Information and Ideas

Chief Editor

Mar 23, 2024

Take all 3 MCQs in interactive quiz mode with timer and progress tracking

In the 1980s, many musicians and journalists in the English-speaking world began to draw attention to music from around the globe--such as mbaqanga from South Africa and quan hg from Vietnam--that can't be easily categorized according to British or North American popular music genres, typically referring to such music as "world music." While some scholars have welcomed this development for bringing diverse musical forms to prominence in countries where they'd previously been overlooked, musicologist Su Zheng claims that the concept of world music homogenizes highly distinct traditions by reducing them all to a single category. Which finding about mbaqanga and quan hg, if true, would most directly support Zheng's claim?

Difficulty: Hard

Mbaqanga and quan hg developed independently of each other and have little in common musically.

Mbaqanga is significantly more popular in the English-speaking world than quan hg is.

Mbaqanga and quan hg are now performed by a diverse array of musicians with no direct connections to South Africa or Vietnam.

Mbaqanga and quan hg are highly distinct from British and North American popular music genres but similar to each other.

One challenge when researching whether holding elected office changes a person's behavior is the problem of ensuring that the experiment has an appropriate control group. To reveal the effect of holding office, researchers must compare people who hold elected office with people who do not hold office but who are otherwise similar to the office-holders. Since researchers are unable to control which politicians win elections, they therefore ________Which choice most logically completes the text?

Difficulty: Hard

struggle to find valid data about the behavior of politicians who do not currently hold office.

can only conduct valid studies with people who have previously held office rather than people who presently hold office.

should select a control group of people who differ from office holders in several significant ways.

will find it difficult to identify a group of people who can function as an appropriate control group for their studies.

Philadelphia's Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, founded by Jeri Lynne Johnson, performs classical music, from well-known compositions by Beethoven to contemporary works by Jessie Montgomery. For the orchestra's iConduct! program, Johnson invites community members to learn some basic elements of conducting and then experience conducting the Black Pearl orchestra themselves. Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

Difficulty: Medium

The Black Pearl orchestra performs music from all over the world but mostly performs music composed by Philadelphia.

Johnson founded the Black Pearl orchestra to perform classical music by contemporary artist Jessie Montgomery.

The Black Pearl orchestra gives community members the chance to both listen to and participate in classical music performance.

Johnson has community members conduct an orchestra to demonstrate how difficult the task is.