【托福备考】托福写作提高必背10个短文 （1）艺术类音乐

It may seem strange that we're discussing music from a Broadwayproduction in this class, "The Lion King" especially, since it'sbased on a popular Hollywood movie. I mean music preformed for Broadway theaterin the heart of New York city surely would seem to be in the western traditionof popular music and not have much in common with the music we have beenstudying in this course, such as gamelan music of Indonesia, or Zulu chants ofSouth Africa, music that developed outside the western tradition of Europe andAmerica. But in fact, musicians have a long-standing tradition of borrowingfront one another's cultures. And this productions director intentionallyincluded both western and non-western music. That way, some of the rhythms,instrument, and harmonies typical of non-western music contrast with andcomplement popular music more familiar to audiences in North America andEurope, music like rock, jazz or Broadway style show tunes. So I want to spendthe rest of this class and most of the next one on the music from the show"The Lion King" as a way of summarizing some of the technicaldistinctions between typical western music and the non-western music that we'vebeen studying. Now the African influence on the music is clear. The story takesplace in Africa. So the director got a South African composer to write songswith a distinctly African sound. And the songs even include words from Africanlanguages. But we'll get back to the African influence later. First let's turnto the music that was written for the shadow puppet scenes in "The LionKing", music based on the Indonesian music used in the shadow puppettheater of that region.