Sunshine, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA // 11.9.14Open Letter to New College Students + Old:On

Sunshine, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA // 11.9.14Open Letter to New College Students + Old:On the first day of my global musics course, my professor played an unusual recording for the class.  He explained that the track came from Bosnia, where two sisters passed the time by singing with each other while they did their chores.  As the recording played, the entire class cringed.  The sisters sounded disjointed, out of touch, out of tune.  Still mildly hungover from the last night of freedom for a while, I was less than appreciative of the blaring din.After letting his students suffer for a moment, our professor offered up a little more context to the piece.  The sisters had spent years refining this technique.  In fact, they were perfectly in tune.  You see - the sisters were holding a half-step interval, or a minor second in the diatonic scale.  If you’re familiar with the piano, this is the equivalent of playing an adjacent black and white key at the same time.  To understand how difficult this is, our professor guided participants in an attempt to sing a minor second.  Without fail, one student’s voice always faltered and submitted to the same tune as their classmate’s.  As group after group tried, we began to understand the beauty in the sisters’ steadfast ability to hold their own frequency.Although our professor only meant to illuminate our skewed perception of musicality, I found his lesson quintessential to my time at college.  We’ve all heard the old platitude, “stay true to your own frequency.”  And while it may sound like some hippy gibberish, we often forget the power and beauty in that little half-step difference.  Conformity becomes all too easy when silence is complacency.  And in such an emotionally and politically charged time in our nation, students can only expect larger disputes and protests to manifest on campus.  You may not always agree with your roommates, your professors, your friends, and even the institution as a whole.  But foster your own frequency in the midst of that discord.  That pulsing vibration that emanates from contrasting noises may make everyone in the room cringe for a moment, yet the resulting dissonance is you and sisters and brothers learning to make something beautiful together.  Maybe within your four years, you will learn to captivatingly dissent together, revel in the cacophony, and celebrate your own vibrations.Thanks for listening to my late night rambles xxLJ -- source link

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