Summary

Its hard to summarize this class with strictly speaking of the music, its more about the feelings and relationships. Which is really what the music is about as well. All the music we have learned about and listened too are forever changing with the people and feeling of that specific moment, and with the recording you can relive that moment. This class has made me see music in a much different way. The stories I engaged in most were the the ones like carrying a recorder in the trunk of a car and traveling around getting different peoples individual perspectives on a song, and how they would like to portray the words. It shows how sometimes words are simply just words, and the meaning comes from the feeling you give when you expose those songs. I found it very interesting why in a class that only met once a week, I have made more friends  in this class than i have ever met before in any other class. This is a mixture of many things but i think the music plays a huge role in that. The music we listened to was raw and real, there is true meaning behind it and that set up the stage for people up to express their own raw emotions. I bet if we had a full year of this class, we would be getting into some exceptionally deep talks and open up even more. Its hard to come to a class that is four hours at night, i couldn't have done it for another class. The mixture of the environment which the music creates and the free flowing discussions lead by Mr. Panda himself made it feel like a gathering as opposed to a class. This has been a very special class for me, and I will think of it always when I hear the songs we sang together.

Country Blues

Country Blues really has a different feel from place to place. I don't have the expert ear to be able to decipher from where without looking it up, but i can just feel it. This week had a lot of interesting songs. I have like the blues ever since i was young, its just the feeling it gives you while listening. It really makes you listen and feel the lyrics.

For this week I focused on sweet home Chicago. While I was listening to it, i was with a friend that was actually from Chicago and he started singing along, i asked him if it was a popular song over there and he told me he doesn't know about the kids now, but he thought everyone knew that song in Chicago.
Then I could see his joy to hear about his home town and based this weeks project about my favorite place back home, my local beach i grew up surfing. of course I had to show my favorite place from my favorite view point!! inside a wave looking out to the stairs where you walk down. "Baby i want to go back to half moon bay" is what i heard listening to this song. While making this project, i really did make me feel like i was there.

Woody Gurthrie

This week i found Woody to be especial interesting. I relate to him a lot, i found this mostly due to some quotes i found of him. He is a man that wants to bring people up and he believes in the power of love a the importance of what is in front of you.

    "I hate a song that makes you think you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you       think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody.No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim. Too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I'm out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you."

 His soul comes out through his songs. In Red River Valley, this is the typical song of a lost love, but there was not the dark feeling that came with many of the music we have learn about in the earlier classes. He speaks of his love that he will miss and the feeling he has, as well as how he wishes she will come back. As folk song typical go, she does not come back, she is forever leaving. But he does not feel worse knowing this, he wishes her all the love and he relieves himself of the longing feeling and only hopes she remember the great memories that have made together. 

This is the type of message i enjoy and this is why i connected to woody a lot. 

I wanted to create a project based on that feeling of wishing for the best rather that self loathing and longing, but i found it very hard to accurately portray how i felt. 

I then moved on to This Land is Our land, and i took those aspects of Woody i found inspiring and connected them to a simplistic view of This Land is Our Land, which i tend to enjoy doing. The Morals is no matter the size, shape, location, or visual of a being, we all have beauty to share and if you share that beauty that comes from the inside that you should belong every where. I do not believe every one is a great person, and i am not someone who preaches that you should love everyone always and equally. I don't see that as realistic, how ever i do believe that if someone has a good soul that can change a lot of peoples views and bring the beauty out of individuals. Woody was one of those people.

From this I made a cricket, a seemingly insignificant insect, producing a rainbow of musical notes. They create music themselves, that i relate to wonderful times and when i hear them at night is the forest is bring me back to the basics, which woody does. Love and treat people well, bring em up instead of down. 

Fishin' Blues

For this week i chose fishin blues for my song. It brought me to my first time fishing with my friend and the first fish I caught. I found that it was a song more of friendship and companionship. For the song man always fish's with some one. Fishing living in the south holds meaning on its own and it was part of the culture. Fishing is an activity that can be a person and sort of meditative act or it can be a something that brings people together and creates bonds with people. For this project i wanted to display the meditative side. I used to fish when i was frustrated because i could sit by the ocean and just have alone time.

Mississippi John hurt

I chose John Hurts song, I Shall Not be Moved and mixed that with the reading by Betsy to form my project for this week. I was influenced most by the section from the reading when John asked Max about what he thought soul meant. 

one time Max was

singing along about

the soul not thinking

of the words at all

but only the throes

and thrum of chords

and John asked him

what he meant by soul

and Max couldn’t say

a single word

and John said

soul meant

the spirit the body

the personality

everything  the entire man

the whole man

that was soul

The lead to me read into the line in the song " just like a tree that's planted by the water, i shall not b moved." I read into that as a metaphor for internal strength that comes from the same soul that Max describes. 

APPALACHIA II-THE BRITISH BALLADS

This weeks song choices were very different and more sensual and flowing. The Appalachian songs of last week was filled with a story, many murder and death stories, that i found minimal morals from. I found it to be more of a told story.
This week I found the songs to have more open ended context and morals you can find in them.

 "Dancing has been corrupted by the social dances of today", said Mr Sharp.  "It has taught people to slouch through dancing instead of putting rhythm, grace and life into it."

I  felt this quotation embodied a lot of how i felt the difference between american and Appalachian song were to me

I focused on down by the sally gardens for this weeks piece and found that have less lyrics made me read into each word and line more. To me it felt real, like he made a more abstract song about a story he truly lived. Then was Sally Gardens the name of of a real place? or the name of the love the writer was speaking about?
the line that i couldn't get a grasp of was 

"little snow white feet", i think it added a great visual to the song and brought the mental imagination alive. Then came my favorite lines, "she bid me take life easy" .... "but I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree"

with this comes a fault i find i do myself sometimes. A sort of 'all or nothing' way about approaching things, and in life that is not always correct. life can be a day by day process and that needs to me taken step by step. 

The second stanza was the aftermath of take love on too quickly and the women places her snow white hands on his shoulder leaving him "full of tears"

Banks of Ohio

This song is indeed very hard to hear and to relate too. It is so hard to hear, not only because of the death in it, but because of why and to whom this man committed murdered. Someone he claims to "love", he then kills her because that same "love" is not reciprocated. While then feeling the guilt of his outrageous reaction. This is a very dark song, which is why I enjoyed Dolly Parton's version the most.  Because she keeps the same somber, dark, un-energetic tone the entire time, even in the beginning she keeps it during the verses when it simply seems that a happy couple is taking a walk by the river about to speak of their love.

I first listened to Banks of Ohio, and then after, listened to Will the Circle be Unbroken. I saw a natural transfer in the story. A man murders a women in the Ohio River, and then the family has the real pain of mourning for her; shown in Will the Circle be un Broken.

I real enjoyed the Circles will be Unbroken more as a song, because I can relate much more. It is about support and letting go while still grieving and hoping for the best for a past friend or lover.
However, I could not stop thinking about how much I hated the fist song, Banks of Ohio, so I did my piece for this week on that. It is the most abstract piece I have done but I did it wile listening to the song, and I wanted to show, "gnarliness" or just something hard to look at, just like the song. So I made a piece that made me feel that way.