Explorations in Music

In recent years, The Walt Disney Company has made numerous remakes and spin-offs of their original movies and shows. One of these is the Disney+ series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series , which has received its fair share of praise and criticism. Throughout, there are many covers of songs from the source material (the Disney Channel original movie High School Musical ), but what really shine are the new songs written specifically for this show. “Second Chance” is one of the few songs that stuck with me after watching the series. It’s the closing song for the second season (out of four total). A major theme of this season is making mistakes, hurting, and healing. By the last episode, the four main characters are closing their arcs and this song solidifies what they have learned. Ricky, Nini, EJ, and Gina have all lived different, but intertwined lives, which blend beautifully together in this quartet. The song opens as a duet between Ricky and Nini, easing in with j...

If you’ve ever tried to do two things at once, you know it’s difficult to keep them both going. The classic example is when kids try (and sometimes fail) to rub their stomach and pat their head at the same time. There are so many things you could try to multitask with, and Hillary Klug has found her passion: her unique blend of fiddling and dancing. Hillary Klug was born and raised in a small town in Tennessee, only recently moving to Nashville. She had already been practicing the dance style of clogging for years when she took her first violin lesson at age 13. Her family really had no connection to dance or music, so Klug was out on her own. Even so, her family was very supportive. She found a mentor who taught her how to fiddle–different from what she learned at violin lessons–and soon fiddling became a core part of her identity. Later on, another mentor helped her shift her clogging into buck dancing, a similar style, and inspired her to carry on this tradition. Her mentors became ...

The Trinity of Carnatic Music Southern India has its own classical music style distinct from Northern India, called Carnatic music. It was likely either named after the location Karnatakam, or the Sanskrit term Karnātaka Sangītam, which refers to traditional music. Starting in the 12th century AD, the music of Northern India, Hindustani music, saw influences from Persia and central Asia, while Carnatic music did not. They continued to diverge, and by the 16th century AD, Saint Purandara Dasa, often considered the “father of Carnatic music,” had composed thousands of devotional songs and solidified the traits of this classical music style. Bhāva is extremely important–the expression of thoughts and emotions. This blends together with bhakti, devotion, to create stories in the lyrics, both expressing one’s human feelings and addressing a Hindu deity. These requirements are rooted in Carnatic music being a ritual of early Hinduism. The world around them was incorporated into the music, ...