McGahee's Magic Music

      This week's class has been focused on Arabic and Indian music. I have been interested in the cultural aspects of India such as religion, but I have never looked deeper into the music of India. I find it to be very interesting, and I quite enjoy the art of it. It is very intricate and extravagant. For this blog, I am going to ask three questions about India broadly, and two of these in specific will be asking about the music of India. I hope you all enjoy, and find this just as interesting as I do. My first question: What genres of music is popular in India?     When I first googled this, I don't really know why but I expected only a few results to pop up, but actually there are over 37 popular genres in India! After thinking about this for a minute though, this made sense because India is a country of 1.35 billion people (OR 17.7% of the entire world population)! Thats a lot of people! Which in return means a lot of diversity. So for this blog, I picked one of thirty seve

Throughout the entirety of this class, we have looked within ourselves and our personal history of music taste, so for this blog! I decided to talk to my mom about her musical past and boy was it interesting! I already kind of knew what kind of music she used to enjoy, but I have never really gone into depth with her about it. I knew that it would be diverse though because if I'm in the car with my mom her playlist ranges from Kendrick Lemar to Carrie Underwood and even some Five Finger Death Punch. Pictured: My mom, my little sister, and myself My first question... "Mama, what kind of music did you listen to when you were my age?"  "Wow, Cameron. That feels like forever ago. Don't make me feel so old." (Then she rambled on about how time flies and kind of avoided the question... SO I got her back on track.) "You know, I listened to the Back Street Boys a lot."  *Instantly I knew that she was going to mention Howie Dorough because I had already hea

Hip Hop Roots           America is so diverse in music culture! I can get so lost in the millions of songs, each of which has a different background that we don't even think about! Where does the music that we listen to come from? What group inspired it or started it? Where in America was it created? What era? There are multitudes of music forms and many questions that could be asked but today, we are going to focus on the roots of Hip Hop!       I chose Hip Hop because the music really hypes me up, and gets me ready for practices, games, and weight training! This is important, I need the hype to perform my best!      Initially, when I began doing research on Hip Hop and where it came from, a song caught my eye. It is called Rappers Delight by the SugarHillGang, and this is one of the first hip hop pieces in America. It hit the top ten charts worldwide! This song is what started the worldwide spread of hip hop! After this song dropped, it was almost a snowball effect! Hip hop album

We have explored many cultures so far but one of the most exciting to me is African culture. Throughout school I found myself intrigued by African culture, specifically because it was so headstrong that it greatly impacted and changed the culture of America when slaves were first brought from the Africas to the Americas in 1619. In my middle and high school history classes, we didn't specifically study the music of the African culture, but more of the songs created by those that were displaced America. Because of this is was very cool to learn about the roots of the people who created the songs that we learned in class. When researching countries south of the Saharan desert I immediately took a liking to Cameroon! Simply because it is very similar to my name! So, this led to my first question! " What is Cameroon's most popular music?"      Mr.Leo is the most known Cameroon artist. He is an urban artist who has been named the best artist! I listened to some of his musi

      Honestly, when presented with this topic I instantly was unsure of what to write. I have only lived 18 years on this earth, and I have only been interested in music for a handful of those so I haven't really focused on the role that gender plays within music or even modernized music. I do know that gender greatly influences everything, including music.      Within the popular music of my time, men are normally the ones to sing or rap about more controversial "sexual" topics. They will often time sexualize and "slut" shame women within these songs, whether it be specific partners or just in general. I have noticed that it is socially excepted and when these songs are dropped, there is no controversy around them. This is because it is normalized. It isn't just within my time that men have been creating sexualized music, I know this because my parents listen to quite a lot of older music and it is very involved in the same if not similar topics. It is muc

      We have learned about multiple cultures and their music practices. This week however we have been studying and learning about South American music - particularly in the Andes Mountains. I'd like to do a broader study of the South American culture and music though so I have chosen to further study Argentina. I chose this country, honestly just because that is where Lionel Messi is from, he's a very well known soccer player for Barcelona.  My first question is... What are some traditional Argentinian foods?  1. Barbeque or "parrillada": grilled meats. This is the most common "main course" style meal. It is the national dish and originally eaten by cowboys. This style of food is expected to be seen around every corner.  2. Provoleta: Literally grilled cheese with seasonings. It is crispy on the outside with gooey cheese on the inside.  3. Empanada: Pastry stuffed with beef, goat cheese, chicken, or veggies. These also come in a dessert form, where they ar