Syncopation

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Synchopation refers to how much a musical rhythm stresses the subdivisions between each beat verses the beat itself. –Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding, Switched on Pop (88)

There are a lot of varieties of syncopation–including “suspension syncopation,” “missed-beat syncopation,” “even-notes syncopation,” “off-note syncopation,” and “backbeat.” The site Hip Hop Makers breaks them down pretty thoroughly here. You don’t need a mastery of all these types, but it’s good to know they exist.

Here are some examples.

First, Romeo Santos, a bachata artist. Bachata is originally a Dominican musical genre, and it’s all about dancing. The syncopation is fundamental to bachata as a dance.

Here’s an example of bachata dancing. Notice how the leg work is all about the syncopation.

Here’s James Brown using a syncopated groove suited to his signature moves–and to make a mid-tempo song danceable.

Here’s Bruno Mars taking a cue from James Brown style syncopation to get people on the dance floor.

Here’s Raphael Saadiq, using syncopation to create a feeling of disorientation.

Here’s Kendrick Lamar, bringing more disorientation.

Here’s New Order with a new wave synth variation on syncopation, creating a menacing feeling with robotic sounding syncopation with a military vibe.

And here’s Los Fulanos, transforming the same song with Latin-style syncopation. Where New Order feels like tortured isolation, Los Fulanos create a collective feeling. The singer sings the same lovelorn lyrics, but the infectious syncopation, along with call and response, makes it feel like he’s getting solace from the rest of the band.

Record Club: War with Heaven by Keshi

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Losing the person you love most. No matter the person, we’ve all experienced the pain of losing someone we love dearly, whether it be losing them figuratively or physically. The song, “War with Heaven,” was Keshi’s contribution to the soundtrack for the 2021 Marvel superhero film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Known for his distant falsetto vocals and textural instrumentals, Casey Luong, known by his stage name Keshi, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist. During the chorus of the song, Keshi harmonizes with himself:

“Might go to war with Heaven

For keepin’ me away from you, so long, eh-eh-eh

Might go to war with Heaven

‘Cause I don’t know what else I’d do

If I was away from you, so long”

As heard in the song, Keshi uses “going to war” as hyperbole for fighting for a relationship with his lover; always wanting to be closer than they were before. The idea of “going to war with heaven” to reclaim someone you love is relentlessly grand and romantic, thus being the reason it resonates so much with his listeners. To love someone so deeply that you’d want nothing else but to savor them in your arms, even if that means going to war for them.

Being familiar with Keshi’s discography and how he likes to structure and execute his compositions, this song was similar to yet different from his past works. In this song, Keshi maintains his signature falsetto vocals, however, if you listen closely to when he sings ‘heaven,’ it’s part of his high falsetto riffs. This song specifically is also in a higher range than what he would typically sing because rather than his usual tendency to just hold the note, he instead goes down the scale. But while the composition of this song was different from his current discography and was also made for a soundtrack, this song was no different in context as he was able to yet again capture the truest human emotions and put them into words.

Regardless of the context of how you once lost that person, the feeling of longing to do anything for the person you love is universally felt. Not only that, but when he belts the chorus, it’s as if he wants the person from above to hear and understand the desperation he has for them the us, making the song so heart-wrenchingly relatable as his efforts might not come to fruition as they already belong to “heaven.”

For Class Thursday

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I’m writing  with instructions for Thursday’s class.

1. Remember that you only need to read pp. 105-129 from Maureen Mahon’s Black Diamond Queens. If you don’t have page numbers, that’s from the beginning of the chapter up through the heading “Creative Labor.”

2. Choose one of the songs or artists Mahon discussses. Find a little of their music. Bring that along to class.

3. Choose a passage from each assigned reading–Mahon on backup singers and Harding and Sloan on harmony. Choose passages that speak to each other in some interesting way. What do you understand in a new way by reading them together?

4. Be sure to listen to the songs I’ve listed. They’re all relevant.

5. Think about whether your chosen passages help you hear the music you’ve chosen and I’ve assigned in new ways.

All the Way Around Record Club

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“All the Way Around” by Marvin Gaye is a song that he proposed to women he deeply loved and would shortly marry. Gaye’s voice is timeless, the instrumentation paired with his subdued but passionate vocals lets you know exactly the emotions he is feeling. In the intro of his song had the melody of his voice reaching this pitch of pure lust, it almost felt like I was getting summoned. When the drums kicked in when he was about to sing his first verse, you can hear that his is not just using his voice to sing but he is also adding his voice as a instrument.

The album possesses the yearning of love and he executes that with “ I Want You” , he makes me romantazies my whole life once I hit play, its a bitter sweet feeling if you think about it. He is asking for his lovers hand in life but with love there also comes the ego of ones self. Gaye introduces that in his music with the lust of women moaning in his music representing sexual needs a man desires.

Furthermore, “ All the Way Around” captures the distilled feeling and asthetic of black sensuality,sex, and simmering erotic desires right down tot he album cover that was made by late Ernie Barnes. The album captures the aesthetic of soul music the women dressed in short flowy dresses and the men with jeans and tshirts. You can also see the band playing in the background a young black man with a tuxedo singing his heart away with the mic in hand next to him you see a man with a saxophone, which Gaye loved using in his music. What you really see is the expression of love that everyone is surrounded by you are hearing good music you are seeing everyone around grooving to the blues. That gives something the listener to look forward to when listening to Marvin Gaye’s music, he is bringing to the forefront a love that is natural it is not love you can find anywhere else.

 

Timothy So, “EMS Mixtape”

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EMS Mixtape

The songs of my life in the crazy emergency services world. These songs while may not coincide with the overall song, they are songs that relate to my experience.

“One Last Hope” from Hercules

The beginning for most Emergency Medical Technicians. The classroom. To teach us how to save lives(and transport patients to dialysis). Taught by a Danny Devito-esque, experienced instructor who is well versed in the world of Emergency Medical Services. Jaded and cynical but also a source of knowledge and my main resource in my quest to become a “hero” and help people. Like Devito trains Hercules to be a hero, so does my instructor Charlie train the class of twenty people to be EMTs.

I learned a lot in this time, I started to correct my grandiose visions of being an EMT and realized the hard work and studying it takes. I learned the basics of patient care and got my feet wet in the expanding world of medicine. Learning the ways of CPR and the AED and learning how to diagnose and treat certain illnesses. This is the beginning chapter of my journey.

“Get the Party Started” by P!nk

Fresh out of EMT school and I am ready to “get this party started” equipped with my new license, CPR card, and stethoscope. I am excited looking for a job and get the chance to help people. I search online, and I am available to get a job fairly easily in New York City. While I won’t be pulling up in a “Mercedez Benz” I fantasize about “looking flashy” in an ambulance responding to emergencies.

Like how this song has an upbeat tempo and a uplifting tone that keeps on rising throughout the song; it is close to how I feel about starting out in the medicine field. This is something I have wanted to do and I finally am getting the chance to pursue that dream. The party of being an EMT has started as I start my new career. I soon find out that is not the party I thought it was.

“Stay” by Rihanna

I started out in my new job and reality hits hard. I realize it’s not all lights and siren emergencies and life-saving calls but rather it is a mixed bag of being a medical taxi with emergencies sprinkled in. The world of NYC EMS usually starts in transports, where to gain experience most companies require you to have a couple of months to a year experience in picking people up and dropping them off. The theory being you learn the techniques you would need for solely emergency calls and you gain a sense of how the EMS system works along with how the hospital works.

This was jarring for me as “all along it was a fever,” the ideas I had of being an EMT. I was a “cold sweat hot headed believer” of the images of EMS from shows, movies, and even in class. I knew that there was more to the job that transports but this start in this career was a reality check. This song really captures that effect for me. The way it is slow, with the solemn piano playing in the background. Rihanna love seems to go “round and around” while the same is happening to me literally with transporting patients either to the hospital or their house but also with my feelings of being an EMT. I am unsure about my feelings with this career and bleak start. I am not doing what I set out to do. I want to stay in the excitement I had when I first started out. But after a year of transports, it faded out pretty quickly.

“Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor

This is sort of a cliché I know, but this is the song of power and passion. It is pushing through adversity and coming out on the other side with the “eye of the tiger.” The fight here being is something I feel many NYC EMTs will go through. It’s pushing past the negative effects of the system but the lack of motivation even from your peers. I soon realized that for many, that dream of saving lives and the subsequent failure to do so by not getting the chance, really burns people out in the job. Some feel cheated and while I struggled with this reality as well, it also inspired me more. I was “risin up” going literally back on the streets in the ambulance and I was motivating myself again to continue. The guitar riffs with the buildup of the song is what I felt like trying to build up myself to become a better EMT. I pushed past the slow, negative, pessimistic feelings of the system and my partners but rather found my personal joy in it. While I wasn’t necessarily helping people with emergencies, I was still helping them in comfort and assisting them in their times of need. I realized one day, after driving two hours to New Jersey with a 68-year-old patient who was one of the interesting people I have ever met and then carrying him up five flights on a Stairchair, that what I loved about my job is helping patients and making those connections. My thrill of the fight is patient care.

“Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees

I had to include this song, the CPR song known in the world of medicine. The song has an upbeat tempo. This 1977 song by the Bee Gees has 103 beats per minute, very close to the recommended 100-120 chest compressions per 60 seconds with two rescue breaths every 30 compressions. They teach the song along side with CPR in class. It has a stable and consistent beat, where you can match the compression to each beat. Funny enough, the song is named “Stayin’ Alive” which is what CPR does exactly, it helped provide oxygenated blood and attempts to resuscitate a person who has no pulse or breaths.

This song isn’t only ingrained in EMS teaching but it’s a song a I regularly play while driving the rig. It’s friendly, infectious sound is fun to sing along to. It also helps me remain positive during stressful times with patients. It’s a thought that runs through my head continuously when I am on an emergency call. Stay alive. While the company I worked for was mostly transports, there are emergency calls as you can get flagged down by a pedestrian or if a facility calls. We are in the business of keeping people alive, and this song matches that. “Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother, you’re stayin alive” is the anthem of an EMT. The shit can hit the fan pretty quick.

“Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne

The life on the ambulance is really a crazy train. Even if its for a transport focus company. “All Aboard” indeed. You never know with a patient really. They can go from 0 to 100 pretty quickly. A stable patient can all of a sudden become unstable. That bad-ass riff in the beginning of the song always pumps me up, especially when I am about to start a 14 hour shift. When your first patient is an inmate who got injured and needs an ambulance to transfer, which has to be escorted by an armed guard and a truck following our ambulance and then your next is a routine dialysis return to their home followed by an emergency call for a broken femur is something pretty standard. “Crazy, but that just how it goes” is accurate. I have peers who have psychiatric patients attack the technician and run out of a moving ambulance. But then again sometimes you are posted with no calls for four hours and you are able to catch up on you Netflix shows and some sleep. It is a mixed bag really but it is crazy train and a rollercoaster at times

“Superman” by Lazlo Bane

What is cool about this job, is that you have a partner. Partner’s are crucial, you are a two person team trying to help patients while battling enemies like stress, fatigue, and worst of all the people who control your fate: dispatch. Dispatch gives you the calls and literally determine the craziness of your day. But what can remain constant is your partner. If you are blessed to get a permanent partner that you work well with, then the job becomes way better. They are a resource in a stressful job. This song with the acoustic guitar always playing in the background provides a personal feeling where Lazlo Bane claims that he “can’t do this all on my own” as he is “no Superman” much like how it feels in EMS. You can’t do the job alone, literally, the stretcher required two people to lift a patient safely up and down. I would say this to my partners(that I work with well) where I need them and we can’t do this job alone. When you lose that partner that you worked so well with I feel like the end of this song where “someday we’ll be together” again I tell them. I’m telling you, it is like finding a soul mate when you find a partner who you work well with. You spend a lot of hours with this person.

 

Homecoming: The Live Album

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“Single Ladies”, “Crazy in Love”, and “Countdown” are the songs you know and love by Queen B herself. However evolving beyond that, following the release of her 2016 Lemonade album we are introduced to a new side of her music that displays an activist voice. Transforming her sound, Beyonce Knowles Carter makes history with her 2018 Coachella performance. The 40-track set list is produced onto the album, Homecoming: The Live Album and is filled with some of her greatest hits reimagined to the theme of an HBCU Homecoming performance. With majorette dancers, a poppin drumline, an impeccable horn section, steppers, and much more, Beyonce makes this album her statement piece emphasizing her roots.

As the first black woman to ever headline one of the biggest festival stages, Mrs. Knowles was sure to leave a lasting imprint on the Coachella stage. Her performance was not to exalt herself and all she has created nor was it enticing for that matter. Instead, it was to educate the world on black culture in every way. What made this performance so enticing was its ability to transport the audience into that realm of black culture through dance, song, instrumentation, step, and much more. Beyonce’s theme of an HBCU Homecoming is iconic in many ways as its stylistic impression is apparent within each track. Homecoming: The Live Album is not an ode to her greatest hits but her greatest influences.

“Freedom (Homecoming)[Live]” is the remastered rendition of the song “Freedom” from Beyonce’s Lemonade album. Arguably one of the most powerful pieces within her catalog, it is a statement piece against injustice in America. Unveiling the struggle of generations tired of experiencing violence, being marginalized, and subdued by institutional racism, it urges everyone not to be complicit but vocal.

“Freedom (Homecoming)[Live]” is originally composed with an organ playing the lead melody, which provides the feeling of being in a baptist church at an altar pleading with God. However, in the live version of the homecoming album, the lead organ part is replaced with a heavy brass section led by horns providing more layers, depth, and the feeling of the song reaching the inner pit of your soul. To preserve the gospel nature of the song, hints of the organ melody remain intact as bass and electric guitar enter. The gospel nature of the song is a spiritual experience

Within the pre-chorus of “Freedom (Homecoming)[Live],” she melodic sings, “I’m telling these tears, “Go and fall away, fall away,” Oh. May the last one burn into flames” portrays that these cries won’t be in vain. The lyrics evoke that in spite of the road to victory being tolling and sorrowful it is imperative to press on. Acknowledging that time and time again although the black community faces moments of suffering their power and determination shine through. She soulfully sings, “I’ma walk, I’ma march on the regular. Painting white flags blue”, declaring complacency is not an option anymore and we won’t be silent up until reform is had. At the end of the chorus, the music breaks, leaving Beyonce vocally bare to sing, “ima keep on running cause a winner don’t quit on themselves, oh” the emptiness here with nothing but vocal and a powerful organ entrance leaves her audience awe. Capitalizing on this musically glorious moment, Beyonce is highlighting to her audience that in midst of the nation’s turmoil, we won’t quit fighting for justice.

After the song Freedom, Beyonce slows things down with the anthem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” creating a heart-wrenching moment with her audience. Accompanied now by her hand-picked orchestra, Beyonce’s soulful voice carries powerfully through the syncopated stomps and chants of her dancers. Mimicking the sounds of a literal march the stomps signify a sense of union and defiance as their chants signify an unending resilience. With big crescendoes and melisma in every melodic cry Beyonce sings, “let our rejoicing rise, high as the glistening sky, let us march on till victory is won”. As if attempting to touch heaven her powerful yet angelic voice is moving and draws us into experiencing something bigger than a mere performance. In a moment when the Black Lives Matter movement is at its peak, this anthem is a moment of encouragement to remain firm in the rally for social change and continue pressing forward.

Beyonce’s Homecoming album also displays musically joyous moments such as the communal joy that filled the arena when “Drunk in Love (Homecoming) [Live]” came on. Here, Beyonce calls for the audience to sing along with her as you also hear the band just as engaged in the moment as the audience. In addition, we are able to get a blue jazzy feel with a steel drum giving a reggae sound in “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No) [Homecoming] [Live]” and “Hold Up (Homecoming) [Live]”. Another beautiful moment within this album is the “Bug a Boo Roll Call (Interlude) [Homecoming] [Live]” which displays the humor and talent of stepping derived from black culture. Each stepper is given the opportunity to show off their own flare as they also provide the audience with comedic relief of their rendition of Beyonce songs or strangely cover the opera “Ava Maria”. The audience is able to share a laugh before being blown away by a clean step combination many have never been exposed to. Meticulous in her craft Beyonce is sure to make sure the recording of her Coachella performances catches every breath and rhythmed stomp on stage creating the effect that you are in the audience watching live.

Homecoming is melodically satisfying in many ways as the band, orchestra, and vocalist synthesize so effortlessly. Her seamless transitions create melodic medleys such as from track 16 into track 17 “Party (Homecoming) [Live]”. Her background singers’ choral entrance “I may be young but I’m ready” is perfectly harmonized where you can’t help but have your face scrunched up in complete enjoyment.

After 22 years of being in the industry, she is more than just her vocal abilities and glamorous performances. She byproduct of what has come before her. Homecoming is symbolic of returning to your roots; home and its culture. Homecoming is hopeful for more joyful days. Thank you for bringing us home Beyonce.