Chinese opera fan becomes online celebrity after standing in for male lead during encore performance by Alice Yan FROM Yahoo

 

Amy Winehouse - Rehab [OK, I only recently discovered Winehouse]

They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, "No, no, no"

He's [her daddy] tried to make me go to rehab, but I won't go, go, go--from her song "Rehab"

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Winehouse was plagued by drug and alcohol addiction. She died of alcohol poisoning on 23 July 2011, joining the 27 club (a list of musicians, artists, athletes, and actors who all died at 27).  -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Winehouse

PSY Apologizes for "Kill Those F--king Yankees" Rap by Erik Pedersen FROM Entertainment Online

The song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron, rap legend

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For cultural references, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised

3 California inspired songs

There are lots of others, but these three are among the more famous.

Vuvuzela Horn - The sound you hear at the World Cup

Weaponizing Mozart by Brendan O'Neill FROM Reason Magazine

"They’re so desperate to control youth—but from a distance, without actually having to engage with them—that they will film their every move, fire high-pitched noises in their ears, shine lights in their eyes, and bombard them with Mozart."

Paying for downloads is like buying air by Bob Stanley , member of the band St Etienne FROM TIMESONLINE

"The record companies are once again crying over spilt milk. When they experienced a windfall from the compact disc in the Eighties, instead of giving back the love, the industry made the customer feel guilty with its 'home taping is killing music' campaign."

A License to Perform Music

FROM The Tehran Times (November 27, 2007):
In an interview, Alireza Mashayekhi, the conductor of Iran's Modern Music Ensemble, complaining of the music situation in Iran said:

“Unfortunately, the situation is so bad that we have to obtain a license to perform concerts of Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, etc.”

This is an extreme example of the harmful effects of government supervision of education. There are however countless others which are often overlooked because they are far more subtle. All I can say is at least they can get a license.

Mandarin Language Is Music To The Brain

From Science Daily:

Science Daily — It’s been shown that the left side of the brain processes language and the right side processes music; but what about a language like Mandarin Chinese, which is musical in nature with wide tonal ranges?

UC Irvine researcher Fan-Gang Zeng and Chinese colleagues studied brain scans of subjects as they listened to spoken Mandarin. They found that the brain processes the music, or pitch, of the words first in the right hemisphere before the left side of the brain processes the semantics, or meaning, of the information.

In the English language, Zeng says, changes in pitch dictate the difference between a spoken statement and question, or in mood, but the meaning of the words does not change. This is different in Mandarin, in which changes in pitch affect the meaning of words.