The earliest mention of Jazz I found was in 1917 from the New York Sun. I really enjoyed reading the article titled “Whence Comes Jass?” The article described how primitive jazz is and the savages that played it. This reminded me of what was discussed in class; white people love black culture but hate black people. The author was talking about how the music makes you want to dance and how everyone loves it then degrades the people making the music; “The music of contemporary savages taunts us with the lost art of rhythm.” The author then describes how complicated jazz is. Jazz is pure rhythm, there is usually no melody. During the time this was written, most composers could not wrap their heads around how that could possibly work and therefore disregarded the “savages music.” However, the author did describe how intense and difficult it is to write and perform jazz. Jazz originated in Cuba and worked its way into New Orleans. “For years jazz has ruled in the underworld resorts of New Orleans… wild men and wild women have danced to jazz for gladsome generations.”

One quote I found very interesting was “It was an attempt to reproduce the marvellous syncopation of the African Jungle.” This intrigued me because when listening to jazz, the jungle is not the first thing that comes to mind.

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030431/1917-08-05/ed-1/seq-23/#date1=1789&index=17&rows=20&words=Jazz&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=New+York&date2=1963&proxtext=jazz&y=18&x=14&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

Today in class we discussed what is distinctly American and what that means. Most people answered with Baseball and hot dogs. But is that what’s really American? The U.S. is known as a melting pot for a reason. Everything that the U.S. is known for is from somewhere else. Hot dogs are from Germany, the idea of pizza is from Italy, and so on and so fourth. This also relates to our music. The reason the rest of the world likes American music so much is because it is a mix of everything. The different kinds of music made all over the country have been blended together. I don’t believe that any one thing could be distinctly American.  I believe that the melting pot comparison is the most distinctly American thing ever. The mixing of cultures, races, and ideas is what America is about.

I found the discussion of where country music came from very intriguing because of the debate surrounding country music now. Country music came from rural people who moved to the city and were then told what to sing about. This is where the idea of what country music should be about came from. Singing about the south and hard work in the sun, when only some of these people actually lived like this. Country music is the romanticization of southern life that only rarely lives up to the songs. This is relevant to now because so many people are talking about how what is made now is not “real country.” Country music listeners complain that the pop-country phase is not genuine or accurate. I find this interesting that people are complaining about music that isn’t genuine from the beginning.

The fact that there was such a thing as race records made sense to me because of the time period but also made me very sad. As someone who played instruments for seven years, I very strongly believe that all music is for everyone. When Prof. O’Malley said that if he had wanted to buy a record from the “race” section his friends would have laughed and asked what he was doing. I can only imagine what would happen if a black person tried to buy from the “white” music section.

The idea of music being sold to people based of their race begs the question; is music for specific people? This is still brought up in modern time. Some of my black friends got into my car one day and made a comment that I “listen to blacker music than them.” I know that “black music” is still a thing but, it struck me as weird that it was weird for me to listen to it. I’ve also seen lots of white people ironically listen to rap music as a joke. There is definitely such  a thing as black music still but I do not believe it is only for black people. I believe all music is for all people.

When looking at music throughout the decades, one notices particular sounds that have remained in popular music. Two of these are the samba and the habanera. These two types of songs have very basic, catchy beats. Theses simple beats have been consistently used throughout history. They can be heard in jazz and blues, usually on the stand up bass. The tunes have also carried through to modern pop music. While this may seem trivial, I find it incredibly interesting. This means that musicians were originally influenced by the traditional samba and habanera and that producers saw what was selling money. These producers then told their musicians to make songs with these beats so they would be hits. This is interesting to me because it’s taking something that could be creative and new and putting the same notes in the same order over and over again.

Prof O’Malley discussed today how, throughout history, humans have been obsessed with boundary transgressing animals. I almost immediately thought of RuPaul’s Drag Race. RuPaul hosts a T.V. show where drag queens compete. It’s an incredibly popular show for the exact same reason O’Malley said we like carnivals.

While drag is becoming more normal and being portrayed incredibly positively in the media, it still is boundary transgressing and therefore, arguably, weird. Men dressing as over exaggerated forms of women is not “normal.” In class, we discussed how people love carnivals because its so weird, it’s everything that shouldn’t be in one place. Bearded women, incredibly flexible people, people jumping from incredible heights; not everyday things. People eat this kind of stuff up and that’s why RuPaul’s Drag Race is so popular, people like to see things that they wouldn’t consider normal.

The legacy of minstrelsy is still very much so alive. Rap has been known as “black music” and while music is for everyone, it was understood that only black people rap. Suddenly this has changed. There is a new era of white “soundcloud rappers.” A white soundcloud rapper is a white boy who thinks that because they can talk fast to a pre-made beat, it makes them rappers. These “rappers” typically have dreads and have that persona of a “thug,” the same persona we discussed 50 Cent having when promoting his music. While some white people look down on black people who listen to rap and “act like thugs” they are now promoting these white boys pretending to be black. While most people who are promoting these white soundcloud rappers are doing it because it’s funny because they can’t rap, it still is giving them fame and money. And at the same time, these white kids listen to rap music solely because they think it’s funny for white people to listen to “black music.” I think this is stupid because music isn’t for people, while different kinds of people could connect more with different kinds of music, everything is for everyone, especially music.

This class we talked a lot about when computers were invented and how they were built from there. But the facts and numbers of when these computers we’re built didn’t strike me as all that important in regards to the class as a whole. what struck me as the most important is something that O’Malley brought up at the end of class. The internet was hard for people to understand because of the change of authority. Because when on the internet, no one is in charge. When this was new a lot of people had trouble wrapping their heads around this concept. When reading books, the author was in charge, when listening to someone talk, they were in charge. No one is in charge on the internet. This is why everything is for everyone. Everyone has access to whatever they want.

When you think about how Google pulls up search results for you, you think it searches for the particular words you typed in that order. But, what Google actually does is it pulls out certain letters in the specific order and searches for that. Shannon had a very interesting outlook on why this is. Shannons theory is that the more uncertainty there is, the more information there is. For example, in English, the “U” following the letter “Q” in any given word has no uncertainty, and contains no information. So, when the letter “Q” is used in a word, “U” is not needed. 

At first I didn’t understand this concept or how it made sense, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it makes. If Google isn’t sure what exactly you’re looking for then it can give you a lot of different options. Thus, more uncertainty equals more information.