Israeli singer-songwriter Gilad Segev has devoted himself     1     an ambitious project to present different views of China through music, because of his love for the country. In June 2020, he launched Project 34, through    2     he will release a song for each of the 34 provincial-level regions in China every month.     3     (combine) Chinese music and global folk music, he     4     (post) 17 videos so far on social media platforms, gaining millions of views.

“My     5     (inspire) for the project was the great beauty I discovered in China’ s culture, landscapes, and more.     6     (important), the hearts of Chinese people.” says Segev. He calls     7     (he) a “passer-by” — a traveling artist who tells stories from his encounters with people from various cultures,through music.

Over the past decade, the award-winning musician has travelled to most of the 34 provincial-level regions, and plans to go to     8     rest when travel is not restricted by the COVID- 19 pandemic.

For each music video, he cooperates actively with a Chinese singer or musician, to include characteristics from their own home region. He and his team have listened to various types of Chinese music    9     (figure) out what suitable elements can be used in his works. “I believe when all of our voices    10     (hear) together, true harmony can happen, ” Segev says.

2 . 5-year-old Taylor Hooper was just one of the 35,0000 people who were attending the Foo Fighters concert in Belfast, Norther Ireland last week. Not only is the American rock group his favorite band, it was also his first ever concert.

Taylor's mother, Nikki Hooper, says that she and her husband have always been huge fans of the Foo Fighters. So when the band played in their home city, they decided it was finally time for their son to see their beloved rock and rockers in concert.

Mrs Hooper told BBC．“We called the event organizers and they said it would be no problem, but that we should know it would be a loud music event, so we got Taylor some special headphones. When we got there everyone was so welcoming to him.”

Throughout the show, the audience continuously made Taylor and his parents move closer to the stage. Furthermore, Mrs. Hooper helped her son stand out from the crowd by making him a sign that said he was a 5-year-old attending his first concert.

When Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl finally saw the sign and read it aloud into the microphone, the crowd began chanting for them to bring the youngster onto the stage. When the stage managers brought the boy to the stage, Grohl asked Taylor to show the crowd how to dance．

The small boy then danced to the whole song, making him an “Internet wonder”. The band also invited him backstage to give him a number of gifts, including a pair of Taylor Hawkins's drumsticks(鼓槌).

4 . Sara Kays, a 22-year-old singer-songwriter from Indiana, US, is a(n) ________ star on online video-sharing platforms. She not only uses TikTok to ________ her music but also posts partially-finished snippets (片段) of songs to get ________ from her followers.

“It’s been cool to engage with people that way, and sometimes I’ll ________ to a comment of someone asking me if I could write a song about an idea they suggested,” said Kays.

Kays has been using online platforms to pursue her music dream to ________ effect. Now, she is a TikTok celebrity with about 1.3 million followers. She released her breakup song Remember That Night? in November 2020. The post ________, getting almost three million views. Kays has ________ singing since she was young. At 11, she got a guitar from her mother and then started to ________ while playing. Two years later, she began busking (街头卖艺) on the streets in her hometown,   which she had been doing throughout high school. ________, people started asking her to play at restaurants and she also started to ________ some live videos on YouTube, gaining her more and more followers.

Different from other content creators who update their content ________, Kays updates on a weekly basis and only posts videos about her songs and ________ stories, such as singing, playing the guitar or ukelele, recording in the studio and shooting music videos.

Now, Kays has ________ with a music company. She hopes to sing live and go on tour. In Kays’ eyes, people like her songs and videos ________ she shows the ideal package for a TikToker: relatable (易产生共鸣的), authentic (真实的) and youthful. “I just sing and share my feelings about divorced parents, body image, loneliness and mental health,” said Kays. “I want more people to know they’re not alone with the ________ in their lives.”

6 . You have probably heard of the Mozart effect. It’s the idea that if children or even babies listen to music composed by Mozart, they will become more intelligent. A quick Internet search reveals (透露) plenty of products to help you in the task. Whatever your age there are CDs and books to help you taste the power of Mozart’s music, but when it comes to scientific evidence that it can make you more clever, the picture is more mixed.

The phrase “the Mozart effect” was made up in 1991, but it was a study described two years later in the journal Nature that sparked (引发) real media and public interest about the idea that listening to classical music somehow improves the brain. It is one of those ideas that sound reasonable. Mozart was undoubtedly a genius himself; his music is complex and there is a hope that if we listen to enough of it, we’ll become more intelligent.

The idea took off, with thousands of parents playing Mozart to their children, and in 1998 Zell Miller, the Governor of the state of Georgia in the US, even asked for money to be set aside in the state budget so that every newborn baby could be sent a CD of classical music. It was not just babies and children who were exposed to Mozart’s music on purpose, even an Italian farmer proudly explained that the cows were played Mozart three times a day to help them to produce better milk.

I’ll leave the debate on the effect on milk yield to farmers, but what about the evidence that listening to Mozart makes people more intelligent? More research was carried out but an analysis of sixteen different studies proved that listening to music does lead to a temporary improvement in the ability to handle shapes mentally, but the benefits are short-lived and it doesn’t make us more intelligent.

Yingge Dance, a traditional folk art combining dancing, Chinese martial arts, and Chinese opera, is popular in the Chaoshan area of Guangdong province in South China. Yingge, written with the characters for “hero” and “song”,     1     (mean) heroic song in Chinese and Yingge dancers, as their name implies, are the avatars (化身) of     2     (hero). The dancers each hold a pair of short sticks and strike the sticks with force     3     (create) strong beats — an     4     (art) display of masculinity (男子气概). In 2006, the Puning Yingge Dance     5     (list) among the first batch of national intangible cultural heritages in China.

However, as young people move out of the villages, so are local folk arts     6     (gradual) disappearing all around China. In Puning, Yingge is still danced during holidays such as the Lunar New Year and its performers are generally amateurs — farmers     7     have put down their tools and put on costumes. Some of the parts are passed     8     in the family, from father to son, and so far some villages have started giving performers a basic salary.

    9     (dress) in colorful clothes and wearing heavy makeup, ordinary villagers have created a song of cultural confidence. The performance,     10     must-watch for the local people, graces the village square one more time.

Music is one of the most     1     (power) things in my life. Listening to music can help to motivate me in a trying time. When young, I     2     (show) not great interest in music as I do now. I mainly listened to     3     my parents were listening to. Whether I was in the car, the house,       4     anywhere else, there was sure to be some Beatles, or Buddy holly constantly playing in the background. Now I am older. I enjoy music for the reason that it allows me to feel     5     (energy) in face of any difficulty.

I believe music has the power to convey all sorts of emotions. The song A Little Bit Longer is     6     emotional and inspiring that whenever I hear it, I can't help     7     (move) to tears, especially when I watch it being played alive. The effect that music can have     8     our emotions is tremendous, as it can bring people to floods of tears or     9     (burst) of laugh.

I believe music affects people in many ways. To me, music is     10     (extreme) important in my life. I think it brings me closer to my friends and family.

9 . When my sister Diane began playing the violin, she was seven. How did she sound? Terrible. But she didn’t ___. At twelve, she asked our parents if she could ___ a full-time music school. They said no. Actually, everyone agreed that my sister lacked talent.

I was better at my ___. My teacher had told my parents that I had great potential. So my parents found the best piano teacher in the area to ___ me. But the only time when he was available was Saturday at 3 pm. Back then, I was ___ by the British TV show The Avengers, which was ___ every Saturday at 3 pm. I let nothing take up my The Avengers hour. So I ___ this amazing opportunity. Today, I don’t even have a ___ in my house.

My sister became an engineer, but she ___ stopped making music. When she was in her 40s, she changed her career. She went back to college, got a ____ in music education, and became a music teacher. She starts kids off on their first instrument and gives them all the encouragement and support she never ____.

Recently, she and a pianist pal put on a recital (音乐演奏会). A big crowd of friends and family ____ for her. As she played, I looked around at the ____. Everyone was obviously enjoying the music. It occurred to me that I was the only person who remembered that 7-year-old kid making those perfectly ____ sounds and knew how far she had come, despite ____.

Talent is important. But enthusiasm is even more important.

10 . Music is not just a set of sounds and rhythms. Its influence on the brain is much deeper than any other human experience. Keep on reading to know all those amazing powers of music.

A recent study suggests that preterm (早产的) babies appear to experience less pain and feed more when listening to music. Experts led by Dr. Manoj Kumar of the University of Alberta, Canada, found that music had a beneficial effect on reducing pain for preterm babies experiencing painful medical tests. It also appeared to benefit full-term babies during operations.

Many people experiencing brain damage have speech and movement-related problems. Music can help recover from brain injuries. As a different and effective treatment, doctors often advise such patients to listen to good music to improve the parts of the brain responsible for these two functions. When people with neurological (神经系统的) disorders hear a musical beat, it helps them to regain a balanced walk.

Though music cannot make deafness disappear, it really can stave off the loss of hearing. There was an experiment involving 163 people where 74 were musicians. Participants were asked to pass some listening tests. Musicians heard the sounds better than non-musicians, and this difference gets clearer with age. This means that a 70-year-old musician bears better than a 50-year-old non-musician, even in a noisy environment.

Besides, music mends a broken heart. It is not about a thrown-away love, but about a heart attack. The matter is that music can help people recover from a heart attack or heart operation by reducing blood pressure, slowing down the heartbeat rate, and reducing anxiety. Listening to the quality music produces positive emotions, improves the movement of blood, and expands blood vessels, thus, promoting quick recovery of the whole cardiovascular (心血管的) system.