Hannah's Musical Adventures

Traditional West African music is not just one type of music. Today we will explore two different types. Let's begin this musical journey by watching the Northern Illinois University School of Music's percussion ensemble perform a version of the music from a traditional African dance called  Zaouli . The next stop on this trip is to watch the dance performed in a traditional setting. While it is not completely clear when or by whom this song was written, it originates from the Ivory Coast region of West Africa. Ivory Coast is also known as the country of Côte d'Ivoire. Like much traditional West African music, Zaouli is well known for its rhythmic properties and its use of percussion instruments. Doris Green, in a book called African Dance: An Artistic, Historical, and Philosophical Inquiry, wrote, "The dance activity is essentially fast movements of the feet dictated by the rhythm of the drums for the Zaouli figure." Sometimes these rhythms are polyrhythmic in na...

I was a little girl when I first heard my mom play her flute. I thought it had such a unique and pretty sound. What I didn't know then is that humans have been playing similar instruments for a long time. Although instruments resembling the flute have been around for thousands of years, the modern flute was not introduced until much later.  Renaissance Flutes Picking up the story during the Renaissance, we see that during this time flutes were still relatively simple instruments. They were cylinders of various sizes (to produce different ranges of pitches) and these cylinders had holes in them so that the flutist could manipulate the sound. These flutes were typically made of various types of wood according to Kate Clark and Amanda Markwick in their book,  The Renaissance Flute: A Contemporary Guide.  Here is an example of what a typical flute sounded like during the Renaissance: The piece that these gentlemen are playing was composed in the Netherlands during t...

Countless versions of the holiday classic song "Little Drummer Boy" have been produced by many different people over the years. According to Kelly O'Sullivan in an article that she wrote for Country Living, this song, "was first recorded by the Trapp Family Singers in 1951." While they were the ones who first recorded this beloved song, it is unclear who first wrote the song and where they did it. One of my favorite renditions of the song was released in 2013 by the band For King & Country. For King & Country is an American based group, although they have traveled around the world to perform, and the founding members of the band are originally from Australia. Timbre Most bands generally have their own specific sound. For King & Country is no different in this respect. As seen (and heard) in this example, For King & Country uses a lot of different instruments in their music. I really enjoy the unique sound this combination of instruments gives to ...