For this linking task, I decided to take a look at Mark’s post, specifically knowing his background in music, as I wanted to see how he approached this task from that perspective!
Coming from a music background, Mark definitely draws from a lot of music theory when it comes to analyzing and justifying the songs he chose. For his criteria, he wanted to find pieces that “contain an obvious example of universality of musical elements, tempo, harmony, melody and texture” (Pepe, 2022). Some common element included “ostinato patterns, chant, call and response musical phrases and representations of nature”.
The first 4 tracks he chose belonged to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Stravinsky, some big names in classical music history. Mark explains his choice with some musical jargon, but then adds more information in an accessible way for those who might not have as much background knowledge in music. He also points out the significance of the composer or the piece, and uses very descriptive expressions to compare and contrast it with each other, providing some context in the realm of classical music.
"Compared to Mozart where emotions begin to surface, Beethoven brings it to a boil" and later on "If Beethoven brought emotions to a boil, Stravinsky boiled them over"
Mark then picks some tracks in the world music genre, and uses them to demonstrate some of the universal commonality between them, such as the call and response in chanting, pulsing trance-like rhythm, and nature imagery.
Lastly he chose a more contemporary blues song, Dark Was the Night to complete his curation. Mark chose this song specifically as blues took elements from the world music previously listed, and became a foundation of North American popular music.
Reflection
I thought Mark’s post was very insightful, as much of this information about these songs is unknown to me, as I do not come from a musical background and therefore do not have the skills to decipher them directly from the music tracks alone.
The way Mark put each piece next to each other for comparison and contrast helped with extending it into a greater context such that one can see why it was significant to include a certain track. He did not look at each track solely on its own, rather, he built on more to the foundations that he had laid down, such that his track-list curation and decisions felt cohesive as a unit!
References
Pepe, M. (2022. July 10) [8.2] Golden Record Curation. Mark Pepe’s ETEC540 Course Site. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540mpepe/2022/07/10/8-2-golden-record-curation/