Sorry for the lengthy radio silence. I've been spending the month preparing for This Very Day. Today is the Tuesday of First Week, and today . . . drum roll, please . . .
Behold Teacher Pony!
My very own section of Introduction to World Music, of which I am the single solitary instructor, starts today! I get a class of my very own to teach! Wheeeeeeeee!
We're starting off slow today, with introductions, talk about myths, and then listening to and discussing The M.T.A. Song and a Hungarian B'rosh Hashanah that I recorded back at the beginning of the summer. This is going to be fun!
Behold Teacher Pony!
My very own section of Introduction to World Music, of which I am the single solitary instructor, starts today! I get a class of my very own to teach! Wheeeeeeeee!
We're starting off slow today, with introductions, talk about myths, and then listening to and discussing The M.T.A. Song and a Hungarian B'rosh Hashanah that I recorded back at the beginning of the summer. This is going to be fun!
- Current Music:The M.T.A. Song
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frenchpony- frenchpony
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You know, I feel very lucky in this regard. I was more or less handed my secton as a matter of course on reaching year 3, and for all my whinging it has been fairly routine.
I think.
Anyway, they seem like a nice bunch of kids. I can't wait to see what they'll do.
May the joy carry you through paper-grading!
. . . .ohshit, I have quizzes to write before that . . .
And how can your students not love a teacher who includes "The MTA Song" in the very first class?
I was impressed that two of my students had actually heard "The MTA Song" before. It's from when Mom and Dad Pony were young, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Hey, now! It was part of the folk revival that was popular when I was in eighth grade, and I don't remember so very many dinosaurs about.
I don't know if I've talked about xhoomei here before, so just in case I haven't: It's also called Tuvan throat-singing. It's a kind of song developed among the herders out on the steppes of Tuva, where they sing so as to isolate the fundamental of a pitch from its upper harmonics and play around with the harmonics to make the melody.
I learned from my undergraduate World Music professor how to make the basic sound of the kargyraa style (really deep fundamental with a strong whistling harmonic), though I never did get good enough to sing the basic melodies. But what the hey, at least I can demonstrate the sound to my students, right?