Waleed Alzoukari                                                                                    9/14/2022 ENGL 11000  

                                                          Cover Letter

              Throughout this phase I learned that we need to look at things in many different ways because when we do so we can find many little details to a topic or song.A quick example I have is that when people listen to music they just listen to the sound of the beat and how it makes them feel but skip fast the lyrics which can tell a lot.In this assignment I went tinto as much detail as possible to make the scene almost stand out and can visualize it.I also learned that the time of when  the music came out also has to do a big part because it can influence the artist for example african americans back then were talking about how unfairly they were being treated in there time which shows how that influenced the whole song because of what they were going through.Furthermore, sometimes you have to listen to a song multiple times because in the first time you might miss a couple of things that deliver a strong message.Additionally, in my assignment I tried to be clear as possible to not cause any confusion, My audience is mostly college students so they might not take the time to read it again which made me make it as clear as possible.Many times the artist will try to deliver a lot of messages about many situations that’s why listening to lyrics are important and also shows that listening to the music again is important.

                                  Written Literacy Narrative “Bara”

      In my home country (yemen) there’s a traditional drum music called Bara which is performed with a dance that was named after it.This dance has been in our culture for a very long time. Bara is the most popular in Yemen because it is hard to perfect, you use the traditional knife called Gambieh to dance with it and it’s also used for decoration that compliments your outfit.I have attached a video of the dance and pictures of the outfit they wear during the special events.I picked this drum music because growing up I used to hear this music in every big event and people will always do the dance that comes with it.When I was a kid back in my home country my cousin was getting married and the day before his wedding day all of the kids in the family including me were brought together to learn the dance because they wanted us to do it during the party but we were not allowed to use the knives because we were still kids, we spent the whole day learning the dance but weren’t able to because we weren’t taking it serious.During the party they set up a really big tent that is the size of a whole street because in yemen there’s no real venue so they had to create a temporary one, inside the venue was a lot of arabic style sofas which I also attached a picture of.The venue had really big light stands on the corners to brighten the place up which if you were too close you would be blinded,it had a lot of decorations which made the whole space look amazing and it had empty space in the middle so the people can dance.During the wedding day it was a Huge party and everyone from family members to friends came to the same place, the whole venue became full of people and the party was started.During the middle of the party the song “Bara” came on and the older people got up and began to dance to it,everyone was watching because they were all dancing at the same paste and made no mistakes.Then we finished off the party with some other dances and the night was concluded.I wanted to shed some light on this song today because I have a lot of stories when it comes to this song and the one I just told is one of them.This drum music doesn’t have a known creator because its soo old but you find a lot of modern arabic singers using the drum sound of the dance to creat songs.This drum music is played in literally every ceremony or big event,This music is played almost all around the world which many people enjoy.This was special to me because I have seen it many times and and I basically grew up with that drum music.This music kind of made me who I am today and I the reason I say kind of its because its not influential enough for it to shape my whole life bit it did in a music way which is a little part.This drum music recently started to become a trend in the newer songs which many artist say it was influenced by Bara drum music.This shows how it has influenced many and I am certain it will influence many more in the near future.

The Traditional dance video:https://youtu.be/u35JoIC_jm0

Traditional Arabic Sofias: