(10/08/2018 – No class)
10/10/2018
Growing up living in West Islip, NY, with my mother, going to my high school, I can 100% attest to the statement that White people clap on the wrong beat. We are the worst and it’s something we can’t help because naturally we think we have rhythm, but we don’t. Almost all pop music emphasizes a beat on the 2 and the 4 (and if you have no experience in music just bear with me here). But listeners from different backgrounds have different ways to interpreting where and when to clap on which beat. Clapping on beats 2 and 4 is rooted in music from Africa (you learn something new everyday!)
The Great Migration that occurred from around 1916 to 1970 mainly consisted of African Americans moving from the south to the north in order to get a better chance at life in America during this time. Until this point, blacks were associated almost exclusively with the south, and racism was still extremely pertinent in society. Virginia Senator Carter Glass widely contributed to the disenfranchisement of black voters, supporting discrimination and outwardly making no effort to fight for their right to vote. However, in places such as Chicago, they could vote. I found it interesting that blues singers, such as Bessie Smith or Muddy Waters began to emerge around the same time. Relatively few white Americans listened to their music at this time and into the 1950s. Toward the end of his life, Muddy Waters began to be seen as an icon of rural authenticity; this is another example of how difficult it is to speak outside of racial stereotypes, especially in American history, it seems like everything is riddled in these stereotypes. W.C. Handy, “one of the first to arrange and publish blues material,” played a large part in amplifying the popularity of the Blues genre, and “identified the blues as a collective invention of the African American South” (Miller P.148/254). Music cannot simply be music, artists, especially those of color during this time, cannot simply be artists. Once again, all music is inevitably saturated in politics and history.
10/15/2018
Personally, I’m from the north – so naturally, country music was odd and almost foreign sounding to me. I wasn’t a fan of it at first. I find a lot of it to be corny and makes me cringe at the thought of someone plucking on a banjo in their overalls and straw hat, singing through their chipped tooth and thick southern accent. However, since branching out and giving the genre more of a chance, I have come to learn that country music is about much more than it gives off from a distance.
The way a genre is marketed often creates a divide between people that we are not even aware of. People that are proud to be from the south and associate their roots with country music do not resonate as heavily with music that originated in New York. But it is through means such as the railroad system that emerged in late 19th century America (as discussed in Miller’s book) that originally made it possible for people to experience music that originated on the other side of the country from them. “United States train companies completed approximately 100,00 miles of rail between 1869 and 1900” and it was because of this mass increase in transportation that “mass marketed songs flooded the south” (Miller P.25). From there, as other people began to experience new music, people themselves began to become woven into music. This again reinforces the idea that all music is inevitably saturated in politics and history, whether that be good or bad is up to opinion.