1st lecture with songs..

Sufi Song

On the 1st lecture of this course, we had been introduced to a sufi song. The song was sang in other language, of course it was not English. Well, it was a task, all we needed to do was just listened to it.

First thought that came accross my mind was, "it sounds like Hindi song". But still i listened to it. The song was about praising GOD...although the singer, Saeen Zahoor was a Muslim and the song itself was about praising Allah, we still could listen to it as a universal song. Basically, my class was consisted of multiracial friends, so the song might give them different meaning. I didn't think it was a problem.

The song was sang beautifully by the singer. I didn't get the meaning when I listened to it but the beat of melody helped me to feel.It didn't matter if we didn't understand it by looking at the alien lyric, what we could do was listened and felt with heart. Then we could feel it and understand it. =)

Alejandro by Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga is a famous singer all over the world and her songs are always hit songs. During lecture time, on the same day we listened to Sufi Song, we listened to ‘Alejandro’ sang by Lady Gaga. The song was played in class and almost everybody enjoyed listened to it.

Even though the song was just a hit song, it is actually beyond what we thought. The song itself carried a number of interpretations and different people might view it differently. For me, I felt like I was watching a drama that was played by Lady Gaga with a group of men. It was pretty much like watching a theatre. The songs itself indicated the feeling of the woman in the video clip which was obviously played by Lady Gaga. She expressed her feeling and emotion which were conveyed through the choreography of the song that suggested her sadness and regret. If we wanted to use this song in classroom, I didn’t think it was a good idea for a teacher to show the video clip to class but it was fine to let the students listened to the song and learn the message from it.

Of course ‘Alejandro’ was different from Sufi Song. We couldn’t compare the content of the both songs. But what I was trying to share here was although both songs were composed in different genres and purposes; both of them carried their own interpretations and meanings. They were just like literature and they had their own ways to convey different messages and ideas. For me, in our classroom, it was fine to use songs because songs were part of art as well as literature.