We sung so many song and went so many places.

This semester we went to the Plantation Negro South to Appalachia to America the Great in the lens of the 1940s and 1950s back to the South in the Mississippi River delta post-slavery, up to Chi Town pre- Civil Rights, all the way across the seas to good ole Europe pre/circa Industrial Revolution and then somewhere in between in the land of cowboys and sailors.

Traveling to all these places through song sincerely connected me to people I knew and to people that I didn't know. Songs are the records of time, they are live history, they are bridges, they are comprehensible, they teach us how to understand one another. Music is indeed a language. Granted that we all have different backgrounds that inform how we might understand a song. Listening to a foreign song tells you more than you would ever know than if you never listened at all. 

I have gained a deeper tolerance for Songs and Places through the historic artifacts of the folk songs we sang. And they will always be able to orient me in these Places that I previously never knew.

The best thing I take away from this experience is a mindset. Always be open, be strong and be sure of what you are doing as you learn. In my first blog post I mentioned that I hesitated to take this class because of the artistic component. As the class went on I was comforted by the songs we sang, the people I sang with and the guidance I received. By singing the songs of places I was able to go somewhere and dig deeper into something beyond the me and what I thought I was. As I dug deeper to get to these places I showed bits and pieces of what I was learning and the things I learned, I absorbed and took with me to help me work on discovering who I am.

Where I am today 

W12

What a scary thought to be at sea, responsible for killing one of the worlds biggest beast...for your own survival. When I was in the sixth grade I went whale watching. I remember being about 15 miles from shore looking into the dark blue deep sea, I was terrified yet I still wanted to see the 2 ton mammal first hand. When I saw the the blowhole of the nearly prehistoric creature I was amazed at first then inwardly startled then at last amazed again. The blue whale continued to swim past us and onto the Gulf of Mexico. It was such a cool sight that I will always remember. Connecting my experience to that of a sailor I could not imagine having to engage in warfare with that enormous mammal, we are no match for them. Listening to Greenland Whale Fishery I could feel the sorrow and the dread that went with hunting whales. In my drawing I tried to capture the sad feelings and misfortunes that spelled out life or death in whale hunting.