After listening to the differences between European beats versus Afro-American beats, I was trying to figure out what type of beats exist in South Asian music. I was born and raised in in Northern Virginia and my parents are from Pakistan, so I’ve been exposed to a wide range of sounds and music growing up. The whole world of Bollywood definitely has some similarities with “Western” entertainment (especially modern-day music), but it’s really different. I went through a few popular Bollywood songs and it was difficult to pin point if the beat was more European or Afro-American. But then when focusing on the New World beat, it made sense. The swing beat did apply to a few of the Bollywood songs that I listened to, which is so fascinating. Being a first generation student in the U.S., learning about U.S. history has always been an odd experience because it’s always been hard for me to place myself. There weren’t many people from the Indian subcontinent in the U.S. before the late 20th century, so finally being able to apply the lesson to myself was a really cool experience.

One of my favorite elements of this course has been the fact that we’re talking about the racism in our history and how we’re exploring the elements of our history through sound. Contrary to how American political culture has been (and somewhat still is) segregated, the theory that American popular culture has a desire for “mixing” and toys with integration. I felt sort of uneasy with this because it is essentially claiming that the Afro-American influence is only allowed when it’s not performed/provided by Afro-Americans. For example, many artists performed songs with Afro-American musicians, but didn’t allow the public to know that because it wasn’t accepted. For me, it’s difficult to separate politics from other aspects of culture because of how severely it sets the tone for day to day interactions. I do think that this point of view might be because I’m a young Muslim growing up in a post 9/11 era where my identity is highly politicized on a daily basis so it’s hard to not view everything politically. Although popular music might’ve had more of a desire to mix sounds, I don’t think that it was a sign of progress because of how racist society and politics were.

It’s no secret that a lot of America has a dark history, including the fact that many traditions date back to the time of slavery. I wasn’t familiar with the haunting history of Minstrel Shows, and I especially wasn’t familiar with how its customs still linger with us today in various forms of entertainment. Professor O’Malley brought up the comparison with 50 cent because with his album cover, he has a “rapper” persona but at the same time, there’s a photograph of him smiling and looking like an approachable guy on the red carpet. The question of whether or not 50 cent is a minstrel show character was brought up. I don’t think it’s fair to claim that a rapper who may be performing in a different persona is a minstrel show character. I think most performers, including rappers, have different personas that they release when they’re sharing their art. Also, being any person in entertainment but especially a person of color can often mean personifying yourself into something that may not totally be you but it helps gain attraction. From my understanding, Minstrel Shows were more deeply rooted in racism and the belief that having darker skin was something to be made fun of, which is why I don’t think it’s totally fair to say that a black rapper might feeding into the same dynamic as Minstrel Show characters.

Claude Shannon’s “Mathematical Theory of Communication” made me uncomfortable, to say the least. To claim that information is dislocated from meaning is an incredibly distorting claim to make because everything that we take in as information is converted into meaning and how it applies to us or how it relates to something we’ve known before. Shannon argued that everything is just signal and the relation to one thing to another has nothing to do with the meaning of either thing. As an English major pursuing a concentration in Cultural Studies, this was especially troubling because I spend all my time finding meaning in things. I think if everyone viewed the world as Shannon did, we would all be quite cynical and cold to others.

Similar to the Garageband example Professor O’Malley displayed in class, peoples’ identities and culture have such significance and meaning, but in the way that Garageband’s stolen that from the individuals and converted it into drag-and-drop, Shannon suggests the same theory. It’s an interesting approach, but I do think that meaning, and feelings, and emotions are crucial when understanding and interacting with the world and the people in it.

I’m pursuing a minor in Sociology, so when we discussed Max Weber’s influence on rationalization of modern-life, I was able to relate a lot of his other sociological theories to this lesson. He argued that the key invention of the modern-age is information management, or record-keeping. That sounds mundane to us today, however, the lack of rationalization of records and uniformity didn’t exist during/right after the Cold War. I drew similarities to Weber’s three-component theory of stratification, including class, status, and power. His theory was a way to form rationalization within society, so similar to Montgomery Meigs made sure there was a standard uniform, Weber used his theory to create rationalization in society.

I’m currently also taking an Introduction to Film course, and in that class, we had to watch a film from 1920, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Similarly to the short film we watched in our class, Caligari was filmed from one perspective, not many like in films today. It is unnatural that in modern-day films, we as the audience are so many different people in a scene. Other elements from Caligari like the sets being distorted and the overly expressive facial expressions to help convey feelings in a silent film, were odd and “old-school” for me to see. The way Carr speaks about the “self” being multiple people in today’s technologically advancing world is interesting. It’s strange to read about how everything I’ve known about my “self” is altered reality according to Carr, and changing the “self” of discipline.

Between 1880 and 1920, the United States experienced the most technological change in history. With the invention of the railroad and telegraph, people were able to communicate instantly and transit was rapid. This was the beginning of the concept of time and space being shattered. Additionally, photographs grabbed a moment of time and space – something that people hadn’t ever considered a possibility before. Since then, we’ve had the clock, refrigerated railcar, electric light, telephone, and other technological advances that shifted our concept of time and space.

Before this lesson in class, I hadn’t thought about the clock and the affect time has on our lives. Our entire lives surround time. Regardless of if it’s a cloudy, rainy, sunny, or stormy day, once it hits 7 am on our clock, I’m up and ready to get on with the day. Having time zones and standard time dislocated time because of easier access and ability to function at our jobs without needing sunlight or the natural world to agree with us.

Before listening to the comparisons in class, I never thought about how compressed music today was compared to the earlier days of music. I thought it was interesting how music producers today add new instruments but are still able to compress the singer’s voice so he/she doesn’t get any louder. After comparing ‘Havana’ by Camilla Caballo to Aretha Franklin’s ‘Say A Little Prayer’, the difference was clear, but I didn’t necessarily like one song over the other. And that may be just because I do enjoy listening to Aretha Franklin. As discussed in class, I do think that music is seen as background nowadays rather than giving our full attention to listening to it. Our generation is so used to multi-tasking so having music playing while doing something else, like walking to class or driving, makes us feel like we’re occupied and busy. The example I could think of was how there’s always music playing in stores while people are shopping, and if that music wasn’t compressed, it could be really distracting and inconvenient to have to worry about the constant shifting volume.