Meaningful Collaborations: An Introduction to Music of Jamaica

The purpose of this column is to explore a meaningful collaboration between a classroom music teacher and an expert from a music culture. Dr. David Aarons from Jamaica worked with a music educator and a class of 5th grade students. They explored dance traditions, steel pan performance, singing games, and stories. They also discussed sociocultural and sociohistorical meanings of the lyrics, instruments, and hybrid nature of many of the current traditions.

EVALUATION OF TOXICITY IN SURGICAL STEEL PANS

This research aims to verify if the water heated in a surgical steel pan has metal contents since few studies are found involving this type of pot. The results have shown that only Al levels showed levels at the limit and above the values recommended by the Ministry of Health Consolidation Ordinance 5 / XX / 2017 after 40 h of discontinuous heating. This may have been caused by the pH between 4-5 of the deionized and drinking water used for heating. It is known that most metals are soluble in the acidic medium and, therefore, Al can be transferred to food. This shows that the level of salt contamination in foods heated continuously in these pans in an acid medium will most likely be significant and harmful. Thus, the intake of food prepared continuously in these pans may develop serious illnesses in people, such as Alzheimer s and Parkinson s. since metals, including Al, are cumulative in organisms and can cause pathogenic disturbances in humans

Fatal poisoning by ingestion of a self-prepared oleander leaf infusion

An unusual case of poisoning by the ingestion of oleander leaves is reported. A 71 year old male laboratory technician committed suicide at home in this unusual manner. At the death scene a steel pan and other paraphernalia, used for the extraction of oleandrin and other cardiac glycosides from the leaves of the Nerium oleander plant were found.Toxicological investigations for oleandrin, oleandrigenin, neritaloside, and odoroside were performed by LC–MS/MS on all biological samples (peripheral blood, vitreous humor, urine, liver, gastric contents) and on the yellow infusion found at the death scene.In all samples, toxic levels of oleandrin were detected (blood 37.5 ng/mL, vitreous humor 12.6 ng/mL, urine 83.8 ng/mL, liver 205 ng/mg, gastric content 31.2 µg/mL, infusion 38.5 µg/mL). Qualitative results for oleandrigenin, neritaloside, and odoroside were obtained. Oleandrigenin was present in all tissue samples whereas neritaloside and odoroside were absent in the blood and vitreous humor but present in urine, liver, gastric content, and in the leaf brew.The purpose of this study was the identification of oleandrin and its congener oleandrigenin, detected in the vitreous humor. The blood/vitreous humor ratio was also calculated in order to assess of the likely time interval from ingestion to death. According to the toxicological results death was attributed to fatal arrhythmia due to oleander intoxication. The manner of death was classified as suicide through the ingestion of the infusion.

Bimusicality and Beyond

The chapter examines roles for gamelan in music pedagogy outside ethnomusicology. First, the pedagogical benefits of teaching gamelan are compared to those of teaching African drum ensembles and steel pan, two other non-Western classical percussion traditions that are commonly taught in American colleges. Then, the benefits of teaching gamelan within percussion education, composition, and music education programs are considered as teachers who employ gamelan in their classroom discuss how they use the instruments. Pedagogical benefits for students include improving motor coordination, physical technique, focus, and cognition; improving their listening skills; and expanding their concepts of artistic collaboration or group social skills, in addition to instilling real possibilities for cross-cultural professional artistic collaboration.

The Brooklyn Steelband Movement

Chapter 5 chronicles the rise of steelbands on Eastern Parkway and the establishment of WIADCA’s Brooklyn Panorama steelband competition during the 1970s and 1980s. These bands were extensions of Trinidad’s steelband movement that afforded Brooklyn’s migrants, now far from home, the opportunity to re-experience their native culture. The uptick in post-1965 Caribbean migration to Brooklyn led to the influx of skilled steelband players, arrangers, and tuners with years of experience with the Trinidad bands. The transnational flow of steel pan players and musical practices was relatively unidirectional in the early years of Brooklyn Carnival, as Trinidadian musicians, arrangers, and tuners regularly visited Brooklyn and helped shape the emerging steelband scene. New York’s complex multiethnic political landscape served as a backdrop for WIADCA’s struggle to deploy various Carnival expressions, particularly steelband and calypso music, in hopes of uniting Brooklyn’s diverse island populations under a single pan-Caribbean banner, while also encouraging greater social integration of Caribbean culture into mainstream urban society.