Module 2- World Music Listening

Title: Oye Como Va

Artist: Tito Puente

Culture: Latin American Jazz (Parents were Puerto Rican Natives)

Instrumentation: Horns (trombone, trumpet, saxophone), flute, various Latin percussion instruments, vocals.

I thought about sharing this piece this week as I was searching for a location to do my fieldwork observations for this course.  Since I am doing my fieldwork on Latin music, I found this recording from Tito Puente very appropriate.  The first remembrance I have of this piece was performing it in a jazz ensemble in high school.  Getting the opportunity to perform different musical styles and try to match the Latin style and cultural sounds they get in the original recordings was a great learning experience, even in high school.  Many of the different classifications of instruments globally center around how a certain instrument is played, what sounds the instrument relates to, or what the particular instrument is made of.  Something else that came to mind while I was listening to this piece and the different instruments that were used in the recording was; what about what style of music certain instruments are associated with?  While there are various percussion instruments in many different types of music, there are many times when certain percussion instruments are used in a piece that it gives that piece a different cultural feel, such as Latin.    

Module 1-World Music Listening

Title: Esta Noche

Artist: Federico Aubele

Culture: Argentine Singer-Songwriter (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Instrumentation: Acoustic guitar, bass, drum set, auxiliary percussion instruments, women's vocals

I was thrilled to come across this piece by Federico Aubele.  My wife is a foreign language teacher and enjoys listening to music in both Spanish, as well as French but I have never been much of a fan of music I did not understand.  This song however, caught my attention.  Although I had to look up a translation of the lyrics, once I did the music behind the lyrics made complete sense.  The solo-like acoustic guitar that interjects between the lyrics along with the added auxiliary percussion do a wonderful job of setting up the mood of this song.  The study of ethnomusicology is important for us as music educators because it gives a better chance to learn about the music of other cultures so that we feel more comfortable sharing more music with our students.  The more comfortable that you feel about a subject the more likely that you will be to include it in the curriculum for your students.