Bright Hall

Beyonce Serenades Barack & Michelle

Emily Lasky — 2009-01-21T15:29:00+00:00

Filed under: Politics, University of Pennsylvania, Music

Last night marked Barack Obama's first night as leader of the free world, so naturally, he spent his time getting down with his presidential self.

Obama and the First Lady attended the Neighborhood Inauguration Ball, just one of 10 events the Obamas attended Tuesday night. The Neighborhood Ball was the first inauguration event to be open to the people, and the first ball the Obamas visited on their whirlwind night. The Ball featured performances by Jay-Z, Sting, and Stevie Wonder, among others, and was broadcast on ABC. It was a fitting moment for the new president to include regular people in the inauguration festivities and turn the Ball into a celebratory concert people of all ages could enjoy.

At the Neighborhood Ball, the couple danced to Beyonce performing Etta James' classic "At Last" and later, Obama threw down some old school moves with Aretha Franklin and other attendees (see below). It is the rare president who can do "the bump" with class. As Obama settles in today and begins work on a million different issues, including suspending some of the military trials at Guantanamo, remember this image and know that we clearly entered a new age:

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Rap Is Scottish; America Is Confused

Emily Lasky — 2008-12-29T19:40:00+00:00

Filed under: University of Pennsylvania, Music

According to Ferenc Szasz, a professor of American and Scottish culture at the University of New Mexico, rap music, that hallmark of modern American culture, actually comes from medieval Scotland. Because in addition to kilts, golf, and throwing logs, the Scottish are also well known for spitting those phat rhymes.

More specifically, Szasz's argument is that rap battles are derived from "flyting," in which two people insult each other via vulgar, satirical rhymes. This practice was so popular, poets would perform in front of kings, such as the Flyting Of Dunbar and Kennedy, performed in front of King James IV in the 16th century.

Centuries later, flyting crossed the Atlantic when Scottish slave owners traveled to America and passed the practice onto their African-American slaves. According to Szasz, the American version of flyting first appeared as a war poem published in Vanity Fair in 1861.

Watch the clip below of Eminem battling in 8 Mile (NSFW because of the language) and then compare it to the text of Dunbar and Kennedy (supposedly also NSFW if you can actually understand it). The two should be similar in terms of the use of obscenities and clever word play as well as the competitive nature of the activities, in which only one performer is judged to be the winner.

And do not be surprised when in retaliation, New York City claims that Sean Connery is from the Bronx.

8 Mile:

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"Stayin Alive" Now Even More True to Its Name

Emily Lasky — 2008-10-19T06:04:00+00:00

Filed under: University of Pennsylvania, Science, Music

Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother, you can save lives!

A study from the University of Illinois medical school attempted to determine whether the Bee Gees' classic "Stayin' Alive" (see/hear below) can actually help people perform CPR. According to the American Heart Association, people are supposed to perform 100 compressions a minute when trying to revive someone. It turns out that at 103 beats a minute, "Stayin' Alive" has the perfect rhythm for dancing and performing CPR. In fact, whether listening to the music or just thinking of the song, subjects in the study performed more chest compressions than are considered necessary, which is sort of a "more the merrier" situation.

The study on how you can tell by the way a man uses his walk, he's a woman's man, was inconclusive.

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Guitar Hero: Saving the Music

Emily Lasky — 2008-06-01T21:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, University of Pennsylvania, Music, Pop Culture

I don't play an instrument. I don't have a working iPod or CD player. In an entertainment journalism class, we had to do a song critique, and while most of the students picked Bob Dylan or an indie band with meaningful lyrics, I chose Europe's "The Final Countdown." Fun fact: the phrase "the final countdown" is sung 16 times.

So I am not what you would call a music aficionado. Or a musician. And I know VH1 has been trying to save the music for years, but Guitar Hero has accidentally wandered across a way to get people actively engaged in music in a way that doesn't actually require any musical skills. Thanks to GH, I have been a rock god for two years now. Fun fact: though the GH guitar does not have strings, you can get callouses if you play too much.

Rightfully so, GH is permeating every aspect of pop culture: boosting song sales, being referenced on TV shows as disparate as My Name Is Earl, South Park, and Gossip Girl, destroying video game sales in a way no game other than Grand Theft Auto has. Plus, it's got widely different age groups and people playing. By widely, I mean I know a girl happy holding the guitar vertically like a tiny little cello and on the other end of the spectrum, a guy who has so handily beat every song that he decided to learn to play an actual guitar. So he got one.

And then there's someone on the middle of the spectrum, like me. I generally start out playing the cheesy '80s songs I know. But to beat the game, I have to branch out from "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" and "Talk Dirty to Me" to songs or bands I have never heard of, which applies to most of the tougher songs. I get to hear all these songs I never would have experienced before. I don't know who Eric Johnson is, but I love "Cliffs of Dover."

I may not know any chords, and I may have a tendency to play "Rock You Like a Hurricane" before choosing the Who or Rage Against the Machine, but Guitar Hero has done a service to music overall. The Aerosmith edition will be just another example of how GH gets people to trek through featured band's old song catalogs or at least gets them to sing along (loudly and badly in my case) to classic rock on the radio. Now that the gamemakers are adding a Rock Band-like drum set and a function to make your own songs, GH is encompassing much more of the musical world than the earlier incarnations. It's actually making that world accessible, outside the band room and well outside any reasonable measures of musical talent. I couldn't be a rock god without it.

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