Wrong Day to Go to Balboa Park

I dragged my family to Balboa Park on Sunday, intending to catch the 2:00pm organ concert at the Spreckels Organ Pavillion, not realizing that the EarthFair was going on.  It was well after 2pm before I even managed to find parking (a mile-and-a-half away), and the concert was over before I could wade through the 60,000-odd people to get to the pavillion.  Poor planning on my part!  I'm going to have to get more creative coming up with concerts to attend with audiences and performers whom I can interview.

Getting sick and falling a week behind is catastrophic for a once-per-week class, but it has given me some time to ruminate over my research topic.

I'll be covering the role of the organ in culture.  This "King of All Instruments" has had such a rich past that it blows my mind when I speak to people who have never actively listened to organ music.  Many have thought it was merely a functional instrument for conducting church services, wedding services, and funeral services.  We shall prove that the organ is a much more versatile instrument of immense character and of great importance.

Gigout's Toccata in B minor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t38aWitpVXQ

Dupre's Prelude and Fugue in G minor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj6rMaYw5c4

More to come very, very soon.

Possibilities Abound

I've had a number of different ideas brewing regarding the subject of my research for this quarter's class.  My top consideration was the culture of the marching band, and the marching band's role in other cultures (sports); however, speaking from experience, most school bands' marching season is the Fall, and Spring is concert season.  Concert season is its own thing, but during this time, bands don't have the same interaction with the public and with other cultures as they do during marching season.  Even the drum and bugle corps are in recruitment and rehearsal mode this time of year.  Too bad.

Another vastly different culture that might be interesting to study is that of the electronic music scene.  It is certainly a culture unto itself, with myriad subcultures.  From the mildest of clubs that occasionally feature a house DJ to illegal warehouse parties to full-blown raves with multiple rooms/genres/scenes/weird people and enormous festivals out in the desert; the scope of the electronic music scene is huge.  The current soar in the popularity of Dubstep is certainly not harming the popularity of the scene, I'm sure.

I recently saw a great documentary from 2008: "Nerdcore Rising" which followed then up-and-coming hip-hop artist MC Frontalot, who helped spark a new subgenre of hip-hop that appealed to highly intellectual yet sometimes socially-challenged listeners.  I know that Comic-Con is massively growing in audience and scope, and it would be interesting to see how music is intertwined into that scene.

I'll ponder on this.