Cool Stuff! no. 3 (Arabic and Indian Cultures)

The two areas of the world up for discussion for this round of Cool Stuff are the Arab World and India, and both are writ large. In terms of the Arab world,  keep mostly to the Arabic map I’ve been using in class (it’s the second map on the Arab World Powerpoint), unless you really want to follow Islam to another nearby area. (Keep in mind that your last Cool Stuff blog will be about Eastern and Southeastern Asia, so you might want to save any interesting items that infringe on those areas for that upcoming blog.) As to India, you can also include those bordering countries that Dr. Weeks will be sharing with us on Monday—Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal. I’ll even throw in Tibet for good measure. This blog is due by 11:59 pm on Thursday, January 23, with your list of Comments posted here on the next day.

And here’s a couple of Cool Things that I would share, had we time in class.

Thing 1: Every time I talk about Arabic music, I find myself wondering what  Tareq Jundi is up to these days. Tareq is the fantastic oud player who gave me an Arabic music theory lesson when I visited Amman. So I wandered over to his YouTube channel, and it seems that, in addition to an abundance of composing and performing, he’s also been working at making the world a better place in a pretty tangible way.

Thing 2: This Cool Stuff contribution is actually lifted from a former student’s Cool Stuff blog. Natasha Senanayake graduated from Converse in, I think, 2012. Natasha is originally from Sri Lanka, and she’s returned there after earning her Master’s Degree in Music Composition in London. We don’t have much of a chance to discuss the music of Bollywood—India’s vast empire of musical movies—in class. So Natasha can help us out. Here’s what she wrote about her favorite Bollywood movie:

Here is a video from one of my favourite Bollywood films, “Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gam” (literal translation – “sometimes happiness, sometimes sadness”). This type of Indian film music is more on to the side of Indian pop music culture than of the traditional music culture although it has a definite influence of traditional Indian music. It is interesting to see how all these three different styles (Sri Lanka, Arabic, and Indian pop) have many similarities.