Musical Autobiography

   Although Western Art Music is a big part of my life (obviously), I also have a big connection to African, Jamaican, and Hispanic music. My family is from Liberia, which is located in West Africa and my paternal grandmother is half Jamaican. All my life, I have been around African and Jamaican music. We have gospel music, popular music, and regular songs such as “Happy Birthday” with African and Jamaican influences. Listening to an example of a popular South African song “Body to Body”, I am able to hear that while there are definite American influences such as Auto-Tune, the music is inherently African. The beat sounds more complex and it seems like the rhythm and percussion aspect of the song is just as important as the singers are.  

    There seems to be a different quality of sound in this music. Playing the different genres of music in my iTunes library, I realized how much of my music sounds similar. I have spoken Spanish since I was four and through my academic career I have been involved with Hispanics and their culture. After all, it’s extremely difficult to speak a different language, and not involve yourself completely in the culture that provides the language. I have classical Spanish guitar music, Latino pop and hip-hop, and Hispanic reggaetone and this music sounds extremely similar to the African and Jamaican music that I grew up with. The biggest audible difference that I heard was between the African, Jamaican, and Latin music, and the American music. For some reason, there seems to be something that American artists include in their music that these other artists don’t. When my parents and their siblings were growing up in Liberia, they were introduced to American music such as Michael Jackson, Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye and others. I would guess that the reasons that they liked American music so much were because it was different from what they were used to, but that it also has a type of easy, 1-2-3-4 beat that African music doesn’t.

   When pop arose and artists such as Britney Spears, *Nsync, and the Backstreet Boys became popular, I added that type of music to my growing music library. Of course I noticed the difference between that music and the music I was used to, but I liked it. And when hip-hop’s new generation featuring Chris Brown, T-Pain, and Drake grew, I heard how the African. Jamaican, and Hispanic influences were used underneath the melody, but also how they reached a happy medium with pop beats. Today, I realize that artists from other countries such as Rihanna, Bruckup, and Sean Paul use their home music as well as American music, just like artists from my countries and Spanish-speaking countries. The world is becoming one, big, melting pot for music, and I am glad that my culture can contribute to that.