Borders in Music

One of my examples is Freddy Sky, a Panamanian "Reggae" singer with his song "Dime que si"
which has a Hip-Hop rythm and the lyric is in Spanish. He made up his own song, only that he used Hip-Hop for it.

Comando Tiburon "Te Pille", with an Afro-Caribbean rythm that is known in Panama for a long time because of our mixed ethnicity and races.

Jimmy Bad Boy - "Sigo Pensando en ti", This song has Trance/Electro rythm that comes originally from Europe.

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

In my country we can find different type of mixed rythms on our music because we have different races influences on our culture. When Panama was starting to grow as a city we received people from different ethnic roots and races. For example: African-Americans, Jews, Europeans, Asian, Indians, and bunch of other different races. That's why Panama is called "Crisol de Razas" or "Rainbow of Races."

Falling Moon by Ting-Yu

This performance was about a poem called Falling Moon where she represented a ghost and while the pieces of the song were going on, she was like seeing all this beautiful scenes of the poem and she make us understand all this by the way she moved.

All the dance was an inspiration of that moment, she never practiced like all the same movements. It makes the dance more attractive, because we got to see how she feels the music inside when she was performing.

What did you "see," "hear," "sense" and "feel" when watching the Falling Moon performance? How do you think your response to this performance and NATYA is shaped by your cultural and social conditionings?

What i see was that she was very concentrated, enjoying what she was doing, she was confortable. The music that we listened too, mixed with the sounds the man made with the different instruments made the story more cool but the only thing is that i got distracted a little bit when he moved from a place to another. My feelings of this dance is that looks so relaxing and cool, i really wish i could to that.

I always admire different countries cultural traditions. For me, both of these performances were beautiful and interesting. But something i really want to say is that i liked more Falling Moon than NATHYA, because it was not as complicated.. It was very simple and attractive.

NATYA Dance Theatre

The NATYA Dance Theatre is dedicated to to perform different dance expositions based on Bharata Natyam, which is a classical dance style from South India that combines Technic and Energy. The Bharata Natyam has three diverse types of Technics: Nritta, Nritya and Natya which is the one the dancer showed us today.

I saw all of her different expressions and the way she moved her body and her hands and I think that is hard to understand most of her movements meanings but it's such an interesting dance. I like to learn from other cultures, and i have not seen India's dance like this never.

What questions and values did the dance performance convey?

This dance performance conveyed a lot of traditions and historical characteristics. The Technic she used to perform her dance were very simple and attractive.

Was it anything you expected? Why or why not?

I never thought about India dance before, and this show opened my eyes to a new world. The way she used her face expression and her hands movements to explain a specific aspect of the nature around her.

I liked this show and I hope that Shenandoah open the doors more often to more countries to show us artistic and cultural traditions.

The end of La Bamba

This movie showed us bunch of different boundaries between the same family and in other situations. One i remember that was very obvious was when Donna passes right in front of his house and she asked him if that was his house and he said no, that it was down the street. He hid his own reality.

In the end of the movie he came back from California where he was singing in some concerts and his mom received him with a big surprise party and with all his family. His mom was very proud of his son but something that she didn't pay attention to was when Bob saw that she was caring more of Richie than him. During the party, Bob acted very awkward and Richie decided to talk with him and ask him what was his mood all about. They started shouting things to each other and they end up fighting. While fighting, Bob gave him the last punch and he pulled Richie's necklace off.

I really think this was a very important part of the movie because after this happened, Richie started falling down. His lucky life was ended when Bob took his necklace off. The necklace had a real meaning with something religious. :)

Hunger of Memories book conclusion & La Bamba

This week we end with Richard Rodriguez's "Hunger of Memories" which is a very interesting story based on his life as a Mexican-American. His family thought that writing about his family's life was not a good idea but he felt comfortable with all the things he wrote about because that was his life, and that was how he grow up.

In the Wednesday class we started watching a movie called "La Bamba" which is most about how there are borders between the same family, for example Richie and Bob. In this movie, Richie loves to play guitar and he is part of a band with some friends. He decided to try singing alone and his mom helped him with his dream and after this an owner of a disc company asked him to record his songs and this is how his life starts to be pretty. As i can see, their mom is concentrated on Richie's life and his singer career and she doesn't cares about Bob's drug and alcohol problem. This fact is going to separate the family and cause problems, we will see.

This movie seems to be connected in a way with Hunger of Memories because Richie doesn't speak Spanish but he understands and he grew up in a Mexican family but living in the US.

I'm sure that we are going to enjoy this movie, and there is going to be a lot more comments about boundaries created in the scenes of the movie.

Rich-heard Road-ree-guess

He is a Mexican-American citezen who moved to the US while growing up. His family lives in a neighborhood surrounded by americans, they are the only Latinos in the street. When Richard started school he realized that moving from his country was very sad, because now he needed to get used to different culture, characteristics, and a lot of other facts.

He was on a Catholic school, with teachers that were nuns. These nuns went to his house to talk to his parents about his English speaking part and they made the family start speaking english in the home too, because Richard didn't spoke English at the school. This change made Richard learn English and also able to answer questions in the classroom. The language represented a boundary for him as to his parents, because his other two brothers were able to speak English well.

Something that never changed at home was their believes and their customs. the Virgen de Guadalupe was always going to be their saint. God was always the one who guided their lives on the right way. Everything he did, he made it in name of Jesus Christ, our father.

Something that really took my attention was the chapter about the professional life. Here comes the biggest problem that the United States of America has, and it is the Racism. When they offered opportunities of job to people, they prefer the white than the black and latino people. Probably is because of the image, or because those people think that we are not intelligent or educated and that's very bad. I think that now we should start trying to change people's mind and make them realize that we are all the same, humans. We can all think, work, act, move, pay, and do whatever we want to do, because we should have the same rights in all the world.

This book identifies myself a lot. It's just because of that both us come from other country, and getting used to other cultures is not easy, it takes long to feel comfortable with all the american society.