Cultural Music Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Cultural Music - Essay Example What we are going to explore in this paper are the values, cultural music uphold, its historical significance, where it came from and the factors that distinguishes the cultural music from that of popular culture. We would put light across factors like religious rituals, social rituals, materialism and how it developed. Cultural value becomes a relative idea today because it is everywhere turned into something quantifiable, as the principle of exchange value (i.e., price) is extended into all spheres of life. Music when considered on a broad spectrum, is an art, and the value of art becomes a shifting term in an economy of cultural meanings, defined by its relation to other signifying elements in the cultural system, not to anything "real" to which it might ultimately refer. But when it comes to musical judgments, cultures are never explored in the context of social values. Though the formation of "taste cultures" has always been socially defined. Participation in certain genres of music say, grand opera, street ballads, or rural folk music was historically determined by a person's social position, not by a purely independent aesthetic choice. Indeed, from a sociological perspective, cultural taste is always a social category rather than an aesthetic one; it refers to the way we use cultural judgments as social "currency, " to mark our social positions. This may be less clear today, since contemporary society is characterized by the fragmentation of older taste cultures and the proliferation of new ones. In this context, cultural musical transactions take place with increasing rapidity hence the heating up of the cultural economy and its rapid turnover of new products. Not only are taste cultures themselves shifting, but people now tend to move between them with greater ease. These factors contribute to a sense of the relativity of any single position. Contemporary musical choices enable us to make selection from among umpteen choices, such choices refer to the pluralism, and the effect of that plurality is inevitably to confirm that, in matters of musical judgment, the individual can be the only authority. (Johnson, 2002, p. 7) Musician Perception Musicians are perceived as "speaking on behalf" of the cultures they perform. As Harnish says, "For those of us teaching in geographic areas of little diversity, we are charged with or charge ourselves with the task of representing the music and culture of the ensemble". (Solis, 2004, p. 14) Debate about music, even technical debate between musicians, has always been an attempt to wrestle with this conundrum: music flows from individuals to other individuals and yet seems to be shaped by supra individual forces. The basic model of that conundrum does not change. Music teachers, however, are the only

A student should participate in study groups Essay

A student should participate in study groups - Essay Example For example, if two students, both equally intelligent and capable, completely complement each other’s skills in a physics course, then it is only logical that they work together in order to learn from the other’s experiences and abilities. Study groups, like a group in the workplace, seek to fulfill the goals of each member to the extent that each member’s objectives are aligned with the other members of the group. Usually, it is the case that members of a study group are interested in achieving a better grade, and this desire is what unites the individuals in their efforts to help others and in turn help themselves. Students should participate in study groups because such groups offer knowledge, experience, and skills that individuals alone could not realize. Study groups have been shown to be successful, particularly in fields where knowledge is particularly specialized, such as in more in-depth fields like physics, chemistry, and computer science. Research ha s demonstrated that students retain more information by devoting time to hands-on laboratory work and with faculty. In addition, study groups are helpful to students insofar as they encourage individuals to become active learners and to become better collaborators with peers (Guo 190). As such, study groups tend to produce higher results on academic performance than individual work. In a study of perceptions of academic support services by engineering students, researchers Charlotte Amenkhienan and Lori Kogan observed that students thought that study groups were invaluable. Individuals thought the chance to describe course material to others assisted in a clearer understanding of the notes. Moreover, in order to add more to the group talks, members of study groups retained an incentive to finish work in a suitable manner. Students who had trouble in their classes found it difficult to identify fellow students with whom to make study groups. This was described as a limitation to fres hman year academic performance. As the authors wrote, â€Å"Their inability to establish contacts with fellow students precluded their ability to take advantage of valuable peer networking and study group opportunities† (Amenkhienan and Kogan 536). In other words, the study groups were instrumental to some students’ success, while the inability to actually participate in them in other cases was a burden on their academic performance. This corroborates findings from other research that study groups are an asset to students of specialized fields. In one case of study group effectiveness for students, a pre-medicine undergraduate student named John decided that he should form a study group with other pre-medicine students because he had trouble with mathematics. Sure enough, John was able to put together a study group of pre-medicine students, some of whom were strong in mathematics, others in physics, others in chemistry, and others in biology. John was able to leverage his strength in biology to help a fellow member of the study group, Kevin, who was especially strong in mathematics. Together, the students could work collaboratively while doing well in their courses. This specialization of skills within the study group provides for personal improvement that one would not have access to outside of the group. If John had continued without participating in a group, his academic success would be