Course Name: MUS 22121 Music as a World Phenomenon in Florence

Course Description: This course explores music as a part of human life in a relaxed and fun way. As a complex social phenomenon, music reflects the experiences, desires, and histories of the world’s peoples. What does music mean to the people who produce it, practice it, and consume it? How are these meanings constructed and experienced? Each unit in this course highlights the music of a specific geographical area. In addition to these geographical regions, we will be exploring issues related to the musical practices of the musicians, audiences, composers, and teachers we study. The experiences of the musicians themselves help to contextualize the issues surrounding the complex world of music we will be exploring. Students in this class will learn to listen analytically and critically to many different kinds of music: to hear music as more than just sound. We will learn to recognize the fundamental structural elements of several different musical traditions and develop the ethnographic skills needed to understand their social and historical contexts.

Credit Hours: 3

Prerequisites: None

This course is offered through the Kent Campus.  Please review course tuition at https://www.kent.edu/tuition to find costs for Kent campus tuition.