Houston Music Experience M-Term 2023

 On Tuesday, March 22, the second day of our Houston Music Experience began. We began the day by learning about the darker side of Houston Hip-Hop and Hip-Hop in general with shady record labels and their executives. One big name we talked about was James L. Smith also known as James Prince or J Prince, he was a CEO of a famous and successful Houston-based record label from Houston called Rap-A-Lot which he is known for his success and influential control over the Hip Hop scene.   After learning about J Prince we continued on with our day learning about artists in Houston and some of the big names that have come from here. The biggest name we talked about was the Ghetto Boys and DJ Screw.  The Ghetto Boys, created and produced by James Prince, would go on to become Houston's first nationally famous hip-hop group, thanks to their iconic song, "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," released in 1991. The album's title, "We Can't Be Stopped," was appropriate because o

      Today we started off the day by working on our final project for the presentation. I'm working with Oliver on a poster for Country and Rock from Houston. He is doing Kenny Rogers and I'm doing ZZ Top.      After lunch, we had Nuri Nuri, the radio station host of 99.1 Sundays Blues Brunch. He presented on all of the blues that came out of Houston and what exactly the blues are. He played us some songs from old blues artists and tunes. He taught us somethings about how blues songs are made, and the basic chords in them. It is called the  standard 12-bar blues progression has three chords in it - the 1 chord, the 4 chord, and then the 5 chord. In the key of E blues, the 1 chord is an E, the 4 chord is an A, and the 5 chord is a B. There are also many different types of blues, and they have influenced a lot of the music we listen to today.

  We began our morning with a walk to Mo’ Better Brews for breakfast/brunch. Mo’ Better Brews is known for being vegan and also having a large inventory of vinyl records. Once we returned back to the school we learned about the history of Archie Bell and The Drells and how that integrates with America's history, specifically the Vietnam War. After we went over to history of Archie Bell and The Drells we learned more about their musicality and sound. This lesson brought us to the topic of the TSU Tornados who are responsible for being the backing track of Tighten up which is one of the most popular Archie and the Drells songs. After learning about the TSU Tornadoes, we watched some videos about world renowned keyboard player, Billy Preston. He was famously nicknamed “The Fifth Beatle” for his tremendous help with The Beatles music group. After watching the videos we went to Chapultepec Lupita, which is a Tex-Mex restaurant on Richmond Ave. It is open 24/7 and most people after conce

Out and About in Houston!   On day 3 of our music experience we began our day by learning about the Jazz Crusaders. The Jazz Crusaders were based around the mid-’50s and started in Houston and then moved to Los Angeles. After learning about the Jazz Crusaders we headed down to the record shop called Cactus Music. When we arrived at the record shop, one of the owners explained to our group the history of the record shop. For about an hour students were free to look around and buy items at the record shop! After we browsed for a while, some of us bought vinyls, CDs, or posters and we all grouped and left the first record shop.  We got on the bus and began driving off to lunch, which we had come to a consensus to be Frenchie’s Chicken. On the drive there, Mr. Dorsey pointed out several prominent locations in the Third Ward, including Texas Southern University where the Jazz Crusaders had originally met, and the University of Houston campus. When we got to the restaurant, we grouped and we

Day 1 : Houston Music Experience      On Monday, March 20, 2023, we started the day off with Mr. Dorsey asking our class if we are music junkies, meaning, we listen to music all the time. Most of the class didn't raise their hands, not knowing what the question really meant, so Mr. Dorsey handed us a packet of questions to answer. The packet contained questions about our music tastes, opinions, and feelings.     After answering all the questions, we had to share back some of our answers. We all had different music tastes and got to listen to each others music. Mr. Dorsey provided information about the different singers and bands we listened to and I thought it was very informative and fun. We talked about who we thought the best male/female artists were, which caused a bit of debate in our class, but overall we respected each others opinions.      In the end, the class didn't realize how much we all listened to music, so Mr. Dorsey asked the same question from the start of clas