Big Blog no. 2: One Last Music Culture

 The time is here--our last Blog entries! We'll talk more about this next week, but I'd like to start out by thanking you for being such a wonderful class this term. Your curiosity in your blogs, your kindness to each other in the comments, and your honesty in the "quizzes" has been one of the Good Things that has helped me navigate this most curious couple of years. 

This last blog is (obviously) a Big Blog, and the scope (but not the content) will be the same as the first Big Blog. In fact, let's just copy them here: 

In terms of scope, think of this as a short term paper, but more informal, and with a fair amount of media embedded. As a guidepost, aim for about 1000 words, plus media. You'll need a handful of sources at the end (use full citations, rather than just web addresses), but you don't need to include footnotes or parenthetical references....While a bit of fan-girling is just fine, do remember that you're teaching other people about your chosen topic, and they need to learn about that topic from you.

The content will be quite different from the first Big Blog, though. As we've discussed in class, pick a music-culture that we haven't explicitly covered in class. Let your imagination run wild! You can pick a people, a country, a repertoire, or something else along those lines. The Maori of New Zealand, the Inuit of Alaska, the Tango of Argentina, the country of Madagascar, traditional Bulgarian music, Tuvan throat-singers, Chinese opera, etc. Your goal is to teach the class sort of like how I've been teaching y'all throughout the semester--give us something of a broad overview, but pick some deep pockets to expand on. It will help you if you pick a topic of medium breadth. For instance, "China" is way too big--it's a huge country with many ethnicities and traditions and a much-recorded long history. C-Pop is way too narrow--it's a fairly recent popular music genre without much real variety. Chinese opera, however, comes in lots of different styles has been around for centuries but is fairly contained--it's just right. Smaller countries--like Madagascar--that have much less of a written tradition and are therefore trickier to research are just right all by themselves. Don't even think about doing your whole blog on Russia (way too big) or K-pop (way too small). 

As before, leave a comment on this blog entry letting us all know what your topic will be, so that everyone doesn't happen to flock over the Chinese opera. In fact, leave your topic by next Thursday, December 2--I'll be sure to check over the list and try to head off anything that's undoable. 

This final Big Blog is due the final Saturday after classes (December 4) by 11:59 pm, with Comments happening over the weekend and due by the following Wednesday (December 8) at 11:59.

Oh, and Chinese opera? Here's a short clip of just one type of Chinese opera--it's just a bit different that what you might expect in a European opera house....



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