Claryn Contemplates Cultural Cadences

As I mentioned in my first blog, I am someone that enjoys a wide range of music. To demonstrate this contrast, my two top genres according to Stats for Spotify are hard rock and K-pop. In the US, these genres tend to appeal to very different audiences. Most of the hard rock fans I know are middle-aged men. Most of the K-pop fans I know are girls. Though the fanbases are, of course, more diverse than this, this is how the demographics tend to exist. As an avid fan of both of these genres, I have received many, many, many comments about my interests. My freshman year of high school, I walked into class with an AC/DC t-shirt on. My teacher raised his eyebrow at me and asked, “AC/DC? Can you name even one of their songs?” I am convinced that every woman with an interest in a male-dominated subject has been asked a variation of this question. (I got him to leave me alone by asking if there was a specific album that he wanted me to name a song from. And then listed all of their studio a...

 Fair warning! I'm gonna talk about a death in the family so if this is triggering to anyone, please be aware!   My family is a fairly musical one. My mom and dad both noodle on a couple different instruments, my cousins are pretty good guitarists, and I consider myself to be a somewhat decent flautist. Hopefully. This gene, however, must have skipped right over my grandmother. God bless her, she could not carry a tune in a bucket. This never stopped her, though. As a matter of fact, I can’t think about my childhood memories with her without hearing her singing voice. She was always singing or humming or an odd combination of the two that was meant to mask the fact that she didn’t know the lyrics. Anything from old hymns to commercial jingles to Elvis (I know everyone’s grandmother was an Elvis fan but mine was an Elvis STAN!!!), she always had a melody in her mouth. When I think back to my childhood with my grandma, one song in particular comes to mind.     Sh...