Timbre

One of America’s longest standing traditions has been the white consumption of black music. One of the ways in which this tradition began was the adaptation of slave songs, otherwise known as spirituals, into popular culture. While there were many artists, both black and white, who translated spirituals into music more accommodating for white audiences, it was the Fisk Jubilee singers who helped popularize this music. As one of the first non-minstrel black musical group, the Fisk Jubilee singers…

Introduction When visualizing the Toronto soundscape, it is inevitable to picture it without considering the plethora of accents and languages of people from culturally dominated areas. I had the chance to attend a music and dance performance reflective of the diversity of the world’s traditions but also reflective of Toronto’s multiculturalism. The event took place at the Lula Lounge on March 5th, 2016, where I saw the band ‘Salsotika’ perform classic 80s and 90s salsa. In relation to the…

determine how an utterance is to be accepted in a conversation. Illocutionary acts are not always easy to be categorized when a person speaks. There are many complications ranging from unambiguous performative verbs, paralinguistic features (stress, timbre and intonation) and word order which should be taken in to comprehension. To correctly decode illocutionary acts performed by speakers, the hearer should be acquainted with the context the speech occurs in. Mey (1993) made this clear by…

Although a flop during commercial release in the US in its day, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West is now generally acknowledged as a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made, regardless of genre. What made me select it for this assignment is the haunting sound of the harmonica in one of its key scenes, sheer brilliance in blending the visual and the auditory into one of the most poignant moments in movie history. Once Upon a Time in the West is a 1968 spaghetti western film.…

The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto was written for western style orchestra and features a solo violin played using some Chinese techniques. This piece retains the Chinese flavor but however to some extent. The reason why I have chosen this question and this piece is because as a violinist, I have the interest in how the violin in The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto is a western instrument, but however it is still able to capture some of the Chinese style. In this essay, I will be comparing…

Research Essay Portfolio Task 5 Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story”-1957 is a landmark composition in the development of the American musical and it took many years for the idea to be developed into a musical. They had the idea of writing a deep meaning musical which would show people what real life was all about. The original idea was for a Jewish girl and a Catholic boy to fall in love. This theme however changed when the Puerto Ricans moved into New York and the story line was altered to…

Introduction Ever since I was a little boy, I was surrounded by music, which gave me a chance to get to know many different music genres such as opera, classical music, pop, rock, and more. I have always been inspired by different styles of music, and the primary person responsible for that was my father. Although he passed away in November 28th of 2005, he lived long enough to transmit his experiences in the music industry and the positive way he perceived music. He was a very talented…