musical cultural context paper

Find a video online of a world music performance in YouTube. You will include a link to the video in your paper. You do not have to limit yourself to the world musical cultures focused on in this course. For the purposes of this paper, “world music” is defined as the musics not covered in the other Penn State Music courses. We have courses in western classical music, American music, and jazz. So the Musical Cultural Context paper can be of African, Latin American, or Asian music. It can be of European folk music, such as Roma music or the reels at an Irish pub. But it cannot be of European classical music, or of an American music. One exception: Native American music is allowed for this paper.
The video must not already be accompanied by cultural information, since the assignment is for you to provide the cultural context yourself. If the video you find has an elaborate cultural description already, then it will not be a valid choice for this assignment.
Describe the music using the terminology of the course.
Do some research to provide information on the cultural context of the performance. What tradition does it fit into? What is the history of that tradition? Where is it popular? What social functions does the music have in the lives of the people? What are the instruments? Are there cultural or religious symbols involved, and if so, what are they and what do they mean? When writing, concern yourself as much as possible with accurately representing the views of the people in the culture.
This is not a paper in music criticism. Please do not evaluate the music as good or bad. Instead, our aim is to study this music in order to learn about its culture. Music critique is done in Music 5 and Music 7, but not here. Our approach is the anthropological approach of cultural relativism, meaning that we don’t evaluate or judge but instead set aside our own culturally-based evaluations in order to understand a musical culture on its own terms.
I strongly recommend that you come up with a title that draws the reader into your subject. “A Lively Evening of Improvised Music at an Irish Pub” is a good title. “Musical Cultural Context Paper” is not a good title for your paper. This is the title of the paper assignment, and it does not introduce the specific insights of your paper.
The paper should be at least 750 words, written in academic English, and 100% your own writing. Be sure to include a link to the video in your Works Cited section, and fully cite all sources.

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