The…’Cool Stuff’ Blog #3

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I like to find trap music in the cultures that we study. This time is no different. I found some amazing Arabian Trap music that includes some of the aspects we talked about in class. The bending between notes (quarter tones, etc) is present. The constant beat in the background gives the piece life. The repetitiveness doesn’t get annoying or boring, it actually gets more interesting as it goes on because you have a couple of breaks where the drum comes in and does some fun rhythms! The melodies are simple but seem complex when they’re all put together. I suggest looking more into this if you like the music!

Continuing with the Arab theme, I also found an artist I liked. His name is Omar Offendum. He’s a Syrian American hip-hop artist. The first song I listened to really connected to me in some ways. It’s about immigration, fatherhood, mortality, Syria, america, and mother nature. I related to the mortality of the piece so I decided to share it with all of you. In the piece they do use the Qunun, which I found to be very cool and really put the piece into perspective. The song is a mix of speaking and rapping. He narrates over the Qunun and then raps with the beat. The piece is just beautiful.

Lastly, we’re going to jump over to India. I found a YouTube page that takes wants to ‘make classical music cool’. They add in elements of Indian music to make it cool! The video I found had me amazed. They took Ed Sheeran’s song, Shape Of You and added in Indian elements. They use the percussion syllables and don’t exactly hit the note center. It’s very creative and I absolutely love this version. Other than Ed Sheeran’s original version, this will be the only other version I’ll listen to! I would definitely like for them to do more American popular songs like this!