Jefferson believes the U.S. must remain an agricultural nation of small independent yeoman farmers, a small farmer who owns his own land who owns the means of his own living, otherwise it will become corrupt. A society of wage earners was hardly different from a society of slaves. He believed that for the nation to survive there had to be a high degree of uniformity. He thinks diversity is the enemy. The natural course of life is acquiring a skill, land, professional, but you acquire your own subsistence. He directs that the U.S. should be surveyed in identical 640 acres sections and these would have subdivisions. This is why the U.S. cities look like squares of a checkerboard and people know each other’s property. His biggest concern was how do you have a country if you don’t have some degree of identity of interest? He thinks the U.S. should move through space to the west and by getting more land to remain a nation of farmers forever. Hamilton wanted the U.S. to be a diverse industrial nation. Freedom was realized in prosperity and individual diversity, not in land ownership. Human self is best when they compete and find what they are good at. He likes projects to build roads, damns, etc. He equated freedom with market opportunity and with social diversity with the ability to specialize according to your talents. He says diversity is coherence. He thinks the U.S. should ignore western space and move through time into the industrial future. Because of their differences, Hamilton and Jefferson hate each other.

Jefferson said technology corrodes nationalism. You lose the core values of the republic. My identity is dependent on others. I can’t exist as a student unless there is a teacher and my teacher can’t exist without me as a student. We are group dependent. However, things like fingerprints, DNA, and identification cards are unique to a person but make us easier to track. “The more individual you are the less free you are” (O’Malley).  Individualism equals state surveillance and control and the absence of freedom.  Modern life tracks peoples preference and makes them easier and easier to be who you are and harder to be someone different.  People cluster with people like themselves. We used that zip code website in class to explain this and it was very interesting. You type in a zip code onto this website and it shows you what people in that area are all like. We got to type in my zip code 23322 (Chesapeake, VA). When the information came out I was kind of baffled to see the results. I believed half of these things are definitely true about my area and the others were not. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought they were all true. The zip code region is a big area. Where I particularly live I may not see those present but across the water in an area with the same zip code I could see all of those being true. It’s very weird to see how accurate it could be. It also shows you where in other parts of the country people in that zip code are like other people in other zip codes.

If you are in a zip code where you get only stuff that you like and the catalogs that come to your mail are tailored to fix what you already like, it’s harder to find something in common with people in other places. For example, I can go grocery shopping in Chesapeake, VA and know where everything I like to buy is and buy it. I can then go grocery shopping in Fairfax, VA and be “in a different world.” The food at this grocery will not be what I’m used to seeing and will get in the way of my shopping and slow me down. This pushed me away from difference. Technology is destroying nations; it undermines mutuality. It’s hard to try to get along with other countries because were so use to saneness.

Sounds are constantly being masked by other sounds; you’re not hearing everything. My mom can come to my band concert and think she is just listening to me playing music but she’s not; it’s everyone. It’s more about the experience of playing together. Which leads me to the next question, would you argue that music is a social experience? I mean why go to a concert; for the music or social experience? I think we can all agree most singers are not as good live as they are on the radio. You typically go to the concert for the social experience. You know to have a good time with your friends, drink, and listen to the music you have similar interests in.

When someone leaks a song before it is released, it insights people to buy it. Why do people who are pirating music feel like they have a right to have 24/7 access to streamed music? Shouldn’t you be supporting the artists by buying their music? I mean that’s how they make their money. When you think about it that way, you sound like a terrible person. You could also argue that they have other ways of making money like performing concerts. But, information deserves to be free. Rather than arguing the moral pros and cons of “stealing music,” Stephen Witt in “How Music Got Free,” explains the range of motivations behind individuals who played a part in this. The most well-known example he describes is the North Carolina factory worker who became the world’s primary source for albums leaked ahead of their release dates for free because he thinks its cool. Witt calls this Patient Zero of music piracy.

With this, then comes the advancements in technology such as the mp3. Back then, they saw the mp3 as unburdened by knowledge. It was merely a near perfect way to compress audio files. And with this development of mp3’s, it eventually turned into apps on a smart phone to obtain music like Spotify, Apple Music, Itunes, etc. It still gave individuals the opportunity to leak a song before the album was even released. Is this immoral?

So, does the technology of music make it disposable? Yes it does. If you download a song on your playlist on your phone, you can delete it. If you were to have a CD like back in the day, you would have to find someone to buy it off of you. Now it is just so easy to go and delete.

Have you ever thought about comparing music to physics? It’s a physical material thing, has order to it, and is written in the universe. So why not? Sound is pressure waves traveling through air. There is no sound if there is no air. The pitch of a note is determined by its frequency, how frequently it vibrates. Pipe organs are used to display the different types of overtones there are in music. You play the main note and then other notes vary throughout where it can sound like other instruments. Flute and clarinet sound different because they’re producing different over tones.

When thinking about music in the forms of architecture, you would never think to compare the two. Renaissance artist Leon Battita Alberti, thought architectural proportions is based on comparing to harmonic relationships in music, harmonious buildings. “Architecture is frozen music.” You can look at a beautiful building, let’s say for example a church, and see shapes in the structures with beautiful designs. It is very harmonious and can be compared to that in the relationship of music. You can almost hear how beautiful it is.

The history of sampling music first started back in the 1980s. It was about borrowing another artists beat to the song into their own. But the sampling of recorded music evolved out of sound collage that started decades earlier. By sound collages, we don’t mean just instruments. It was the sounds of things like trains and mechanical noises. The Beatles’ dabbled with this with their song “Revolution 9.” The recording began as an extended ending to the album version of Lennon’s song “Revolution.” Then he, George Harrison, and Yoko Ono combined their vocals, speeches, sounds, and other short tape loops of this to come up with the longest track that the Beatles ever released. Music is way less original than we think. What is the most popular example of sampling you can think of? That’s right, a turntable for a DJ! It’s like a new form of music and it sounds cool.

In class we talked about one of the first examples of sampling known as the Mellotron. This was originally developed and built in England in the 1960s. It was an electro-mechanical keyboard that allowed musicians to play string of different instruments on tape triggered by a key. You could literally trigger like a whole string of orchestras just by pressing one key. They were first used by rock bands in the early 70s. An example where this is used is the song “Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues. You’re taking an instrument and making it playable by another instrument. If I was a person who knew how to play the keyboard I would not know how to play the violin. With the Mellotron I technically could. Is that cheating? This turned into a form of sampling developed using records in which artists could repurpose. They would repurpose the original sound with their own lyrics but with the exact same melody. “If you sample, you license.” Bridgeport Music case in 2005 says that if you sample anything, you have to pay to use or be sued. The Power Puff girls have to pay James Brown for using a sample in one of his songs to include in the introduction music.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have all the knowledge in the world accessible right in your hands? Too bad that nothing really in today’s society is free. Someone always owns property to a source you want so you have to pay your rights to use it. Richard Stallman believed in a free software movement which included the four freedoms of software: the freedom to run a program for any purpose, freedom to study how the program works and change it to make it do what you wise, freedom to redistribute copies to neighbors, and freedom to improve a program. Microsoft and ITunes goes against these programs. Ben Franklin invented a lot of cool stuff and never patented any of it this way he could share it with all man kind. We know many things today about Plato, Aristotle, etc. because copyright did not exist; we had the freedom to learn. Stallman’s idea was you deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs. Back to having all the knowledge in the world, what is one source you can think of where this exists? That’s right, Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an example from the digital media revolution; idea of crowd sourcing. With a large group of people you will get better results rather than two to three experts. Lots of people know lots of stuff. Ideas are improved and get better when they are freely expressed. You can remove information and control of ideas from elites that make things more accurate and better. This is why Wikipedia is great! This made it seem like the authority of experts was undermined. Because Wikipedia is a collection of millions of people, we can’t cite it. It goes against this idea. The point of Wikiepedia was to envision an encyclopedia as an open document for anyone to fix with millions of people as the audience to have better sources to get the best knowledge. Information wants to be free. Wikipedia is better than most textbooks. It’s revolutionized access to information. It’s what Busch imagined. One more example of crowd sourcing is recommendations on Amazon. Have you ever ordered let’s say a book on Amazon and then below on the screen, recommendations of other books people have also bought with the book you’re purchasing? It is crowd sourcing. They’re showing other people like you with similar interests. They are freely expressed. You should not be able to charge for information but distribute it, like a software. But then who pays for the workers? NOVA (as a city example) does because they like it. LINUX was Stallman’s free software he made to be shared with everybody.  No one believes in this idea of free software though, it goes against what they think they know.

In another topic about copyright, did you know singing happy birthday to someone at a party or even playing music in a club is technically illegal? You have to pay your rights to the owner to play the song. But why has no one ever been in trouble for it before? They just haven’t been caught/ it’s a smaller issue to worry about. It’s like owning property. You do not own the property so you have to buy your rights to “borrow” it.

What is a corporation? A corporation is defined as a disembodied immortal being, a fictitious person. The entity is created in law as if it were a natural person. It is about transcending time or being immortal. Lets say we start a town called AngelinaVille and it’s run by five families that originally landed there. It has legal entity to buy land, the ability to sign contracts, etc. How does AngelinaVille still have legal existence after the people who have founded it died? They legally find another partner to run. The corporation goes on forever. It has a lot of rights similar to a person because a corporation is understood as a “natural” person. This is so weird!! George Mason University is a corporation. If the president dies the university still exists just under a different law. A corporation can also raise money, like selling shares to raise them money. The best part is, if something bad happens involving the corporation, not a single individual could be responsible. The whole corporation is responsible.

Maybe in the future free software will exist for everyone to use, or is that wishful thinking? I would like to see it happen.

Rock and Roll is a genre of popular music that first started in the African American community in the late 40s to early 50s. The music then was known as a mix of R&B, country, jazz, blues, and gospel. If you think about one of the most famous singers of Rock and Roll during this time period, Elvis Presley, the description of the music fits. In the earliest of styles of rock and roll in the 50s, the saxophone was often the lead instrument. This is now replaced today by the guitar. The rock and roll music of the 50s was essentially a rhythm of blues with a back beat of drums. Certain members of society back then, however, did not agree with this type of music. There were fears among many whites with the mixing of the dance floor that rock and roll would lead to blacks and whites spending actual time together, let alone the fears of sexual relations. “It should not surprise us that a member of the white Citizens Council of Birmingham, Alabama fulminated against rock and roll as immoral music that was part of a plot to infiltrate the minds of southern teens by the NAACP.” The first of the bans of this music started in the South (oddly not shocking), at dances then and become widespread to radio stations who were banned to play this kind of music.  Rock and roll music contributed to the civil rights movement. I never knew this information about rock and roll and I’m honestly really surprised.

Reference:

ProQuest article titled: ROCK AND ROLL, CRT, AND AMERICA IN THE 1950S MUSICAL COUNTERNARRATIVES IN THE JIM CROW SOUTH

What is nationalism? Nationalism is a group of people who abide by the principles and the same framework of laws. An example that we all follow everyday is the U.S. Constitution.  I guess you could say we are all equal because we all agree to follow the same rules right? Some people were romantic nationalists. They said that there is something to a nation beyond law and beyond individual rationality. There is a “soul.” But how would we be able to spot that? One answer could be racial nationalism. You can use a race to define a nation. But why isn’t the U.S. not part of any other country? The U.S. is not really “unique.” We are open to everyone: every race, every personality, every culture, etc. This does not tend to make us unique. A country like Germany for example, is unique because everyone is the same. There are only white people living there who share the same culture and values. Another problem with the U.S. not being unique is the idea that the American character consists of frontiers, unlike other countries. Think about it. In the west, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Indian, etc. cultures are more prominent because that is where they first migrated from. You would not find many people who speak these languages or are from the culture on the east coast.  European countries are known as a place of “whiteness.” One serious study in the 1890s was folk culture. This was like the traditional, untouched people. The only place to find them is on the economic margins, the Appalachia swamps of Louisiana. You could also think of these people as hillbillies, ignorant or primitive. But now because of the whole point of folk culture, they are considered pure and uncontaminated.

Huddie Ledbetter was raised in Texas and worked as a laborer and also played music. He went to prison for manslaughter in 1930. He was discovered by John Lomax. He was looking to bring folk culture and music back and what a better place to look than in prison? Lomax got Ledbetter out of prison and they went on college tours with “folklore” programs. Ledbetter eventually split from Lomax but could only make a living as a “folk” singer.

The song Honkin Tonk  by Hank Williams is about people moving to the south, a man cheating on a women, and then asking her to bring money. His voice in the song sounded like a donkey. It was very odd. The country music during this time is different than what it is today. Today’s country music has been more modernized and I think it also is trying to lean toward the genre of pop rather than being a pure country song.

Buck Owens and the Buckaroos are the second country band to play at Carnegie Hall in 1963. Their music was different than older country music, like from Hank Williams, because it involved drums. This is where the country music started to sound more like pop.

King Records was run by Syd Nathan, a Jewish immigrant in Cincinnati. This industrial city has a lot of black and white immigrants. The first singer he signed in the record label was Cowboy Copas. The song Filipino Baby is about a romance with a Filipino woman. Is this an artifact of white privilege, a white man talking about a dark skinned woman? It is. It just sounds like the women is a “collection of body parts.” You would not normally see a dark skinned woman writing about a white man. This adds along to the topic of racism.  White people tend to speed up the music.  Within the structure of segregation, there are alternate desires to be expressed.

In the New World with its blend of African and European culture,  there is a “displaced” beat. It is not just 1 and 3 like European or 2 and 4 from African, it’s displaced, or mixed. This beat is often called a swing/tango beat. It shows up in current songs as a habenera beat. Music written by white people is definitely faster beat than compared to the African culture. Never really thought about that until today. O’Malley brought up an example in class that I have seen before. If you’re walking the streets of Washington D.C., you sometimes see people with paint buckets on the street. They use these paint buckets as drums and the beat they use is the same as go go music, or the displaced beat.  Music is opaque, or formal. Someone like me, does not understand the analyzing of the song or really thinks about it. I just say something like “oh yeah i like the beat.” Really digging deep into music I still can’t grasp my head around doing. Hopefully by the end of this semester after taking this class that will change.

Minstrel shows were a very strange phenomenon. They emerged from European traditions, but in the US in 1830, it consisted of working class white men dressing up in black face. These men imitated black music and dance forms. Does this show a fond for the African American culture or is it making fun of them? It’s both. They are expressing normally forbidden longings. This was calling the attention of “whiteness” and not “blackness.” Meaning that when someone would see the show, they would ask: “Why is this white guy wearing a black face?” I think this is very strange and don’t see how this could have ended up being a good thing. I mean is it not disrespectful to the African American community, having white people dress as them? This is also more common than I thought. The song Dixie, is about the south written for white people to be sung in black face. Too old of an example? How about the famous examples of bugs bunny or mickey mouse? They are technically dark colored body characters with white face. These are all minstrel characters. The minstrel shows were popular back in the 1830s and still to this day we can find it? 50 cent himself is a popular black rapper who has a different persona’s when on stage then in public places. Is this also an example from the minstrel times? It sure is. In our current society, there are numerous racial stereotypes that are present; yet we laugh at them or fail to acknowledge their presence. Many people blame minstrel shows for the exploiting and dehumanizing the African American race. There are still so many unanswered questions I have or the public has about these Minstrel shows.