Afro-Carribean Music and Dance
MUSIC 211
SPRING 2020
Mon/Wed
9:25-10:40 AM
Professor Juan Usera
This hands-on course will focus on Afro-Caribbean music and dance traditions of such countries as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Students will study rhythms, basic drum techniques, dance steps, drum patterns, improvisation, and song repertoire. Students will take turns accompanying each other on traditional instruments for each musical genre introduced and will learn the dynamic between drummers and dancers that is commonly found in many musical cultures of West Africa and the Caribbean.
NEWS ALERT: Cable television station New York 1 has named Music Professor Caroline Stoessinger a New Yorker of the week.
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The Department of Art & Music, restructured as an independent program in July 2008, boasts an internationally renowned faculty of stellar scholars, artists, and musicians. The curriculum in Art & Music offers our students an opportunity for the development of intellectual, creative, imaginative and independent thinking and skills unique in the College. In the words of Albert Einstein, who believed that he could not have conceived of his scientific innovations were he not an independent and creative thinker: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand." According to recent government surveys, students who study the arts statistically outperform those who do not in all subject areas; and are far more likely to succeed as professionals and responsible members of their communities.
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The Department of Art & Music is dedicated to this premise by preparing students to develop into superior, well-rounded, and accomplished intellectuals and professionals, whatever their chosen career paths. Committed to academic excellence, the Department offers edifying courses in global art and music theory, history, and practice—both historical and contemporary – that are designed to imbue our students with exceptional creative skills, substantive historical and scholarly knowledge, and significant enhancement of their cognitive abilities as they pursue careers in law, criminal justice and related fields. The Department offers a minor in both art and music.