Music

There are 37 posts filed in Music (this is page 1 of 4).

Memories of Thanksgiving parades

I was watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade on NBC this morning while preparing for our Thanksgiving meal. There were quite a lot of Broadway show excepts and pop performers, but there were also the marching bands (both high school and college). When I was in band in high school in the 1970s, the comic strip “Funky Winkerbean” had a character who was the band director at Funky’s high school. His name was Harry L. Dinkle, and was a great entertainment to me and several of my band friends. One year, Harry’s band was going to go to the Macy’s parade in New York City. Of course, they had many obstacles to overcome, but my memory is that they made it to New York, although they may have not marched in the parade. The strip author Tom Batiuk also has a page on Harry Dinkle on his website.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Looking into protest songs

I have been looking into what protest songs/chants have been used in the past five to ten years. Researcher Noriko Manabe from Indiana University has a recent journal article and a set of posts on Medium collecting songs and chants from US protests since 2017:

Journal of Music and Politics: Chants of the Resistance: Flow, Memory, and Inclusivity

Medium: Collection of posts on chants and songs since 2017

Also, I found these links:

National Women’s History Museum: Brief overview of protest songs

The Commons Social Change Library: Listen and Watch to 40 years of Australian Blockading Songs

The language of music

This past year, my wife and I resumed singing in our church choir. It was fun to get together with old friends and making music. As we started, I realized how much of a language written music represents. All of the people in the choir are comfortable in reading music, so the duration and pitch of the notes, the rests, all come together in a common, joyful sound. We are all “reading from the same page”, so to speak. Now there can be variation in musical language, just as in computer languages. However, they represent a common grammar, a common ground, where people can come together to create music or software. We are all richer for the experience.

After finding out about it on Scripting News, I have started listening to the podcast “The History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs”. Episode 2 had some neat history on labor disputes during World War 2 that greatly affected the music industry – I really enjoyed it! 2 down, 153 to go (the podcast is planned to take 5 years to get to 500 songs).

My wife and I watched Annie Live on NBC this week, we both thought it was excellent. The child actors from the orphanage scenes were amazing in their singing and their dancing. NBC has come a long way since their initial start in live drama with “The Sound of Music” several years ago. Several reviews: Deadline, People Magazine, and Yahoo News.