In class when talking about South America, we only talked about Ecuador. I’d like to expand to Brazil. In Brazil the Bossa Nova is quite popular. It developed in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The name Bossa Nova actually means a ‘new trend’ or ‘new wave’ which I find beautiful. The Bossa Nova developed from a combination of the Samba and cool jazz. Instrumentation is varied and particularly simple with only a couple of rhythm instruments. I absolutely love listening to Bossa Nova music because it makes me calm down and focus on the here and now. If you ever need to just take a minute to gather yourself, look up Bossa Nova playlists on YouTube…you can never go wrong when picking one to listen to!
Coming back to Ecuador, modern music can take interesting twists and turns. Of course you have singers with instrumental accompaniment, but one twist I found was an instrumental background with a South American Flute at the forefront. The South American flute is like a pan pipe. It has all different lengths of pipes to make different pitches. The group that I found use a backing track to play the beats while one of the men plays the guitar and the other man plays the South American Flute. The flute is the most pure sounding natural flute I’ve heard and just makes me happy! What’s cool about the video I’m going to share is that near the end he switches to another flute and also adds in a shaker!
Let’s shift gears to Black American Blues. I don’t know if I’m going to be the only blog to mention this man-I hope not because he deserves lots of recognition-but I’m going to bring him up anyway. Louis Armstrong.
Louis Armstrong is an amazing musician. He was an amazing American trumpeter, composer, actor, and vocalist. He was one of the most influential people in jazz! His career spanned from the 1920’s-1960’s (and I wish I had lived during that time so I could see him perform live). What would have helped influence him music wise would be where he grew up- New Orleans. Today we think of New Orleans as a party city with good musical culture. The same would be true back when Armstrong was growing up. I’d say that spanning 5 decades with his music would point out how amazing of a musician he is. I encourage everyone to look up his music because every time I listen to his music I feel like I’m transported back in time.
Music is Universal 
I liked how you went into the Bossa Nova because it’s a term and a form of music that I’ve know and heard about, but never really knew exactly what it was or sounded like. Of course Louis Armstrong deserves any kind of recognition! He was certainly an amazing and versatile musician.
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This is all fun, Katie. I really like the bossa nova, too–it’s somehow both dancey and chill at the same time. And the South American flutes video is good–it seems to be pretty common for a single person to switch back and forth between the panpines and the end-blown flute. I wonder if it’s expected, like being able to play both flute and piccolo?
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