Black music in Praise of Oxala and Other Gods
Throughout South America, the descendants of the millions of slaves brought to the New World by the Spanish and Portuguese still pay homage to the pantheon of their African ancestors, often, albeit, under the identities of Christian saints. This album features their vibrant worship music, drawn from recordings made in Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. Musicologist David Lewiston recalls his travels through South America to record this music:
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Music Licensing Lingo - Soundalike vs. Reinterpretation
Apple, Nike, Gap…so many commercials have helped launch musical careers. While most emerging songwriters would kill to be featured in an ad, bigger bands like Sigur Ros can afford to take a higher moral stance and more often than not just say “No”. The band has licensed their music to just a handful of brands, including Sky Sports, Disney, and Oxfam. Jonsi may end up taking a different stance; his solo song “Go Do” has already been used in a Dulux advert:
The cold hard truth is that most ad agencies will still be turned down by Jonsi and Sigur Ros. So what do ad agencies do when they’re rejected by an artist who’s tough to license? More often than you’d think, they commission soundalikes - similar songs that just manage to skirt copyright infringement. Sigur Ros have been victims of this growing trend. A post from their fan blog points out a number of commercials with Sigur Ros soundalikes.
As similar as these might sound to the original song, none of them are close enough for Sigur Rós to pursue legal action:
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I love Rob Bowman...
This was probably my favorite class so far. Today, Rob spoke about the two parts of the folk music era between the 1930s-’60s; the first part consisting of protest songs about the labor movement… the 2nd part being about civil rights and peace. Although he talked about the influences of Seeger and Guthrie, he mainly spoke about Dylan. Oh, and interesting things about The Beach Boys too. And although I always knew about how revolutionary “Good Vibrations” was, I was never a big fan of their music outside that song and somehow felt evil saying so, but it turns out he more or less feels the same way and explains why. I loved everything he said today about everything, but that’s not a far cry from what I’d say about any of his classes. I even made a contribution to the class! Even though I was sitting in the back! In front of 300 people! I’m so glad I did it. I’ll have to tell you about that in a bit.
So my next few posts will mostly be about Dylan. And why I now believe I won the Dylan argument with my BF :)
Q & A with music majors...
1) To musicologists: so you are a musicologist. So you can memorize the birth and death year of every important composer and performer, right?
2) To piano majors: so you can play christmas songs and sappy love songs, right?
3) to theory majors: so you can memorize all flats and sharps for all key signatures right?
4) to violin majors: let’s hear some Vivaldi’s Four Season!
5) to composition majors: I thought you guys are composing some Haydn and Mozart!
Our reaction………
(photo credits: die-mannschaft-lover)
