World Music Blog

Title: Aquarela do Brasil Performer:  Gal Costa Culture of Origin: Portuguese (Surprisingly, not Brazilian) Instrumentation:  Voice, guitars, strings, drums, woodwinds, piano             This Portuguese love song about Brazil marked the creation of a new genre within samba, called  samba-exaltacao, or exultation samba. In the same sort of way, the instrumentation used in this rendition falls outside of the classification system of traditional samba instruments - which are limited to tamborims, snare drums, Agogo bells, surdos, shakers, cuica, timbal, pandeiro, and repinique. Perhaps one of the biggest reasons why instrument classification systems exist is to preserve the cultural meaning of certain instruments. Samba has its roots in African religious tradition, most easily attributed to Angola and the Congo. While these shared instruments can be used for similar purposes, cultural meaning is not the only way to classify i...

Word Music Blog Week #1 1. Title:  Insensatez 2. Performer: Wes Montgomery 3. Culture of origin:  Portuguese 4. Instrumentation: Guitar, drums, strings This performance of what is not considered a jazz standard, is a bossa nova native to Portugal, even though bossa nova itself is native to Brazil. Pedagogically, bossa nova is a combination of native samba music, and a form of cool jazz from California during the 20th century. Bossa nova contains repetitive rhythms based on syncopation and back beats, which are easily attributed as bossa nova among performing musicians and composers. This very distinct characteristic and rhythmic combination is what drives ethnomusicologists in their study of different music and different cultures. This wealth of information drives music pedagogy in the same way, in which our knowledge of such rhythmic characteristics and their application drive further competition and creation of music: