My Musical Cultures!

 Hello! 

My name is Sarah Beth Martin. I am a 21 year old female from a small town in South Carolina called Gaffney. I grew up with two younger siblings, my brother, Ashton, and my sister, Mary Kate. Gaffney is a small town known for its BIG PEACH, and by that I mean a big water tower that looks like a peach, but yet Georgia is deemed the peach state? Growing up, there wasn’t much to do in my town besides go to school, go out to eat, go to church, or find some extra curricular activity to do in the meantime, mine was dance. Over the years I attempted to do sports, volleyball, tennis, gymnastics, cheerleading, you name it, I tried it. I was never athletic enough to continue sports, luckily my younger siblings inherited what I didn’t. To be fair, I inherited the musical genes in the family as well as the dancing genes, because no one else in my family will EVER look normal dancing. 

Moving forward…

I grew up loving music, but I used music through dance. For 17 years I danced at Southern Dance Academy. I began when I was 2 years old and started out with tap and ballet, but found that boring, so I began clogging. This type of clogging is not and never will be the wooden shoes or that random commercial of a clogging family that aired on TV for a while. This type is like a mixture between hip hop, and tap, but unlike both of those, it is very structured. I have been dancing competitively for over 10 years. Throughout those 17 years, I have won multiple National titles, Championships & performed on National Television (America’s Got Talent). Around the age of 15, I then decided to become a teacher and I worked as a dance teacher for about 5 years. 

If you’re interested, here is a video of one of my teams at one of the biggest competitions of the year. 

After all of these fun experiences, I then decided to pursue music as a career, so I decided to go to Spartanburg Methodist College for 2 years where I received an Associate’s degree in the Fine Arts and met my now Fiancé, Zach. After leaving SMC, I then transferred to Converse University where I am pursuing a major in Music Therapy. 

So, back to the music!

I love listening, playing, or dancing because it always involves music. A song that I like right now and that I like dancing to is “Oh My God” by Adele. It is one of her newest songs and it is just a BOP! I think I like this song because it reminds me of some of the styles of music that we would use for dance routines. I don’t ever really listen to Adele, but I am super into the Pop genre and this fits right into the genre. After listening to this song, you may get an ear worm because it is addicting to listen to! I think it is the faster chorus that really makes this song interesting as well as the instrumental parts, which include the hook of the intro. This song is so upbeat and her vocals are just amazing! It is one of those songs that you could listen to on repeat, I know… because I do

Go on, Press Play!

Now, as a music therapy major, I am very aware that music can provoke emotions, feelings, memories… A song that is deeply important to me is “Let It Be” by The Beatles. This is the song that we played at my dad’s funeral. This song does not provoke feelings of sadness whenever I listen to it, but happiness. This song allows me to reminisce about my father and all the things he enjoyed in life… which was The Beatles. Wanna know a secret? My dad was a Beatles collector! He has so many valuable items in his collection as well as a golden record! 

Give it a listen! 

While I love music, there is one genre that I don’t enjoy or connect with and that is COUNTRY. I am not sure if it’s the music (instruments) or the lyrics, or both! It’s hard to describe why I don’t prefer country, it is a popular and well respected genre, but my ears do not enjoy listening to Morgan Wallen or Blake Shelton or Josh Turner. I think because I come from the South and that my accent is so strong that people assume automatically that I would like/LOVE country music, but that is not the case. I am not one to listen to lyrics in a song, I typically only listen to the instrumental aspects as well as the type of rhythmic structure that it has and country just does not give me the same feeling that a pop or hip-hop song would. I do think that the lyrics in most, if not all country music are either sad, or destructive, which in my personal opinion doesn’t make for a great song, but other genres do the same thing, so at the end of the day, my brain likes what it likes. 

Here is an example of a country song that is just…. Well… Here.