MUS 259: Projects in West African Mande Drumming
Performance course in West African drumming with focus on music from Mandé Empire (Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Senegal.) Taught by master drummer and exponent of Mogo Kele Foli drumming technique. Course provides hands-on experience on two instruments, Djembe and Dun dun. Students acquire performance experience, skills and techniques on Wassolon and Diansa, and develop appreciation for integrity of drumming in daily life of West Africa.
MUS 262: Jazz History: Many Sounds, Many Voices
This course will examine the musical, historical, and cultural aspects of jazz throughout its entire history, looking at the 20th century as the breeding ground for jazz in America and beyond. During this more than one hundred year period, jazz morphed and fractured into many different styles and voices, all of which will be considered. In addition to the readings, the course will place an emphasis on listening to jazz recordings, and developing an analytical language to understand these recordings. A central goal is to understand where jazz was, is, and will be in the future, examining the musicians and the music that has kept jazz alive.
MUS 266: Music and Society in France, c.1750 to the Present
From the singing entertainments of Parisian café-concerts, to the historical revisions of grand opera, to the social critiques of banlieue rappers, music has been central to the cultural and social developments of the French nation. This course explores a survey of music across many genres – opera, concert music, sacred music, song, dance music, folk, rock, rap – to investigate how music participated in, shaped, and fueled many debates in French society from the Enlightenment onwards.
MUS 103: Introduction to Music
MUS 103 is an introduction to Western art music, featuring works from around 800 to the mid-20th century. The course explains the basic elements of Western music, introducing them in the order in which they developed in history- rhythm, pitch, melody, harmony, form- and the historically significant styles and genres of composition.