Cool Stuff Blog #1!!!!!

For my first cool stuff blog post, I wanted to research Native American music to see if there were any crosses with the traditional Irish Celtic music. I am very much from Irish descent in my family and just a very small bit of Native American on my grandfather’s side, so naturally I wanted to see what could possibly be out there to bring the two sides together! Surprisingly enough, I found a video of a Traditional Native American playing the violin to celebrate the “Tatanka,” known as the Great Bison. However, this video also incorporated Celtic music themes mainly just to fuse the two types of music together. Below is the video!

The second concept I was interested in learning more about was how Native Americans make their various instruments.  In history, we have learned that when an animal was killed, nothing was wasted. So, It is neat to find out exactly what was used to make beautiful music!

                Back story as well to further explain my curiosity: I remember visiting Cherokee N.C. several times when I was younger. I remember visiting the museum and little shops around the area. My grandmother had looked at many of the shakers and various instruments used in some of the ceremonial dances that are performed on the side of the street. I remember thinking how creative the Cherokee were for making an instrument out of something that I thought would be unusable. In the video below, my favorite showing of an instrument is the buffalo horn with beads inside. This instrument used has three parts: the horn with beads, deer hoofs, and bells. Throughout the video, there are several other instruments shown, like a flute made from Eagle bone, rain sticks made from cacti and drums made by turtle shells!

The video will begin with a Pow Wow drum circle, just like what we watched in class. Feel free to skip to the 40 second mark to being watching the making of several instruments! 😊

                For the last concept, I knew I wanted to research Sub Saharan Africa and its relation to gospel music. Gospel music has been a large part of my life growing up in the church. While visiting New York, I had the opportunity to visit the Brooklyn tabernacle. This 270-person choir has several different cultures weaved within it, so I was curious to see if Gospel music changed much in other cultures. What I found is there is a mix of Griot, Congolese rumba, Zimbabwean and more, which they refer to the gospel songs as Spiritual Songs. There is a Batuki Music Society which invites multiple spiritual singers/bands from different areas to come and perform. Below is one of the famous spiritual singers who has performed at a Batuki Music Society festival, her name is Ruth Mathiang.

Here is the web link that listed all of the singers! http://www.batukimusic.com/spiritual-songs-of-sub-saharan-africa-3/