The connection between Music and Trends and the songs were trendy and allowed people to get to know them better. The first song was BTS which is a korean music group and they got big because of trends and people sharing their music. Although not everyone understands Korean in the US, they are able to enjoy the music through captions and enjoying the dancing as well. For the second song was an artist named Doja Cat, that recently went #1 on billboards on another song. This song “Moooooo” was one of her first songs and she used a lot of memes in order to get her message across. It was a fun song for her fans. 

If I had wrote about this topic I would have picked songs that I see played in the background of Tik Tok. For example one song I would have chosen was “Say So” by Doja Cat. This song is used in various Tik Toks as a dance. This is how it got popular because of the trend of Tik Tok. Another song I would have chosen was “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion. This song also got popular because of the TikTok trend. Lots of celebrities also started doing the dance that went along with the song as that is what made it so popular and high on billboards.

The song I chose was the Blacker the Berry by Kendrick Lamar. This song was associated with the black lives matter movement. The purpose of the song was to expose the government on how they treat African Americans and show people how his and many African Americans’ lives are. The listeners kind of added their own meaning to the song because not everyone who listens to the song comes from the same place or the same experience. So the audience can have their own interpretation. The musical genre that this song is associated in is rap music. This genre isn’t political usually but it can be depending on the artist. Certain artists in the rap game like to make songs that make people dance or sing. But other artists like to make music that has deep meaning to the song. The lyrics that are relevant to politics are “ I mean, it’s evident that I’m irrelevant to society. That’s what you’re telling me, the penitentiary would only hire me”. Kendrick Lamar was trying to get at the problem of mass incarceration in America and the injustice in politics. The musical characteristic that I hear is the crescendo. Most of the song was playing on the volume to get the attention of the audience.

The role music has on the Sema ceremony is it helps them worship while the performers are dancing. In the video, I saw the music guiding the way the dancers move and the dancers depending on the music. The music may be hard to follow for us, who don’t know about it, but for the people who understand it gives them a sense of peace. The effect music has on the listeners body and mind is it takes them to a place of worship and honoring God. They kind of forget where they are and the song takes them to a different place.  

A song similar could be Amazing Grace sung in many churches all around the world. Amazing Grace is sung to remember how they were before they met God. Both songs serve as worship and to take you to a different place. They both are sound to remember God and to show reverence towards something greater than them. It gives them a form of remembrance and praises to God. The difference is that in the Sema ceremony people were dancing while normally for Amazing Grace people don’t dance to it. This demonstrates that there are two different kinds of worship with singing or dancing. 

My ethnicity is Jamaican and the genre that is associated with it is dancehall music. Similar to reggae music, the instruments that are involved in dancehall music are the drums, bass guitar, drum machine, synthesizer and the electric organ. It originated from Jamaica in the 1970s and it is performed worldwide. Dancehall was influenced by reggae and hip hop. Some artists that perform dancehall music are Buju Banton, Alkaline, Beenie Man and Vybz Kartel. Some well known artists even have dancehall songs like Drake and Rihanna. A unique musical characteristic is that it has a fast rhythm and the instruments involved. 

Dancehall has become popular worldwide due to companies starting to sign these artists and showing them to the mainstream. Similarly, western artists have begun to make songs that fall into the dancehall genre. Songs like “One dance” or “Controlla” by Drake or “Work” by Rihanna. Drake and Rihanna are not dancehall artists but you can hear the dancehall sound in their songs. Dancehall songs are usually heard at parties because they are easy to dance to and you can have a good time. Dancehall has gone through many changes from the early 1980s to now. Popularity has grown and many western artists have been influenced although they may not be from the Carribean. 

The type of performance I would be most comfortable in is the Jazz club. I would be comfortable in this audience because the musicians look like they were having fun. There were lots of solos in the jazz performance. We could see each of the musicians’ skills individually. They were smiling while they were playing and you could see their chemistry. On the other performances, everyone looked so focused. They were trying to set a different mood based on their way of playing. In the Jazz video, it looked like they wanted the audience to be a part of the music they were creating. 

I would feel the least comfortable at the Hindustani classical performance because I don’t understand the language. I don’t understand the message they are trying to portray. The song seemed like she was trying to convey a serious story because of the crescendo she had at different parts of the video. From the Jazz performance, I expected to see a trumpet, a piano and the drums. I was right for the most part but they also used hand clapping as an instrument. For some of the performance, they let the  instrument do the expression. I heard lots of solos and jazzy chords like major 7s. 

In the opening scene of “Get Out”, we can see a guy on the phone walking towards the camera. It looks like he was in the suburbs because of all the houses around. It was really dark and he looked like he was on his way to someone. Then a white car passes him and turns around to follow him. The car stops when it gets near the guy and keeps getting closer as he continues to walk. The guy continues to walk in the other direction and a few seconds later he is kidnapped and dragged into the back of the white car.

Some of the diegetic the guys foot steps, the crickets, the car going passed him and the guy speaking. All of these sounds the audience can hear and the guy can hear them as well. The non diegetic sound is the music that is playing in the background. The music adds suspense to the scene because the music sounds kind of joyful but in the scene we can see the guy getting kidnapped. We hear the joyfulness through the timbre of the song. We can hear all the major chords and the trumpet in the song. When I listened to the video without sound I felt like something was missing and I wouldn’t expect the song they actually played to be the song for the kidnapping scene. The song may have had some foreshadowing in it because it kept telling the rabbit to run away.

The instrument that I have chosen is the electronic organ. This organ was created in the 1930s by Laurens Hammond. One of the most well known organ, used by many jazz musicians and gospel musicians, is the Hammond organ. The manufacturers have changed over the years and many models have been made. The organ adds a gospel feel to the band and it should accompany the other instruments playing. It works by pushing down on the keys, moving the leslie, using the drawbars above the keys and the pedals on the bottom. The pedals and the Leslie aren’t necessary to play but it adds to the muscian’s playing. The pedals are notes as well but are at a lower pitch. The drawbars add volume to individual keys. The Leslie switch controls the frequency of the vibrato. You will tend to see organist moving it around alot. The black keys are presets used that change the sound of the organ. 

The organ is not really used as much in other types of music anymore while the piano is used much more. The only main function is for it to be played. I have experience with this instrument because I play the organ and I am currently learning more about the organ. I play by ear and I try to practice every week so that I can get better. The organ has helped me get better at playing piano because of the techniques can be taken from the organ to the piano. 

The song that I chose was Solid Rock by Sean Tillery. In the beginning there is an organ solo and you can hear how the organ gives the song a fuller sound. People may say it sounds “churchy” due to the way the organ is being played. 

In Kyrie (monophonic) and Kyrie from the Pope Marcellus Mass, the musical elements that I heard were texture, form and melody. Texture is how different musical elements connect.The specific texture that I heard in Kyrie (monophonic) is Monophony because I didn’t hear any instrument accompanying the voice. There was only one voice singing and I couldn’t hear anything else. While in Kyrie from the Pope Marcellus Mass, I heard more than one voice in Harmony. The type of texture that I heard was polyphony. You can hear many different parts doing different things. Form is the structure of the music. The form played a role in the music because it shows why the person sings that way. This gives us insight on the genre this is. In Kyrie (monophonic), you can hear the singer switching his pitches and repeating it throughout the whole song. For Kyrie from the Pope Marcellus Mass, each musical part has their own way of singing but it all came together. Melody is a unit of pitches sounded in succession to one another. The singer’s melody was repetitive and you could follow along after listening to it for a few seconds in Kyrie (monophonic). For Kyrie from the Pope Marcellus Mass, the melody was unpredictable and it felt like they were telling a story with each section of the song. You can hear how they implemented the harmony in the song in the first few seconds of the song. 

My process of close listening to these musical elements was first reading all the slides and then listening to each musical piece to see what they incorporated. I made sure that I read the slides to refresh my memory on all the musical elements that we went over in class that I may have forgotten about. Having the song playing and looking on the slides helped me see which one musical element was the song showing.

The Romantic Era, which lasted from 1820 to 1900, excites me because new instruments that we still use today were invented or improved around this time. Instruments such as the flute, saxophone and tuba. These instruments were used heavily in Romantic era music. These instruments added depth to the orchestra and are seen in other genres of music outside of western music. A historical event that I connect this time period with is when the slaves were freed in America in 1865 with the passing of the 13th Amendment. Also during this time reconstruction was happening in America due to the ending of the Civil War. So America was trying to get back on their feet from the destruction that happened in the South. The textbook describes this music as “emotional intense” because the composer wanted you to feel all the emotion during each piece they played. 

The composer I chose to listen to was Franz Liszt piece called Liebestraum No. 3. This sounded exactly how the textbook described because I felt all the emotion through this piece. It starts off slow but builds intensity and emotion throughout the piece. When I did more research on the song I found that this is the last part of the piece and it is a story about love. Listening to the piece it felt like it was telling all the stages of love because it starts off soft then gets more dramatic in the middle then gets soft near the end again.