I understand the insistence that we read this book; of course because it was an assigned reading but also because it seems to be at the heart of one of the major themes of this class. Miller’s book gives in depths look at the tangled mess that is race and music. He explores the commercialization of music and the different values placed on commercial and non-commercial music. Specifically what genres were marketed towards and produced by southerners and how that became even more complicated when race was included in the equation.

If I have learned one thing from this class, it is how complicated and gray the intersection of music is. Something that seems to have further grayed that area is the introduction of folklore and folk music. It affected both black and white southerners. Lomax, who we actually discussed in class, was one of the first to start chronicling the folk sounds of rural America. Roosevelt actually praised John Lomax for his collection of cowboy songs, basically saying, that they nourished the soul in a way that music from urbanized areas couldn’t (85). Many others shared that sentiment and producers began marketing southern music in that manner. Miller examines the question of whether or not “chroniclers of southern music dismissed commercial pop as immaterial to southern culture”(7). Regardless of why pop music wasn’t recorded as being a part of southerner’s musical repertoires, it had an effect on the stereotypes that were formed. Black musicians were expected “to embody minstrel stereotypes constrained by folkloric values” and were not allowed to record any type of music that did not align with that image; they were constrained, primarily, to blues (227). White southern musicians also faced restrictions, “they had to paint the pop tunes they loved with a patina of down-home credibility.”(227) That in no way is meant to imply that the two were equal, just that both faced challenges brought on by commercialism, the reaction against commercialism, and stereotypes.

I think a quote from the afterword really sums up what I took away from this book well: “[Scholars] have grappled with the irreducible dichotomies of the musical color line: the split between black and white expression, on the one hand, and between folklore and commercial culture on the other.”(278)

After reading this book I feel like I know more about the topics discussed but I don’t know if I feel like I have any answers.

It’s funny that when we learn about the civil rights movement and Jim Crow era in high school we never really delve into the absolute cruelty and inhumanity of it all. It’s very glossed over and that’s almost equally disturbing. We as a society, and specifically we as white people I think, like to try and forget the things we did or the things our relatives did.
Given the extent of segregation in the south as well as the spectacle lynching’s it’s no surprise that black Americans began migrating north in large numbers. The north may not have been particularly welcoming but I imagine that it would have been hard to find a place worse than the south at that time. The more integrated environment surely had a hand in integrating the production of music, even if it wasn’t publicly integrated.
The urbanization of the black experience coincided with the origination of folklore and folk music in the United States. Folklorists Lomax and Work traveled around the country searching for, what they believed to be, the genuine sound of un-commercialized America. During their search the found Muddy Waters, an African-American sharecropper and musician. Lomax described Waters sound as “unwashed and uncleaned” and thought of him as the voice of the African American folk movement. In actuality Waters had been exposed to pop culture and played a myriad of music including pop hits. The idea of an untouched, pure rural sound was fantasy.

Muddy Waters eventually moved to Chicago and continued playing music. Over time his sound did change. This change is apparent in the difference between “I be’s troubled” and “I can’t be satisfied”. At their roots the two songs are the same however they sound worlds apart. “I be’s troubled” was recorded first and embodied the “unwashed” sound that Lomax talked about; even the name, “I be’s troubled”, spoke of a more rural uneducated sound. “I can’t be satisfied” has a much cleaner more put together sound. It appealed to a more urban crowd. Waters built his career in Chicago by repackaging southern nostalgia for recently migrated black Americans. “I can’t be satisfied” is a perfect example of that

I am so glad that I finally have an excuse for having no rhythm. My whole life I have been clapping off beat but now I have a reason for it. Maybe now that I know the root of this very serious problem I can work to fix it and finally be able to fully enjoy concerts and parties.

On another, more serious note, though the space and time displacement experienced in the 19^th and early 20^th century seems extreme. To suddenly have standardized time, more efficient transportation, and recording abilities must have been surreal. I can understand how it could have been somewhat off-putting but I imagine it connected and unified people in a way never thought possible. In my opinion something similar is happening now, granted to a lesser degree. With the invention and popularization of the Internet people became connected in a whole new way. It is now possible to video chat and instant message with people all over the world. In addition to that a lot of modern “smart” technology communicates with the user. For example: you talk to Siri and Siri talks back. There are people now though who do not particularly like a lot of new innovations. They believe it hinders communication in a way. I do wonder if there were a lot of similar reactions during the displacement of the 19^th century; if there were people who thought audio recordings and trains were actually hindering society.

The advancements of audio recording in particular seem to have happened in very quick succession. Things were invented and soon after improved and replaced. Did people get attached to certain audio recording techniques? I mean to say: did some people prefer acoustic recording over electrical recording the same way some people today prefer records over digital music?

It would seem that the societal and cultural displacement people experienced led to displacement and experimentation in music. The beat of the Habanera can be heard in early jazz. It’s as though, because America is neither African nor European, we strive to find something different and a bit neutral.

Minstrel shows. Yikes. I already knew that a lot of modern music had been “borrowed” from African American culture and little to no credit was given. I had even heard of minstrel shows before. I had no idea just how popular they were. America’s selective memory really did its job here. Obviously it is incredibly racist and intended to put down black Americans. But more than that it seems like a way for white people to enjoy aspects of black American culture without having to care about black people. Even today that is prevalent; white people pick and choose what they like from other cultures and races, ignore the cultural significance of it, and popularize it as their own.

I also think there is merit in the argument that minstrel shows helped to unite different white ethnicities. They did a little good. Mostly they turned black Americans into caricatures. It was argued that the reason that people enjoyed minstrel shows so much was the ambiguity it created. A white person pretending to be a black person was funny because it created an ambiguity of identity. I don’t know if I agree with that but I can’t think of much else that could have turned it into such a phenomenon. I do know that comedy today still relies heavily on caricatures of people. A man dressed as a woman acting out stereotypes is considered funny, as is a straight person pretending to be a flamboyant gay person. Mostly it all just seems like an advanced form of bullying. Make fun of people that are different than the norm (white straight men usually)and people will laugh.

On another note, my family is from Texas and I am not the least bit surprised that their state song is rooted in racism. Honestly I would be more surprised if there was something about Texas that did not make me cringe.

Thanks to the good ole’ military industrial complex there was a technology boom during the Cold War. ENIAC was in use until the 60’s and computers became increasing digital. Then in the 70’s Arpanet was created to transfer information (probably about bombs) between important locations. In the mid 70’s digital computing really took off and I am not going to list off all of the innovations that were created. Computers got better and more available though and continued to improve through the 80’s and 90’s. Now we have the IPhone and I think we must have peaked back in 2015/14 because the IPhone 7 looks awful.

I hardly touched a computer until I was in the fourth grade and then it was only for typing lessons. Most people my age though had more experience with computers and even I never thought much about how exciting they must have been when they first became popular with the public. Thinking of the Internet as being something barebones is odd. I’m taken aback when Google only has four pages of search results; I can’t imagine there only being a couple hundred pages. The idea of Hypertext novels and HyperCard games is charming though. I definitely take the Internet for granted and things like that really give me insight into how excited people were to experience the freedom of the web.

Internet freedom is a tricky thing now though. Most scholarly information costs money to access and, even though the Internet is a great platform to share knowledge and interests, it has become restrictive.

Based on the class discussion Claude Shannon seems like he was quite the character. In a way it seems as though Shannon was working in the spirit of Montgomery Meigs. Meigs began the process of rationalizing people into data and Shannon did something similar with language. I guess language is too narrow though, Shannon created a way to transmit any message by changing it into pure information.

Shannon’s work appears to be very straightforward, or at least we did not discuss any conflicting theories. A message is just information, the meaning does not matter. I understand the theory of it but I am fuzzy on its real world application. I do wish we had gone more in depth about the practical aspects of his Theory of Communication.

Shannon also worked with Turing, although it is not clear that they interacted. They both work in the field of Cryptography. Turing developed the machine intelligence test. I can understand that if a machines behavior can fool you, you should consider it intelligent. I agree with it but only because I think it’s smart to err on the side of caution, especially during a time of war. I think that Searle’s critique makes a good point because I don’t consider intelligence to be the ability to follow instructions. I don’t think I’m intelligent because I can assemble Ikea furniture (although they do make it difficult). I think free thought has a hand in intelligence. However they were at war and like I said before, better safe than sorry.

I am not fully convinced that Vannevar Bush was not psychically inclined. He basically envisioned modern digital computers and the go-pro camera 50 years before they were invented and that is incredible. Bush argued that the mind works by networking and making connections. I definitely take Bush’s side over Carr’s. I find that I understand things much better if I make connections and associations. I think that maybe we did train our brains to think in a linear fashion but the Internet allows us to take in information in a way that is much more natural.

Socrates was against writing things down, he believed that it would negatively impact ones memory and that those of higher intellect should just memorize everything. I don’t think Socrates could have ever imagined just how much information there would be out there. That being said it makes a lot of sense that the most important modern innovation is in the way we store information. Military uniform sizing was an ingenious way to get an idea of the countries population and to begin turning people into data. I am going to assume that that was a precursor to the census. Living in a militarized society obviously has a lot of negative aspects but the military does seem to be key to the rapid development of technology.

So there has been a lot more philosophical tangents in this class than I expected. I understand the difference between idealism and realism and I know that I am most definitely a realist but I don’t fully understand how it pertains to this class. Another class I am taking this semester had a similar discussion; we read Plato’s The Allegory of The Cave and briefly discussed Derrida’s opposing view “Everything is real through text”. We didn’t actually talk about realism vs. idealism but how many people agreed with Plato’s view surprised me. Very few people in our class identified themselves as idealists.

The information presented about the Cold War this class was, for the most part, a review. However I did not know that we did not have a standing army prior to World War 2. I knew that when the country was created there was not a standing army and they did not intend for there to be one but I never really thought about when that changed.

To be completely honest I did not enjoy reading Carr’s The Shallows. It felt as though he made it purposefully tedious and difficult to get through just to prove his point that the youth of today is poorly disciplined. That being said I found the class discussion to be enjoyable and much more interesting. I disagree with Carr; I don’t think that the Internet has shortened our attention spans (granted I have ADHD so my attention span functions differently). If anything I think it has made people more efficient in how they acquire information and more selective. I have read books much longer than The Shallows in shorter periods of time; the difference is that I found those books enjoyable so I didn’t mind devoting my attention to them. Carr argues that that is a lack of discipline, and maybe it is; but I think that if you can find a way to acquire the same information in a way that is easier for you then why not. There is already discipline required in sitting in a lecture, in writing a paper, and in how you compose yourself. People develop discipline from an early age and I don’t think that it is necessary to apply that discipline to every aspect of your life, especially if it’s less efficient.

Prior to this class I had never heard of the public and private self and I certainly would not have described myself as having more than one self. I very much do agree that modern people have more than one self and I think that it has had an impact on how we view others, it helps us to relate and humanize. I do disagree with Carr though. He argues that a weakened dichotomy of our two selves puts the structure of society in danger. There is evidence to support that; I’ll give him that. If one were to assume, as Carr has, that our society has blurred the lines of our two selves, then our countries current state is a good example of an unstable society in danger. The government is incredibly divided and consistently gridlocked, there is a grotesque amount of police brutality, and the economy is not doing so hot. And to an extent I do think that people’s personal, private views are getting in the way of needed progress. However I would argue that the ancient Romans were a society that lacked two selves and were still successful. Carr believes that silent reading was key to the development of two selves and the Romans were not a people who read silently. Politicians were always politicians, even in their homes, people would lose themselves completely (in ways that modern man would deem inappropriate); there was no clear division between the public and private. And yet, the Roman republic lasted 500 years. Obviously our society is more progressive than that (we don’t own people anymore for instance), but two selves were not necessary for the society to function. I think it is a gross over statement to say that if we change how we read it will put our society in danger.

What I find funny is that Carr argues for linear thinking and writes his book in that style, slowly building his argument chapter to chapter and connecting A to B to C; and yet, that is what made it so tedious for me. Each chapter is dedicated to its own drawn out explanation and I don’t think it created a solid argument.

First impressions: I did not expect it to be so music oriented. I am a bit comforted by the fact that no one is a music major.

The second day was less of a lecture and more of a class discussion/analysis.

The readings were a bit confusing for me; they really jumped right to the point and assumed the reader had some background knowledge of the subject. The in-class discussion helped to clear up some of my confusion though. The argument was made that the millennial generation is responsible for the ‘death of music’ or more specifically the dynamic compression. I understood the point of using it to spark a discussion however I am very used to hearing that millennials are bad so it was exactly provocative. That being said I disagree; dynamic compression has been present since the 50’s and peaked in the 90’s and early 2000’s. That is the only style of music that millennials have been exposed to in media so there’s not much choice in what we consume. It is also almost exclusively older generations that are producing modern music.

The idea that music’s emotional content has been flattened in more recent years doesn’t seem too far off but there is also an expectation for new music to be put out at a fast pace. If you equate emotional content to quality then it can be argued that quality has been sacrificed for quantity.