking up a new sound by traveling to Paris and picking up a Balkan music influence (Beirut Interview). The unique sounds are mainly because of the wide array of instruments these bands use. I think this is one of the main reasons I love it so much, even this sub-genre has so many different sounds. I first started listing to artist such as Elliot Smith and Beirut, then friends would recommend other bands or I would start a Pandora station of a certain band and see all the different kinds of bands that would come up. This music is apart of my everyday life. Either when I just want to relax or when I am trying to get some homework done, I am always listening. It is able to allow me to reflect on my everyday life and I could not get through a single day without it. I would not have it any other way.