Musical Autobiography

January 3, 2011
Musical Autobiography

My experience with non-western music has not been vast, but those experiences that I have had often brought me into a different world. I've never heard anything like some of the music I heard. While I was sitting at a Chinese restaurant in downtown Spartanburg I listened some random Chinese songs being played. I realized a lot of the songs often had idiophones and aerophones. I didn't often hear voice parts. The harmony was often very simple. It also seems dynamics were pretty limited. The rhythms didn't seem that complex either. Most of the songs that I heard in the restaurant were very simplistic.The simplistic nature of the songs often had me wonder why something so simplistic made me so thoughtful. It seemed so simple that I thought that the songs had to have a hidden, deeper meaning than what I heard at the surface.

This past summer I had become tired of the music on the radio and I looked up different kinds of music on the internet. I found several songs that I really fell in love with. "Bamboo Under the Moonlight" by Gong Yue was one of my favorites. It is a popular Chinese folk song. When I first heard the flute and percussion instrument played in the intro, it give me such a feeling of peace and tranquility. Then when I heard the woman starting to sing I felt it was heavenly. Her voice was so clear. Also the instruments sounded very clear. By clear I mean harmonic. I didn't hear anything that didn't sound in harmony. All the tones seemed perfect. This song was different from the songs I heard in the restaurant in that it had more intensity and dynamics. I could feel the music building to a climax! It was very cool.

In 7th grade band I remember playing "Sakura, Sakura", a very popular Japanese folk song. After playing, and hearing it. I was confused. I never heard anything like it in my life. At first I thought it sounded sad. Now, I think it is too lively to be sad. The tones played are typically thought to be sad tones in our culture, but I think it is different in Japan's culture. It was too lively to be sad, and it was about a cherry tree. How could a song about a cherry tree be sad? Now, I believe it is about new life. I love this song because it was really different and forced me to think in depth about its true meaning. Also in 7th grade we only had the intro of the song. That might have had some influence on me. But now that I've listened to the rest of it, I've gained a new perspective and am convinced that this is a song about life, beauty, and sacredness of nature.