We only had one class again this week, but the information we did get to cover was super cool.

First we reviewed where this class is going. I understand how students would have difficulty following this class or want more information about the organization of it. For whatever reason, I’m not really minding the (what seems like) lack of organization and the variety of topics we’re covering. I’m trying to be more chill about my academics while upholding my normal A+ work. *Note: I’m sure the class was very well thought out and is on the best path for what we need to cover.

We returned to the question of “who controls information?” And whether information becomes useless if it is not shared. I get this. Information wants to be free, and it is not beneficial if it’s not. Controlling information won’t make you or the society richer. We all prosper if information can be shared.

Then we moved on to talking about what the causes of the civil war may have been. Could it be more complex than just slavery? Sure, but I’m not certain it is. I have not studied the civil war in detail, so I guess I can’t really say. In discussing this topic, we took a look at some primary sources to determine whether or not African Americans fought in the confederate army against the union. Some documents say that was the case, and that something like 3,000 soldiers in the army were black. Seems suspect. There are photos too.

So what’s the point of this discussion? It’s that nowadays, we have access to *every* piece of information via the internet. This means that lots of information we find is under-researched, cropped, twisted in an advantageous direction, biased, etc. Because of this extraordinary resource available to us called the internet, we now have a moral responsibility to determine what information is valid and what is not. We have to think a lot more about the sources of our information, whereas in the past, information came from print sources which were credible. We now have the moral responsibility to interpret and validate the sources we find because now primary documents can be found to create an argument, and falsified in doing so.

That’s all I have for this week.

-Jessi Russell

This week reiterated some of the main points from last week, but in the context of Miller’s Segregating Sound.

I enjoyed what we started with on Tuesday – where the beat falls. Does it lag with a relaxed or sexy feel like it’s hardly going to make it before the next beat? Or does it push, with the beat feeling very rushed? We can view this racially as well, like many elements of music. African American music tends to lag, while white rock tends to jump on the beat.

I learned about Go Go, which I’ve never heard of before. Apparently it’s an African American DC musical tradition with very long songs and a unique sound.

Benny Goodman Band is the first publicly integrated band. Bands had had white singers with black musicians on records before this, but it was kept hidden from the public.

Once country music became a thing, genre marketing drove people even further apart – white people bought country music and black people bought race records.

Elvis Presley took songs written and performed by black artists and made them his own. This is bad. Like, really bad. He was able to make the music extremely profitable and popular because he was white. These songs were absolutely marketed as his own and the public was blind to the actual creators of the music. Music is really hard to make, way harder than people think it is. It’s so easy for someone to say, “well, if I had the time I could do that.” Well, you didn’t, that artist did. Just because you could, doesn’t mean you did. Also, original ideas for art are created in someone’s mind and yes, you could replicate it, but you could not come up with that thing on your own. The fact that Presley performed these songs as his own (even if royalties were given to the original artists behind the scenes) is disrespectful of the hard work done by the actual artist. And worst of all, that artist could not have made it big because he was black.

Thursday was a bit different. We started by watching the video about the same four chord progressions making up a ludicrous amount of popular songs. You can’t copyright chord progressions, and those four chords happen to sound really good in combination, so they are incredibly popular.

Next, the 1, 4, 5 progression of the blues. I don’t think I would have ever figured this out, nor would I have ever characterized a genre of music by something like this. I hear it very clearly. Blues also has a “call and response” pattern with the lyrics.

Folk music is a 19th century invention. There are isolated societies, unmotivated (and not-at-all influenced by) modernity or commerce. Music is played for one’s own enjoyment, not for sale.

Now to Miller. This book was okay. Perhaps I’m not particularly interested in the topic, or maybe the book was just way too long (I think a combination of both). I fell a little behind in reading this book so I just finished it and my ending thoughts were: “umm…okay?” That’s basically how I felt throughout the whole book. It just felt kinda…bleh. I guess that just means I don’t care about the topic. It is obviously a good book and does a great job of explaining racial divides in music, but for me, it lacked excitement. Additionally, I felt I got so much information from the introduction, and then the chapters on each of the topics were a lot of repetition and reiteration of what was already introduced in great detail during the introduction.

Anyway, whatever my feelings may be about the book, it’s an important subject and I did learn a lot. His argument boils down to a couple of things: there is a lot more commonality in racially divided music than difference, that racial division is a creation of copyright labels, the racial division of music followed the landscape of the political culture at the time, and the “correlation between racialized music and racialized bodies” (Miller, 4).

While I read the book, I frequently thought to myself “well, yeah.” As in, “duh.” As in, how could this have developed any other way? Could music have developed in any other way given the position America was in during the segregation era? Or the still super racist era which followed? So to me it just felt like a history book. A “this is how things were” book, not a book with an argument. I don’t know, maybe I was just distracted while I read it. Also, seriously, it’s too long for its subject matter. It was fine, I guess. I will definitely be donating this book and not be reading it again.

We also discussed some nationalism stuff but I don’t really feel like getting into that right now because I’ve got some serious thoughts on that. But for now, this is enough. If we talk about it again, I’ll touch on it.

-Jessi Russell

This week we only had one class because of the Columbus day interruption.

We started off by talking about how white people clap on the wrong beats. I’ve never heard this before. I have excellent rhythm (if I may say so myself), so I’m not sure if I’m guilty of this, although I am white. Apparently this comes out of the traditions of European music emphasizing beats 1 and 3, while Afro-New World music typically emphasizes beats 2 and 4. Who knew? Not me. Our pop music almost always emphasizes beats 2 and 4. Mr. O’Malley is right…once you hear it, it’s hard to not listen for it when you listen to music.

The displaced third beat. I couldn’t hear this at first, maybe the first 3 examples. Then we listened for it in swing music, and I heard it there. Now there is a mashup of those African traditions of emphasizing beats 2 and 4, and the European traditions of the displaced third beat which constitutes modern pop music in America.

The genre of R&B is often traced back to “The Great Migration.” Following the abolition of slavery, black people in the south could move where they wanted to go and lots of them ended up in Chicago for employment opportunities. Chicago became a place of southern food and authentic beats that would become R&B.

We learned that race records began to pop up and the market was nostalgic black people who urbanized and missed the countryside. I think Bessie Smith is amazing. Oh my lord did she give me chills listening to her beautiful voice. She was a vaudeville singer, but came to be known as the mother of blues. She often sang risque lyrics too. Apparently she bled to death after an accident because the hospital wouldn’t accept black people. That’s not sickening at all (sarcasm).

We heard a lot from Muddy Waters. Also fabulous. He became increasingly famous after recording music on the plantation with the gate…Stonewall Plantation? That might be wrong. Moved permanently to Chicago, but sings about wanting to go back. There’s a big market for the music of nostalgia. Mississippians are the largest emigrates to Chicago.

“Folklorists” are an interesting group of people. They are comprised of people who seek to uncover sounds not produced for money like unmediated folk music in Appalachia, for example. I think it’s cool. When I went to Radford University, I attended a weekly blue grass/folk music live performance and open mic. It was amazing to hear small groups or individuals who just want to make music for its own sake. Last night I walked my dog and there was a man playing the guitar on his balcony. These types of things make my heart so happy.

Oh, and spectacle lynching, but I won’t get into that.

-Jessi Russell

This week was emotionally taxing. I just…ugh. These topics make me so uncomfortable, and while I know they need to be discussed, it’s just really emotionally exhausting. I don’t know how much of this I can relive, so this might be a short entry.

Minstrel shows. At first I thought Mr. O’Malley was saying “menstrual shows,” and I was very confused. I’ve never heard of them. The tradition of applying blackface and performing song and dance went on for decades and became one of America’s favorite forms of entertainment. The advertisements for the shows often displayed that white actor’s head shot and then a picture of them in blackface with overly pronounced features and body language. There’s almost a plasticity, which dehumanizes black people even more.

How in the world is “Yellow Rose of Texas” still the state song of Texas? Yikes. Someone needs to get on that.

I already feel tired writing what little I have. I have so much empathy. I understand these things permeate society today. I have a hard time handling race issues and I’m still learning what my privilege allows that not all are afforded. Okay, I’ll try to go on.

I learned that Irish people were labeled “colored” for quite sometime, but then the tradition of blackface almost helped bring attention to their whiteness. In that way, the minstrel shows helped invent white as a race, and propelled it above “colored.”

I think one of the strangest things I learned was how there was an impersonation of a black person singing, which then became the typical white folk sounding voice (think Hank Williams), and it’s completely devoid of its connection to black singers. Just very strange. I don’t really know what to think of it. Is it cultural appropriation? Probably. Commodification of black culture? Sure. Most of all it’s sad and embarrassing.

We went on to talk about Hawaiian influence in music, namely the steel guitar. With that we talked about how music is saturated with politics and history, and buying music is a racially-charged activity.

Lastly, de-skilling. I mean, yeah. This seems really obvious to me based on the world we live in. In my favorite coffee shop there is a machine that brews pour over coffee. It can do 5 or 6 at a time with perfect pace and precision. Did that used to be someone’s (or 2 people maybe) job? Of course. Did it take lots of jobs to make that machine? Absolutely. Jobs aren’t going away, they’re just changing in nature.

Despite our changing workplace, we have an instinct of worksmanship. I believe this 100%. I want to cook things. Would it be a hell of a lot easier to order take out? Yep. But I want to make it by hand. I want to put the time into something and have the pleasure of knowing I did that. (And I can eat it too, so win-win.)

Alright, that’s all I can handle for this week. I’m about to start reading Segregating Sound tomorrow so wish me luck and I’ll try not to cry.

-Jessi Russell